Echoing laughter filled the empty spaces, and seemed to last forever. Laughter rife with unhinged madness. Thoughts, deeds, desires, events-the man's entire life; all of it ricocheted through his mind, and each vaguely remembered experience made him laugh harder. Except one.

***

Arrows protruded from his body in a dozen places, and his armor, once spotless white and gold, was rent and torn, splattered with both his blood and others. His azure cape was ragged and unkempt.

Those PIGS. How dare they do this to me? I am unbeatable! I am an Immortal!

He looked up to see the boy, and his band of insufferably noble fools. That damnable brat of a traitor! What was his name?

It doesn’t matter who he is! I am invincible, and he is dog meat!

He lunged to his feet and charged the defiant moron who had stood in the way of a Juggernaut, his flaming sword held low. There was a confused series of blows, too fast for his crazed mind to follow, and then he was lying on the ground, seemingly unable to move. A final, impossible moment of unreality, a laugh, and then…darkness.

***

The laughter stopped then, and in it’s place came screams of rage and loss. For at that moment he remembered that he had, in fact, been defeated, and that these ghostly remembrances were all that was left to him. This cycle continued, laughter and rage, for a trackless time that seemed as if it would never end.

Until the voice called.

…Come to me…

His mind snapped into desperate focus on the first sensation he’d had besides his own thoughts in an eternity.

Who dares summon me?! Speak!

…Find me…

Stop hiding like a maggot and face me!

His answer was a horrendous spiritual tug, something grasping his soul and moving it without seeming to go in a particular direction. And just as suddenly, he was falling, his wild black hair streaming in and out of his vision in a suddenly sunlit world. His cape swirled as he dropped, and for an instant he reveled in the pure joy of knowing he had at last escaped his prison and regained his body. He looked down to discover a forest rushing up at him. But he’d not been the most feared fighter in two kingdoms for no reason, and his teeth showed as he sneered at such a pathetic challenge. He extended both arms and dove downward towards the waiting branches, grabbing the first to come within his reach.

With inhuman agility, especially for a man in heavy armor, he swung on the branch, killing and redirecting his downward momentum, and he reveled in the feeling of power and strength in his arms as he let go of the branch just as it snapped under his weight. He executed a flip and started falling again, this time feet first. Still sneering, he dropped the rest of the way to the ground, landing in a fighter’s crouch. He wasn’t even sweating.

The man looked up through the leaves at the sky he’d just literally fallen out of.

“What now?” he impatiently asked the forest.

…Come to me…

The man threw back his head and laughed, for whatever was calling him could not begin to imagine what it had loosed. It was a cold, ringing sound, devoid of anything but madness and scorn.

“Oh, I intend to,” he whispered, and his smile was wolf-like.

He who laughs last, laughs best. And Prince Luca Blight laughs first, last and always.

Luca set off in an unknown direction, following the faceless voices’ summons…for now.