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I return her bow with a flourish of my own, and that's when I heard a sound I never will forget. A moment as I look away from my partner, a scream the likes of which I had only heard in my nightmares erupts from her direction.

I stumble in my bow, but snap up to see a gnoll, easily the tallest of the bunch, standing in the back of the entire battle with its hand aloft, squeezing the air as if to crush a skull.

And between that gnoll and I is Arwen, her arms pinned against her side, her body squirming around in agony. All around her, a vaguely translucent hand holds her, crushing her, and granting her pain. We've had our fair share of scrapes before. I've even heard her agonized cries before. But there's something different about this time. The act, the facade, all of it crumbles away at that moment as the horror of what this world really is seeps deep inside my soul.

I had long ago accepted the absurdity of reality. I have decided that sanity was the fool's way, but what is this feeling, but another form of insanity? It may be so, but it is so very much different than what I had experienced in the past. I pull out my sickle, and I rush past Arwen. I sprint past the other gnolls, who stand back and watch, confident in their leader's skill. I do not heed their cackles. I do not heed the screams of our commissioner, I just rush forward and sink my sickle into the alpha gnoll's neck.

Blood gushes from the wound, striking my mask and dripping down my motley, but I pull my sickle back, tearing flesh and muscle, scratching bone. The physical injuries I give it are far more grievous than necessary, as the simplest of cuts is needed for what's to come next. Channeling my magical power. I see the atrophy in its muscles, but despite all of this, the gnoll's power coalesces around me, and I feel myself inside its occult grasp

I have been cut. I have been stabbed. I have been hacked and beaten and burned. But this is the first time I've actually felt the most horrifying of pains-the damage of the soul. The prison of my flesh once shielded me. I had come to understand the truths of this world we live in. I had come to just shake it off and smile. Put the future away. It'll come and there is nothing I can do about it. Everything is fleeting: Life, love, friends, enemies, jokes, battle, Golarion, the Material Plane, and the emptiness of the Dark Tapestry.

Life has no meaning for jesters. We only seek to make those who don't know this horror happy. Our desires are selfless, and our bodies, our minds, our souls, are forfeit for this cause.

But in that moment of pain that courses through my entire being, I can only think of one thing--it is one thought that I had hidden away. It is a thought I may have trained myself to hide, or maybe, I didn't truly know about it until this moment. But it is there, and it terrifies me.

I collapse to the ground, my breath raspy. Even if I could tell a joke, I do not. Instead, I watch as Arwen rushes the gnoll, the two clashing in a series of magical blasts and shields, shocks and burns. It's beautiful, and it's wonderful, and my heart stops in my chest when Arwen stumbles.

I grab my lute. My fingers swell and bend in unnatural ways. The spell must have done more damage than I could tell, but I don't care. From deep in my soul, I reach out for a song, one I had written on a dark rainy morning after Arwen had awakened and left me for a mission. It's a song, a masterpiece, written just for her--a sin I wouldn't dare share.

The gnoll forms a spiritual weapon above its head--an impressive flail that swings up in the air and comes crashing down. I've counted the spells. Arwen should be exhausted, having used all that she memorized for the day, but she holds her hands up, and the shadows spread out from underneath of me, up and over her body and above her, grabbing the flail. My song not only counters the spell's attack, but gives Arwen the power, the understanding, to wield it. With a clench, she destroys the flail and holds her hand out to the Gnoll. It falls to its knees, howling in such agony--a song performed by the both of us, and soon, the beast is reduced to nothing but a cube of flesh, twitching, oozing, and living.

Arwen falls to her knees, panting, and glancing back at me. I manage to choke out a small laugh and a nod for her. When our eyes meet, however, there is something different in them. I know now that she and I, no, we, think the same thing.

The rest of the gnolls scatter and disappear deep into the woods. It takes us some time to gather ourselves, and with the low-level potions we could afford, we heal the worst of our wounds. Sitting on our cart, we don't talk for the longest time as the artist and her small team excavate the painting from the abandoned den.

I kick the gnoll cube between my feet, swigging a little bit more of a curing potion. That's when Arwen says "that was a beautiful song. What's it called?"

I chuckle, kicking the cube away. "Thanks... I, uh, I call it 'Arwen."

Another silence. Within it, I feel the combined anxieties of Arwen and mine--the knowledge like when we first discovered the horrid truth of our universe. It's happening a second time, and it seems neither of us can hide from it any longer.

Jesters know that there is an end to every good time. We give happiness to others because we know whatever happiness we have will one day be snuffed completely out. The beaming smile of the artist as she sees her masterpiece all in one piece--that's what this job is about. But now, that job is much more complicated...

"Are you truly sure about this?" The artist asks us. Arwen and I are laying against a beautiful tree in this serene clearing, hand-in-hand with our masked faces glancing at each other. We had come across this scene of beauty when the idea came to both of us.

It isn't unheard of that we jesters would forgo the usual payment for our jobs, even if we had agreed to the traditional price beforehand. Whatever came to increase the sum total of happiness in the world would be what a jester usually goes for, but as we lay there, heads almost touching, our fingers laced, both of us know that while the artist herself is happy, we are only serving to increase our eventual sadness.

I mean, it's this sort of contradiction that puts a smile on our face to begin with--that we are born in a world that laughs at the death of gods. That we live in a planet built as nothing but a cage, that great empires crumble into dust with their accomplishments forgotten. That this short breath of happiness will one day be replaced by eternal agony and suffering before an ultimate oblivion.

She could surely die years before before the Great Old Ones decide to return. Or, she may live to see me grow old and frail and feebleminded. Or we may both be consumed, having deprived ourselves of much more tantalizing experiences than the other, but, unlike most Jesters, we've always come back to each other. We've always been there for each other, and, even if one goes before the other and our faces, our souls are etched in sorrow for the loss of the other, then deep down, we will still be smiling at the memories up until that moment when all is pain and suffering.

That is why we decided to stop at that tree and forsake our usual payment. Arwen and I have learned something new: a happiness we never thought either would experience, and we chose instead to give the artist her own happiness, bringing brush to canvas and capturing this moment for the fleeting time it will exist in this world. Though this moment will go away in an instant, a painting will last for less of an instant, and the memory of the painting will wash away in a time greater than that, but that doesn't matter. What matters is Arwen and I and the painter and us enjoying ourselves.

Turning to answer the painter, Arwen can't help but cackle as she pulls me in closer, mask touching mask as we both share the humor of the moment. And her response comes not only to the painter, but to me as well. "No... this is totally a joke. You just haven't seen the punchline yet."