You choose.
Sky tumbled through the metal strung set of patio chairs and tables in front of the market.
Atlas sat on the solid oak bench planted across the courtyard. He held his large green backpack over one shoulder and tugged at the thick rusty iron chains around his feet and shoulders.
He watched quietly.
Sky seemed startled from the collision, but he kept moving. He took five more large steps scattering furniture as dice spun from a cup.
Sky made his way through the debris as though wading through Atlantic ocean waves feet cut by sharp shards. His legs slowed to ¼ time in the current, but tables and chairs could not stop his movement. He looked around for an opening.
Chaos, a father of Titans, inhaled sharply, nostrils flared wide as sinew and muscle shot red fire neurons jolting his memory back and forth.
The courtyard was a playground for gladiators. It had been a testing place to improve or decay for millennia. Few players found their way here. Most sentients never learned of this place. They never rubbed the soil between their thumbs and forefingers.
Some players chose to grow stronger in every conceivable way — spiritually, physically, intellectually. They became more potent, intuitive, and wiser. They chose rebirth. They strengthened their bloodlines.
Others attempted but lost hope and sank to their knees under unearthly atmospheric pressure. Generations of unhopeful strung together and folded into themselves and nothingness.
One day forty-four moons ago, Sky woke up. He was decaying out of a seeming lack of options but that morning he knew where he stood and what he must do.
Atlas saw him the morning of his waking as Sky stirred from alcohol-filled nightmares and grappled with the addictions of his great-grandfather’s great-grandfather’s distant ancestors.
Chaos burned hotter as events unfolded, and Atlas shrugged to rattle his chains and remind Chaos of the ties that bind and the yokes of order all players carry — even him.
Atlas carried the Earth. He never shirked his duty. At times he lost his balance, and his burden rolled across his shoulders.
Now, Atlas pulled his ankles under the bench shifting his weighted torso forward to see the scene. Cities and the people living on Earth’s fault lines shuddered in response to his interest.
Atlas had not seen disorder like this in the square since Zeus slew his Titan father.
His chains hummed in vibration, and his backpack shifted from his left to right shoulder, causing avalanches and tsunamis to cross the Earth.
With each step, Chaos grew more restless, and a hope that was the size of a mustard seed burst forth in Atlas’s heart. It burned bright with holy fire of hope. He rubbed his forehead up and across with the back of his iron fist.
He spoke slowly at first.
His first words.
He stood and bellowed with hearty laughter and dropped his chains.
He slung the backpack off his left shoulder across his midsection to touch the dirt coiling his body like a spring, and with a giant heave, unleashing the orb into the night sky like a shot-put, pivoting his core and spinning his ankles at impossible speeds.
He laughed loud and long. He had waited long for his freedom. He knew the time had come to exit the stage and begin the new adventure.
The Greek looked up to the skies for guidance, and he surely received the signals he sought, for he paused, smiled broadly, and laughed joyously with a universal mathematical thunder and spoke yes to it all.
