The Raven looked down from on high, silently observing her Champion and her Lady in Waiting. They had served her well and deserved the island vacation they had taken. It surprised her that neither of them knew she watched them; her shadow lay on the sand beside them, rock still as she hovered.

She chose this place to hover because of her Champion's presence. Not only were his hideaways inevitably hard to find, but his performance against the Sun King made her feel more secure with him near. If she needed protection, all she had to do was fall to the beach beneath her.

Slowly, subtly, she gathered power. From the far side of the world, where night held sway, she drew on the fears of men, women and children frightened of the dark. She drew Power from the Middle East, where endless blood feuds ended lives every minute, whether to death or to despair. Power flowed to her in spurts from the nameless border wars and murderous warlords in Africa. More came from the jungles in the Americas, where soldiers and criminals fought an endless war over coca and hemp. Finally, from cities on every part of the globe, murder and despair and black depression, all caused by grinding poverty, poured into her.

Hour by hour the Morrigan gathered it all. She was the Raven, goddess of carrion eaters, and the shards broken from souls when they killed or oppressed or betrayed were hers to sup upon. Normally she let it all flow over her like water, but now she needed it. Her shadow grew. It started a tiny dark stain on the sand; before nightfall a solid bar of midnight linked her to her Champion's demesnes. She had to leave before night fell; if she travelled from her place of strength, she would be set upon as soon as she left. She had to travel from a place of weakness, a place of supplication.

It complicated things that the journey required so much strength.

Finally, just before the sun touched the western horizon, she looked down upon her long, towering shadow. At its base stood two tiny figures. The smaller of the pair sketched furiously on the sand. The Morrigan could just make out images of feathered shoes, skirts, capes, and hoods. The larger, darker of the pair looked up at her and touched his brow in salute.

The time was now. The column of Power, black as night, black as sin, soaked into her. As it did her form melted until she was nothing more than a blot in the evening sky. When the Power was too much to contain, she pushed herself out of Time.

***

Outside the flow of Time, location was a state of mind. She pushed herself out of Time with one being in mind, and now she felt the Presence looming before her. Long ago, she had faced the Host as an opponent. The edges of her ancient soul still ached with the wounds she'd suffered at their hands. Now she felt them hovering around her, behind her, above her, below her. The only way she could not feel the Host was in front of her.

The Presence waited in silence, save the endless soothing music that surrounded it.

She drifted closer to the Presence, drawn to it like a moth to flame.

"You have seen?"

The Morrigan felt the Presence reaching out, and she flinched away. The Host pressed close. It offered no violence; though she could tell the Host ached to destroy her. Still, in the Presence they would not act unless she acted first.

I see all.

The statement hung there, taunting her. She waited, but the Presence said nothing more. She wasn't foolish enough to try her patience against a being that had waited since the dawn of Time. No one knew what the Presence waited for, but everyone knew the Host's claim: the Lord they served had started Time and would wait until its end for it to bear the fruit he created it for. Here, holding herself outside of Time, in the Presence, she was prepared to believe it.

Or to make herself believe.

"I saved one."

Two were saved. You have done well.

The Morrigan drifted, stunned by the acknowledgement that she had done well, confused by the assertion that another soul had been saved from destruction. Before she could form words to reply, a serene voice sounded through the aether.

"One tries. The plan is yours; I am but a humble servant."

The voice pulled her attention to a being that had been eclipsed by the Presence and the Host. Even now it was hard to focus on. She caught hints of a vulpine grin, peaked red ears, and a cloud of tails. That last detail pulled recognition from the depths of her ancient memory. Trickster spirit. Japanese. Tama. In the back of her mind, her grip on the power that flowed to her from the mortal realm wavered as she realized that her entire game had been played by someone else.

"Kitsune." she hissed her annoyance and frustration.

The grin just got wider. A single errant phrase reached her from the fox spirit. "Corruption always assumes it holds a monopoly on subtlety."

Fury rocked through her. The Host tensed, but she was Death, she was Darkness, she was Decay incarnate, and no little yapping fox would taunt her and...

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Those who do not set themselves against me will be at my side in the fullness of Time.

The words echoed through her, the power behind the statement washing over her, through her, for a moment forcing her to stillness. Her endless, aching hunger was for a moment satiated. She was surcease of pain, she was rest, she was renewal.

Confused, she pulled on her Power, her connection to the mortal realm, and fell exhausted back into Time.

***

The Lady Morgan was truly the Morrigan's daughter. Misty finally understood that. She couldn't help it. She smiled at the thought that only now, when she fully understood what depths of cunning and cruelty lay beneath Ophilia's pleasant exterior, she no longer feared her.

