Before Denholm could believe it, the stranger was standing over him. He moved too quickly, able to nimbly glide across the same ground Denholm had barely managed to stagger along on.

  Even though Denholm had never seen clothes like the ones this stranger wore, it didn’t take a genius to see that they were overly formal, so much so that his appearance stood out from the gnarl of mottled natural shapes and colors around him like a candle in the night. Well, it also helped that he literally held the only candle in the night. His face was furthest from the lamp and so the least illuminated. But from what little Denholm could see, it looked too pale and far too motionless. Lifeless, even. The man was unnerving.

  But… he was also Denholm’s only hope.

  “Who are you?” Denholm asked up at him.

  No response.

  The lamp’s handle creaked as the stranger raised it up higher and higher until it finally illuminated his face. Denholm gasped. It was a mask, not a face. A white mask made from something like clay, though it was too shiny to be that. It was also so white that it put the brightest clouds in a blue sky to shame. The mask depicted a human-like face, but the features were exaggerated to extremes. The lips, brows, noise, everything had a curl to it and came to a point, just like the strange clothing he wore. The lips were pressed up in a permanent smile. There were no mouth or nose holes. The only gaps were for the eyes. And behind those two holes was… nothing. Just blackness.

  “I am a Trickster,” the mask replied, so matter of factly, so sharp and clear.

  Denholm almost sputtered. Of all possibilities, the one he never would have considered is that Tricksters, of all things, would be this easy to find.

  “How did you find me?” Denholm asked, trying to sound his bravest.

  “I didn’t find you. You drew me to you.”

  Denholm didn’t remember standing up, but he was on his feet and backpedaling. Though every step he took backwards was useless as the Trickster simply mirrored it, following him at the same distance. “What do you mean?” he asked it, finally coming to a stop as he realized the uselessness of trying to retreat on this horrible, root-ridden ground.

  “Every thought about my kind coming from the mind of a human is like a flashing light in the darkness to my senses. And I daresay, you have flashed quite frequently for some time now. Recently, you have been nothing less than a beacon. However, right when I thought I was imminent to finally find you, your resolve wavered.” He… or whatever it was smiled. Denholm could somehow tell, even though the mask remained unmoving. “Thankfully, you proved me wrong at the last moment. Something worthy of my utmost kindness.” Something flickered behind the mask. Eyes blinking, maybe? There was something wrong about them, though, in both shape and color. As quick as he had thought he’d seen them, there was only darkness inside the eye holes again.

  Denholm had thought over hundreds of ideas on how he would trick a Trickster once he finally found one. Riddles he learned from the old masters, word plays with hidden meaning, and more. Right now, he forgot all of it.

  “Will you help me?” Denholm asked, begged, more like.

  “What are you in need of?” The Trickster’s voice was dripping with sincerity, so much so that it had the reverse effect and became offputting.

  “I need to… to trick a Trickster.” Denholm’s words came out weak and pathetic. He knew admitting that to the very thing he was supposed to trick was a terrible start, but he just couldn’t think straight.

  The emotionless mask stared back at him for several seconds, entirely still. “Luck,” it said, “favors the brave.” The voice was more whispy and subdued this time.

  Denholm waited for more, but the Trickster seemed to be expecting a response from him. He shifted anxiously, trying to figure out what it meant. Eventually, he came to the conclusion that it was encouraging him to try. Perhaps it enjoyed being on the other end of things as much as it enjoyed tricking people. Either way, Denholm wracked his brain, searching for even just one of his previous ideas.

  Abruptly, with a sharp inhale and a hesitant smile, he remembered.

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  Denholm held up his right hand, fingers splayed. Then he put that hand behind his back so the Trickster couldn’t see. “If I cut off three fingers and then show you what’s left, how many will there be?” Denholm discreetly tucked three of his fingers in, leaving only one finger and one thumb still outstretched.

