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A lone figure stood upon a rooftop. Around her, the neon lights of Las Vegas danced through raindrops, plastic coins melting together and rising into the air. Down in the streets, bodies pushed and fought their way through the glamorous city with a crazed fervor. Wine bottles which had been sitting in cellars for decades were popped opened. In the casinos, people poured their chips onto tables and into slot machines, wanting to take one last gamble even as they all disappeared, one by one.
The end of the world. One great big magic trick played on the whole of mankind. One giant escape room. Those boring old chained boxes, those complicated torture devices, they were nothing compared to this! What could be more dangerous, more exciting, when compared to Armageddon? She wanted to throw back her head and laugh. Here, there was finally something interesting, something thrilling. Here, she could finally test the limits of her luck. It would be her greatest gamble, her most magnificent feat of escape!
…Yet, why were her hands shaking?
A gold coin danced between her fingers, that faint glow of Luck reflected on its surface. The last time she had felt like this, she had been a little girl who hadn’t yet understood the true extent of her good fortune. She hadn't known that it would keep her safe, that it would go to any length to let her win. A little girl who peered over gambling tables, watching as people cursed out their luck as they continued to throw their chips at the table. One loss after another, til they crashed and burned. Until they gave themselves up to the bottle, drowning in it before the sharks could tear them to pieces. How many had she rendered like that in her decade long win streak?
She had wondered then, as she found herself doing now, if her fortune would one day turn on her like that too. The collective misfortune of those who had lost to her coming back to haunt her. Maybe that's what this was, this catastrophe. Death has come to collect the debt of life which she had borrowed.
She breathed in, running her fingers along the familiar gold carvings. No, none of that was important now. Her loyal companion had never steered her in the wrong direction. They had never lost before, and they weren’t going to start now. Not to her own thoughts, and certainly not to death. They would evade it once more, and win like they always did. This was just another steel box thrown into the sea, and just like every other box she would escape from it, soaring out of the water with her coin between her teeth. With that promise, she raised her head towards the sky.
“Hey, Santa Muerte, let’s make a bet.”
She held out her hand, feeling the raindrops pass through her skin. Her Solidus sat upon her open palm. She smirked, her gold tooth glinting in the refracted light of these non-sensical raindrops. Her voice refused to waver as she spoke.
“We’ll bet on this coin. Heads, I make a miracle happen. You forget this debt of mine, and I go off to find my next thrill. Tails, and you get to be the first one to succeed in taking something from me. My life. Let’s see who wins, my good luck or your bad luck. How’s that sound?”
Silence. Even the rain’s backwards pattering was silent. Then she lurched, a strange searing, numbing pain surging through her body. Her hand shook violently as she stumbled, her body trying to unravel itself into pieces. The coin fell from her palm.
Her arm shot out, snatching the Solidus from the air before it could disappear over the side of the building. She heaved, squeezing it tightly and holding it close to her chest, her body shaking from the effort of holding itself together. She turned back towards the sky.
“Heh, bastardo empapado. That’s cheating, you know? You won’t be winning that easily. Not against me ,at least."
She stood her ground, grinning defiantly at the shattering world.
"Let’s try this again, shall we?”
The world slowly disappeared around her as she held the coin out once more. She pushed, and the glow of arcanum circled around it, all her good fortune focused on one point. It ran through the gold plating of the Solidus, the gold-plated ornaments adorning her body glowing along with it. She fought through the pain. Just a bit more. Just a little bit more. A bet like this deserved nothing less.
Her eyesight blurred, though she could still make out the building she was perched atop of being rendered to ruins around her. A soft golden-orange light now radiated from the coin in her hand. Wherever her old friend took her next, she was sure it would be as interesting as this.
She flicked, just as the ground beneath her feet disappeared, and she fell backwards.
The gold coin span in the air, fortune shining gold even as it dissolved. Heads, tails. Heads, tails. Heads, tails. It spun on and on.
Her stomach lurched as she shifted from falling through mid-air to collapsing into a small lake of water. She faded in and out of consciousness, her body burnt out from the strain on her arcanum. Faintly, she could make out voices around her, felt someone pulling her up.
Clink.
The golden coin fell into the water beside. As her eyes fluttered shut from exhaustion, she gazed at that golden face, and smirked.
Heads. I win.