I threw a fist at God, but he masterfully dodged it and a claw scraping across the lands–my uncle's maw!
A gigantic golden hand beaming with bright light suddenly picked me up by the pants and gave me a wedgie, the branding on the top of my underwear sticking out for everyone to see!
God set me back down and cast away His spiritual hand, drawing me back into the fight with His manly, fleshy ones and punching me in the face!
I staggered backwards, disoriented, and he socked me in the shoulder, keeping His chin low and His arms guarding His face!
I threw another punch–throwing that attempt–and God spun around, angled His leg and hooked me on it, sending me flying into the pavement!
I rose my fists and got back up, jumping back and forth just as God did, keeping my fists close to my face just as God did–with His robes bouncing around His half-clothed body, His hair fluffing down and up in an almost entrancing way! With haste, I swung my fists and shot back into the metaphorical ring, posting up against God in Round 2!
Claudius struck at Garfield–both of them stripped of their titles, both of them now reduced to mere demonic warriors battling each other for Thane Portia's entertainment!
Garfield wrestled for a grip on Claudius' neck and squeezed his hands. Metal scraping loudly, the two opponents roaring in a boastful, beastly manner, the cityscapes lying within the castle wall erupted with screams of terror as Thane Portia's soul-breaking presence walked through the gates, escorted by a swarm of demonic figures with devilish red eyes, the same figures crawling out of his fair flesh and screaming in wretched, wretched agony!
The chatters and brave, soldiering roars that beamed across the shambly concrete cubes (lining the streets, blood smeared across the coarse walls and dribbling down cracks in the ceilings as soldiers sat against cornerstones and bled out on the rooftops next to their enemies) suddenly jolted to a halt as Thane Portia–the man who constructed an oligarchy and left in his wake a regime of bloodshed and terrified screams, harrowing wails and a crumbling Elsinore, the man who possessed my father after he was murdered in cold blood, inhabiting my father's corpse whilst his spirit was in the afterlife, the man who lied to me and to those my father loved–now walked through the battle-scarred, hollowed concrete surfaces of Raynor. His eyes glowed a brooding, fiery scarlet; his knees were scourged too often and quickly for his body to heal. He wore gray robes (from which he drew a jade staff with a horned demon head perched atop it, veins connected to the lungs still flapping out from beneath the fuzzy head) and he looked at me with a vicious smile, a look that could kill a man.
'Twas a look he gave that could kill a man, but I am no man. I, Prince Saxo Hamlet–son of King Hamlet–am a god…
Polonius and the rebels watched as Garfield socked Claudius up the chin, sending him teetering backwards and leaving him blurry-visioned!
I am not a coward, no. I, Prince Hamlet of Denmark, am an idol to my people and the one man truly deserving of the throne.
Claudius rose to his feet, cogs grinding as his functions started up and the servos in his brain sprung to life with encrypted chatter and confusing sensory inputs. King Hamlet splattered drool all over the sidewalk, salivating to get a bite out of Claudius' succulent, sweet plasma, his chest scrunching up and expanding in controlled intervals as he sized up his opponent, clenching his talons against the inside of his palm, wrapping his fuzzy thumbs around the rest of his paws and preparing and diving headfirst into the final smackdown with a mighty roar! The two crashed into each other! Several ringing booms plowed any buildings that dared to have more than one floor, sending a few scattered two-story towers right to the ground! Claudius and King Hamlet's paws met in the center of Raynor, kicking down the palace walls and sending one final sonic boom as King Hamlet's frizzy paws met with Claudius' bulky paws and the mechanical marvels supporting them!
I am not one to back down from a challenge, especially not a fake challenge put on by a charlatan…
Polonius drew a sharpened rapier as he and the rebels were continually being cornered by a horde of beastly spiders, an unkindness of ravens and Claudius' new summons: a murder drifting through the air, flapping its gaggle of wings and descending down upon them like an angel of death, a rainfall of beaks like a battering hailstorm, a blitz of splinters pouring from the skies and pecking at the rebels and their wise, elderly leader!
I drew yet another scimitar (sheathed in one of several scabbards in my belt) and charged at Thane Portia, my anger boiling like a stew left on the stovetop for too long: bound to catch on fire and burn everything else down with it. I rushed at the thane–the man from whom smoke beamed without him ever touching a vape or cigar–and wrapped my scimitar around his neck. His head slipped under the curvature of the blade, his staff hit my knees, I parried him and he tottered back for a minute, measuring me against himself. I flourished my sword, then quickly ducked as a crew of ravens darted over my head, causing my slate black hair to flow through their concocted breeze!
Thane Portia bolted at me like a hornet, his eyes with no less focus than a wild predator, his legs lifting off the ground as he sprung forward and whipped me in the shins with his cane! He butted me in the stomach with the flat end, bringing me to my knees! I slashed against the ash-gray robes that enveloped his muscles in hues of gloom–not the epic hues of storm clouds, but the horrible grays left behind from dying blazes, trickling into the skies as a fire takes its last breath. Thane Portia's burning cane had me choking and gasping for my last breath, his fire overtaking my meek flame and thus consuming it, leaving no traces of the blazing glory I used to be but the faint scents of my former self emitting from his greater being; and thus I was swiftly extinguished, and the humble flame was enveloped in the embrace of a dirty evil.
But with fire rising, rebel flame rises to meet it. Cerberus–the three-headed hellhound, his eyes glowing white as his fur of midnight-black flaps behind him–does charge through the battle-torn, crime-abused streets of Raynor and barks at Thane Portia, his mind pining for wanton violence, his fangs already tainted with blood not-yet-drawn, his eyes radiating with a jack o' lantern's luminescence and his heart pumping the blood of his enemies, his titanic paws kicking up dirt and uprooting buildings as all three heads clobber each other and drool for the delicious flesh of Thane Portia. One haunting glimpse at the three eyes alone was enough to suck all the confidence from Thane Portia's eyes.
