The Price of Power
4
Eydis stood knee‑deep in lavender slick with rain. Shredded petals lay scattered against mud; a few stubborn stalks still gripped their colour. Odd, wasn’t it, that plants changed with the season, that the cycle of life and death could be so predictably unpredictable?
It didn’t happen like that in Mythshollow. Seasons there were a deck unshuffled.
Clouds prowled, the moon hunting gaps it almost found. How poetic. Most would call it an ordinary night, another shrug of weather. She tried to feel the shrug, failed, and tasted salt instead.
Once, she had chased this uncertainty, dreaming of changing foliages where light casted srising shadows as if peace were congenital, not earned. Tonight, as the thunderheads slunk away, that old hunger lay dead.
In its place coiled a slow, seething rage.
mory had slipped, then slamd back. Did facing Greed bring them back? Or was it because it felt fresh, like it had happened yesterday? But she hadn’t rembered it feeling this raw.
She drew a long breath, and the lavender fragrance faded beneath the scent of wet soil. It slled of prophecy.
Raven.
They had escaped once, forcing a choice she had never wanted to make. This ti, she would deliver the reckoning herself.
“How… dare… you…bind…us,” rasped what remained of Noah, two voices grinding in one throat.
"Welco back, Raven.” She turned. “Strange. I didn’t realise rabid carrion fowl required consent before getting caged.”
Noah’s neck popped, veins marbling the dead skin. Eyes like twin ravens of black fire circled the corpse they puppeteered. Eyes that had feasted on the bones of fallen empires and whispered: All this, and still… not… enough.
“Raven? Carrion fowl?” the split halves of Greed, once divided between Noah and Thomas, spoke together. “Do not presu to bind us with such paltry nas.”
“I wouldn’t bother naming you at all,” she said. “Raven wasn’t an insult. I fought him on it, actually. But now…”
The thing tasted the air. “Bitterness. Anger. Fear. We carved deep scars, did we not?”
“Fear? Please.” She tilted her head. “You slipped my mind until you started squawking. mory, you see, is tiresoly selective.”
Her eyes glinted. “Then again, you wouldn’t know what you’ve forgotten, would you? Anything you share with a bearer dies the mont that bond snaps.”
“A bearer,” the thing snarled. “Mortals from the shadow realms. Always pretending they matter. Ash playing at permanence. Still…” It cocked its head, mirroring her. “You saw us for what we are. You could’ve bound us. But you didn’t. Was it weakness? Or fear?”
Eydis eyed the talons sprouting from Noah’s fingers. “You confuse disdain with limitation. But if you want an answer that badly…”
A shadow-serpent answered her silent summons, scales swallowing all light as it moved. Its jaws parted wide to reveal fangs forged from the deepest night.
"Let show you, what becos of those who cross the Queen of Shadows.”
Wings exploded from his back, eclipsing the thin moonlight. “Fool! We devour gods and will savour your hubris.”
“How unoriginal. Think you can swallow Pride? I would enjoy the choke.” Shadows t shadows, pressure warping sound. Lavender flattened under forces it could never understand.
He lunged. She raised her hand. A second serpent slid from the void, venom tracing molten lines across decaying flesh.
“This pathetic shell.” Greed sared the venom like war paint as black water frothed at their feet, tentacles spinning from sewage and spite.
Eydis conjured a violet shield. The tentacles smashed against it and boiled into soot-dark steam. “Sewage? Really? No gold? No gemstone barrage? Budget blown on plumbing?”
“Wealth moves nations,” Greed snarled. “It doesn’t squander itself on gnats.”
“And here I thought fear moved nations, silly .” She stepped aside as a foul splash barely missed her boots.
"Bold words, Queen of Ashes,” the Sin purred, reading the minute tremor at her wrist. "But your mana bleeds out faster than your wit. How many more quips can you afford before that shield fails?”
“Hmm, perhaps you might be right,” She dropped the barrier. Violet shimr hissed into mist.
Greed surged. Tentacles thrust.
They never reached her.
Her serpent returned, splitting into two, then three. Each form glided through the assault, trailing frost across the crushed petals below. Ice ford where they passed, then shattered.
They sped through the sewage limbs, slicing through them. Sewage limbs fell apart, sludge scorching soil black.
Greed staggered, wings ragged, magic leaking. “Envy,” they spat. “Pedestrian Sin.”
“Funny, I could say the sa about Greed. But…” She rged the serpents into one colossal coil that cinched Noah tight. “My familiar is mine alone to insult.”
“How reassuring, Your Majesty,” Envy murmured.
Eydis’s eyeroll was brief, but her focus stayed on Greed. The Sin thrashed within the serpent’s grip, their black wings beating violently. Bones cracked beneath the coil.
“Clever girl,” Greed said as fresh waves of sewage tentacles surged forward. “You were right about one thing. I turned the Senate race into a jackpot, feasting on every wager. Think you can call my hand?”
She evaded the attack. The serpent constricting Noah crushed down. He spasd, black water hissing over ruined earth, a scream devoured by wind.
When the gale settled, silence returned. The lavender field lay in ruin—crushed stalks and frost-rid petals scattered like ash, their scent barely clinging to the storm-torn air.
Eydis approached Noah’s lifeless body, asuring.
Then his mouth wrenched open.
Corrupted water burst forth. She barely raised a barrier in ti. The impact sent her skidding back.
Bones cracked.
Noah’s mangled body moved again, joints twisting and snapping into grotesque angles, his smile stretching wide enough to split his stolen face. From his throat ca Greed’s voice, layered and rippling.
"Is that all you've got, Shadow Queen?" They flexed their fingers, and shadows dripped from their skin. "Because every blow you land just feeds the flood."
Blood traced her lip as she steadied, golden eyes narrowing under their laughter.
“You wondered why sewage,” Greed crooned. “It never runs dry. Ever filling, ever overflowing. Like this realm: abundant, bloated, wasteful.”
“It was a rhetorical question.” Eydis wiped the blood from her lips with the back of her hand, her chest heaving as she straightened. “But fine. I was hoping you’d put up a fight.”
“Two of us, one of you." The Sin's voice deepened. "Did you really think we ca in pairs by accident?”
Her silence cut through their laughter.
“Ah… you knew,” Skin tore as their grin spread. “Soone you cherished bartered a soul to call us forth, yes? A soul potent enough to birth another .”
“Cherish?” Eydis’s expression hardened, her arms outstretched in command. “There’s no such person.”
“Oh, we both know that’s a lie,” Their tone dipped into a silken purr. “Tell , Shadow Queen. How sweet was their sacrifice? How much of it still lingers on your tongue?”
Her reply was motion. Envy struck, ribs splintered, serpent tightened until marrow popped wetly. Yet the corpse twitched, jerked, lived. Again.
Sewage water bubbled up through split flesh, weaving through shattered bone and knitting mangled tissue. Noah’s empty obsidian eyes locking onto her.
“How uncharacteristically rude," they chuckled. “Where was I? Ah, yes. No sacrifice cos without a price, does it?” they continued. “And the price they paid, oh, how exquisite it must have been. How I wish I could rember the taste. But no matter. The past is aningless now.”
They spread their arms wide, black veins crawling beneath the skin. “Do you see it now? Greed can’t be destroyed. We will never end.”
“We are the ga.” A smile split Noah’s stolen face once more. Their shadow expanded, their wings unfurling like gaping voids that consud the night. “So tell , foolish queen… are you ready to pay the price?”
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