  The Trickster’s mask tilted slightly. “Good trick. You show me only one hand at the start, as if that is all that matters. But after you cut off only three, you will still have also the intact other hand. Five and two remaining on the first hand makes seven.”

  Denholm abruptly revealed his hand. “Wrong! I only have one finger left and one thumb.”

  “No,” the Trickster said. “You have seven. Thumbs are fingers.”

  “No! I showed you this hand at the start, and thumbs are not fingers!”

  “Fine. Even still, you would only have won if you had not deceived me.”

  “I tricked you!”

  “There are no fingers cut off.”

  Denholm frowned. “That’s not the point of the game!”

  The Trickster held up his own gloved hand, and without any discernable cutting, two finger and one thumb simply fell off. “Really? I find such details very important in games like this one.”

  Denholm couldn’t force himself to argue further. He was too horrified watching the smooth stumps. There was no blood. It was as if the material his gloves were made from was his hand.

  “And yet… in a sense, you have won,” the Trickster said in an oddly melancholy way. “You believe you have, and I believe you only partially have. In the totality, that still favors you.”

  Denholm’s heart surged. “So… do I get the boon?”

  “Ah, that is why you seek me. You want the ability to take a god’s power from them.”

  “Yes!”

  “Well, I’m not sure I can give you that,” the Trickster said, a faint hint of laughter somehow overlapping his words.

  “Why not?” Denholm demanded, suddenly finding some of his resolve rekindling. If he could just get out of this with what he needed, maybe there wouldn’t be any need for snivveling in the undergrowth after all.

  “If you believe you have tricked a Trickster, but the Trickster believes you haven’t, who is right? The Trickster, the boy, or neither? Whose belief is worth more? Have both been tricked or neither?”

  “So I have tricked you?” Denholm asked, finding it impossible to follow what he was hearing.

  “That was not an answer.”

  Denholm thought long and hard before he decided on what he would say next. “Why can’t we both just say we tricked each other? That way you don’t have to feel bad, and I can get what I want.”

  The Trickster went to pick up his fallen fingers from the ground as he spoke. “Smart boy. So, let us say this is true. I would be forced to provide you with the key to godhood, and you would also be bound to providing me a service. Does that sound right?”

  “So, no one needs to lose?” Denholm asked.

  “Neither of us.” It emphasized the last word in a way that spiked mild suspicion, but Denholm was too excited to care. “I must request, however, that you perform my task first. You will receive the key only after you finish it. If you can.”

  Denholm watched as, one by one, the Trickster reinstalled his finger in place. They stuck right on as if they had never been severed. and then wriggled animatedly before stilling. After that, the hand fell to his side.

  “So…” Denholm began, trying not to feel sick, “what is the task I have to do?”

  “Why, it’s quite a small thing.”

  “What is it?”

  The lamp creaked as the Trickster leaned forward.. “Why, I would like you to kill a god for me.”

  “But… I just want a god's power,” Denholm said. He might want to be a hero with some kind of godlike power, but not once had he ever wanted to kill anything besides animals, and in that case, only for food.

  “Good thing for you then,” the Tricksster began. “To kill a god and to take their power are one in the same if you have the right tools in hand. I even have one in particular in mind. One most horrible and unkind of goddesses. Does that sound like something you can do? It would be a just killing, one that will save many a frail heart from her whims.” The gloved hand of he Trickster reached behind a flap of his immaculate coat and produced something wonderful, something more beautiful than Denholm had ever seen anything be.

  It was a double-edged knife made from red light.

  Well, that wasn’t quite the way the stories went about it. Wasn’t he supposed to win a key, not a knife? And wasn't that key supposed to just steal a bit of the god's power, not kill them? Denholm blinked. He didn’t remember tricking this Trickster yet, either. How many of the stories he had been told were lies?

  Well, Denholm was too close now. He supposed killing a particularly evil god was as good of a deed as any to start his career as a hero. Two birds with one stone, as Silvi would say. Denholm smiled at his genius, or perhaps just luck. Perhaps a lucky kind of genius.