This man who abused my father's death was now reduced to a coward.
Cerberus stampeded down the war-torn streets, his three skulls slicking out his big, fleshy pink tongues, their claws sharpening as the triptych bulldog dragged them against the pavement, leaving a trail of dust and volatilized concrete behind as his three heads–six floppy ears slapping against its cheeks and its nostrils whiffing the air with excitement as each head wildly turned its neck in every direction–rammed into the wall behind the thane, pressing all three lanate foreheads into the brick wall behind him, anchoring each skull against it whilst the back paws kept the dog at a comfortable angle to rip into Thane Portia, which I was unfortunate enough to see in gruesome detail… details gruesome enough that I could describe them to you.
His insides spilled out of him like a bleary pink mess, a muddy, syrupy mess of boysenberry-hued chunks of his liver, a raw pink series of strings that vomited blood from both ends and were wrapped up and riddled with knots and bows–an almost sentient wormish thing that the bulldog slowly ripped out of him like a gaggle of mouth coil being slowly drawn from a magician's mouth at a child's birthday party; a keychain of bone and bone marrow–coarse, rattling wheat-coloured and resembling the quivering bones of a serpent; Cerberus' claw jammed into his body and dug into his arms like a man at a seafood restaurant digging into the limbs of a crab and scooping out the insides, its claws swiping right and left, forth and back until every last trace of arm meat was gone, and maroon splatters of blood dashed the floor like puddles of muddy rain; anything below the belly was left untouched, as Cerberus was too afraid of what might happen if the entirety of the horrible thane's being–his slaver's being–rested within his brawny insides, settling within the three lungs' shared digestive tract… he was scared of what it might do to him.
As Cerberus scarfed down the last chunks of human meat he desired from the deceased thane, I entered a somber monologue: How swiftly wounds are healed, even in war!
At one time methought, "War delays all healing.
Nothing is resolved whilst world leaders toil.
No amends are made whilst the kings send forth:
Their soldiers, and their soldiers' personnel,
Their navy crews, their navy crew's captains.
Whilst armed to kill, leaders will not repent.
Whilst grudges remain, people won't forgive.
Killing, shooting, massacring, it hurts.
But it goes unseen, 'tis not spoken of.
But now I see that we have forgiveness…
In spite of war, calamity, violence…
In spite of all terror and destruction…
In spite of it all, we love. We choose love.
As I wrapped up my monologue, Ophelia–who, now in her human form, tapped me on the shoulder and got my attention–unsheathed a shiny golden dagger from her scabbard and whispered, "What's all this you're saying about choosing love?"
"You don't understand me," I bumbled back, noting that it was now just the two of us; Polonius and his rebels had departed, and Adam, Elista and Zanaster were on the run from Fortinbras. I sprung through the air, backflipped and struck the hook of my scimitar against Ophelia's stubby dagger, backflipping again and landing in front of her. I blocked a series of deliberate hits, obviously studied moves that I blocked and retorted against with ease. She whipped her blade and I struck her hand, punishing her for showing off; as Ophelia backed away, I drew forward and slashed across her face with my blade, a flick of the wrist that was (on my part) lousy and wasted,
"It's you who doesn't understand me, who doesn't understand you, who doesn't understand the importance of family," Ophelia cried, her wails scaring the pixies back into their abodes in river dugs. She advanced against me, ripping through the tense air with her finely-carved and refurbished golden saber, swiping at my face with enough of a scare in her scourging blows (despite me dodging her importunate strikes) to make me flinch. My former bride screamed every time her blade came down on me, spitting out blood in frustration every time she missed. "You don't understand that you're loved, so you make it a point to hurt others, to make them feel bad, to make them cry–isn't that who you are?
"Just someone who likes to make others cry?" Ophelia's blade swallowed rays of sunlight and puked them into my eyes, blinding me and allowing her the perfect moment to snuff out my spirit… but she only halted her attack, allowing my vision and gaze to return upon her face. She clung onto her dagger barely now, unable to bring herself to do away with me permanently. "You aren't content with what you have, so you steal from others and you use terms like 'chad rizzler' and 'alpha' and 'sigma' and 'top G' to justify your behaviors, to give yourself some reason to abuse, to harm, to manipulate, to destroy.
"You give yourself titles in an order to forgive yourself for the abuse you caused me!" Her blade ripped across my neck and opened a gaping hole in my lungs, blood trickling down my throat like water drizzling from a faucet. She pivoted away from me, shuffling away casually as if ready to leave me there… ready to let me go… ready to let me die… She sheathed her blade and comforted herself with assurances, promising to herself that next time she would be more forgiving, telling herself that I wholly deserved this cruel fate. But she couldn't let me die, because she wasn't ready to let me go yet; she quickly spun around and sliced open my wrist's outer flesh–not a drop of blood drawn from my wrists, I was still deemed victorious in every battle and spar I participated in thus far–and she hollered (just in time), "So you still consider yourself a winner, right?!"
"Yes, because I haven't lost a drop of blood from my hands," I explained, coughing up a hunk of dry, maroon blood from my mouth, my chest scrunching up and relaxing as I struggled out a deep, gurgly breath. "It's a tradition: as long as–in the family of the Hamlets of Elsinore–you do not bleed from your wrists, you are not deemed to have lost a single battle, even if you are slain in one." Ophelia quietly walked up to me, kneeled down and looked me in the eyes; then, drawing gory patterns into my wrists, she kissed my forehead and walked away. "Alas, what a tragedy is this, but I am justly slain." I died.
The End.