First appearance: S4E7 — Wings — Misery v Daisy Bloom · watch it on YouTube
Misery was a tall, endlessly crying fighter who came to the arena of The Void carrying a greatsword and a grudge against joy itself. Called the “embodiment of misery and pain and stuff” by his own description, he faced the relentlessly cheerful Daisy Bloom in S4E7 — Wings — Misery v Daisy Bloom. He won with a brutal finishing blow. What made him unforgettable was what came after: he had a deal with The Shadow King, and he spent his victory on burying himself so someone he loved could have a life.
Story
Misery arrived at The Dread Fortress through the Grandmaster’s blood-portal while the Shadow King was smoking ribs in his throne room. He refused a plate (“I no longer experience any joy from food or drink”). He offered a gloomy reflection on how spoiled wine at least becomes vinegar, while spent human souls leave behind only what he knew “all too well.” Then a black butterfly landed on his finger. He crushed it and scattered the dust, and told Daisy to hold on to the hurt: “Better to be sad and cry than feel nothing at all.” In the dusty, abandoned excavation site that served as the arena, he told the Shadow King to keep his “promise” once the fight was done. When Daisy suggested his words sounded like poetry, he declared poetry a waste of his skills.
The fight opened in his favour. He let sand slip through his fingers, shoved Daisy to the ground and landed a vicious greatsword strike on her. As she crawled away toward a tiny cactus garden, she noticed he had been crying the whole time. The sand stuck to his tears and built little sandcastles at his feet (“That’s not cute”). When Daisy summoned a moth named Janet to carry her a few inches off the ground, Misery cut the moth apart with “This will hurt me more than it hurts Janet.” No blood came out: Janet dissolved into black and white butterflies that turned to dust, and the Acolytes in the stands ended up choking on her. While Daisy told her origin story, in which she slurped a couple liters of her eviscerated parents’ blood out of the dirt, Misery was struck by flashes of memory: children laughing, a blade, and himself kneeling at a grave. He answered by shoving her into the cacti.
The tide turned when his own grief worked against him. Mid-swing, his tears and the sand ran into his eyes and blinded him. He insisted he’d meant to do it, then revealed he had trained to fight without sight. Daisy flipped behind him, battered him with warhammers and wrapped herself in a protective prayer to Criss Angel. Misery dragged his greatsword to The Box of Chaos, which the Shadow King had dropped into the arena after lifting the lid on an Acolyte named Forty’s box (“Oh. It’s just his dick!”), slicing Forty through the chest and throwing his ripped-out soul inside. Misery wept into it. Another memory surfaced: a friend running to embrace a young Misery, then a knife, and Misery coughing blood. The Box answered with two yellow eyes and a slammed lid, then handed him a Vorpal Greatsword. A cloud of butterflies melded into the steel and turned it into “a blade of nothingness, as if it was cut out of reality.” Daisy’s prayer held him off once, even when he dug deep and tried again. On the next round he broke through and struck her three times. She survived only by turning herself partly into a moth from the inside out, letting the moth’s arms rip out through her torso and ribcage and its wings burst from her back.
In the final exchange, Misery caught his breath inside the Shadow King’s suffocating sand tornado. He recovered as another memory broke loose: the knife in his back, his eyes blazing, wings bursting from his own back, and the silhouetted friend’s head sliding off. Daisy flew up and tried to snap his neck between her thighs, cracking a vertebra or two. Misery delivered a quiet speech about friendship being “a well that runs dry,” then spent a gift of fortune from the Acolytes to turn a hit into a perfect strike. The void blade took Daisy’s head, leaving a trail of viscera through the air. He held her head in place and told her, “You didn’t deserve pain,” then guided her body gently down, embraced her and walked away, and her head fell off. In one more vision he pulled a greatsword marker from a fresh grave and walked into a sunset, bandaged around the gut. Then he named his price: “Put me in the ground and give him a life.” The Shadow King raised a stone coffin from the earth, threw Misery in and buried it. Just before the lid closed, Misery smiled for the first time in years. His parting advice to the Acolytes was as cheerful as ever: create as much distance as possible from other people, “because humans are only good for one thing, and it’s hurting you.”
Personality and Abilities
Misery stood “a good, even six foot,” and wept in a slow, steady stream that never stopped, even in victory. Butterflies followed him everywhere and served as a grim signature. He crushed one at his introduction, his blade turned Janet into a swarm of them, and they melded into his sword. He claimed that “Misery doesn’t like anything.” Yet his gloom had a soft edge. He briefly stuck up for Daisy when the hosts were being “super mean” to her, and his last words to her were close to tender.
In battle he was a patient, punishing swordsman. He shoved opponents down to set them up for heavy strikes, swung twice in quick succession and could push himself into a sudden extra burst of attacks. He had a reserve of grit for steadying himself and trying to shake off attempts to stop him. His most unusual skill was fighting blind, which turned his own tear-caused blindness into a non-issue. He carried a greatsword on his back. Later he wielded the Vorpal Greatsword from the Box of Chaos, reshaped into a void blade that beheads on a perfect strike.
Relationships
- Daisy Bloom: His relentlessly sunny opponent, who vowed to make him her best friend. He killed her with genuine regret: “I envied you.”
- The Shadow King: Held up his end of an earlier “promise” with Misery by burying him in a stone coffin after the win.
- Grandmaster Elusia Skypiercer: Agreed with his low opinion of humans, preferring “a bottle of wine over some human beans.”
- The Box of Chaos: Took his tears as an offering and gave him the Vorpal Greatsword in return.
Memorable Quotes
“When there’s nothing left, when you can’t feel pain anymore, you become the most dangerous thing in the world. You become a monster. You understand now?” (S4E7 — Wings)
“I want to swap places with him. Put me in the ground and give him a life. He was always better than me. He was everything to me. He deserves to live. I’m not valuable anymore.” (S4E7 — Wings)
- “That feeling of hurt that you’re experiencing, hold on to it. Better to be sad and cry than feel nothing at all.” (S4E7 — Wings)
- “Poetry is a waste of my skills. Who would enjoy it? No one… It would only bring pain.” (S4E7 — Wings)
- “I might be the embodiment of misery and pain and stuff, but they’re being super mean to you right now.” (S4E7 — Wings)
- “I hope that this was as painless as I thought it was. You didn’t deserve pain. You didn’t deserve this.” (S4E7 — Wings)