The earliest of Misty's long memories featured The Morrigan time after time. Mortals feared her Power, but the high court of the Seeleigh Sidhe had Power aplenty. The wise among the high court feared the dark queen's subtlety. Time and again in Misty's memories she appeared and prodded events with some seemingly minor yet unstoppable gesture. Each time she changed the course of history in a thousand, thousand ways with that one nudge.

Ophilia had done the same. With her one sentence, she had ladled a list of consequences onto Misty. She didn't resent that; she deserved worse. She still found time to ponder the intricacy of the list with more than a little awe, if only because of the first item on the list.

Watching over the file restore was, as the Lady noted, boring. When the technicians arrived and set up the new computer hardware, they reinstalled the Museum Information Center software, but it was tabula rasa, with no more personality than a mass-produced toaster oven. With that done, they showed Misty what she needed to do to complete the restoration, walking her through pulling the data from the first drive and loading it into the waiting servers.

The first drive took an hour to load, followed by several hours of extraction. The process was punctuated by questions from the new Museum Information Center, asking Misty to clarify points about the data, to fill in potential missing gaps in the system's memory. As she understood it, her 'suggestions' would be used to incorporate the data from the other drives, since no one drive held all the backed-up data, and each of them had been damaged to one degree or another.

The second drive took nearly a day to load, as the system tried to incorporate her earlier answers as well as checking the new data against that previously loaded. Once the extraction began, the questions came no less frequently, but were no less trivial. Had Misty still been Tee, lost in the forever now, the task would have been utterly impossible, but not onerous. Misty found it easy, but boring to the point of torture, especially as each drive took successively longer than the first. The extraction of the final drive was underway now; she'd completely lost track of what day it was. She knew how to check. With Mic gone, she couldn't bring herself to care.

The computer's toneless voice interrupted her reverie. "Did you place your right or left hand on the screen the first time you interfaced with the previous installation of the Museum Information Center Software?"

Her memory, so long gone, now had become painfully clear, especially when thinking of her love, her lost Mic. "I touched the screen with my left hand."

The computer continued extraction without acknowledgement or thanks. Misty stood and worked through one of the many kata Tama had taught her. Her muscles had healed, but they remained stiff, sore, and tired from so much abuse. Her convalescence would take quite a while. That, of course, was the second thread to Lady Morgan's tapestry of consequence. The long, involved task allowed Misty the opportunity to rest and recover from her ordeal.

Her body continued to heal. As she flowed through the forms, she knew she was healthier than she had been in well over a century. Her time in the humans’ iron prison had left her emaciated, and she’d never fully recovered from that. That age of deprivation slowly corrected itself now, but the rest that healed her body did nothing for her heart.

That was the Lady's third intent. Time healed all wounds, the Sidhe well knew. With enough time, any injury one survived could become numb, scab over and eventually heal. The problem, of course, was that the Lady thought Misty had survived her ordeal. She knew better. While she still walked and talked and breathed, part of her, an important part, had died with Mic. She felt herself die a little more each day. Every breath she took, she slipped a little closer to becoming Gelt. Deep inside, it felt like a betrayal of Mic, but without him she slipped more each day.

No matter what, she couldn't let herself betray Mic that way. When the restoration was complete, her penance paid, she would leave the museum and find a way to end it. With her memory intact, she knew half a thousand creatures who would give their eyeteeth to end the life of a high court Sidhe. She even knew of some with a personal grudge against her. In all that many, certainly she could find one she could beg, bribe, or annoy into ending her torture.

That, of course, was Lady Morgan's final purpose. Working day in, day out, with the corpse of her beloved was torture beyond anything in her memory, beyond anything she could imagine. Misty knew she deserved every moment, but knowing how richly she deserved the punishment didn't make it any easier to take. The computer muttered something, its voice so like Mic's that it drew tears to her eyes instantly. Through the golden haze of her tears, her Power rose in response to her grief.

The computer's muttering kept on, guttural and harsh. Misty blinked glowing tears from her eyes, but more flowed out as every syllable the system uttered struck her like a physical blow. Her Power rose, growing with each word barked out of the system's speaker. The tile of the floor slammed into her knees, and her Power tore words from her throat in counterpoint to the computer's speaker.

Most of the words were in a language Misty neither knew nor recognized. She wasn't even sure what came from her mouth was proper language at all. None of it mattered; the words forced her Power to heights that would have her screaming in pain had not the computer’s words hijacked her voice.

The computer went silent for a moment, and a whimper escaped her. Gold leaked from her very pores, filling the room with light. One final phrase, ancient Latin, forced its way from her abused throat.

"Genius Loci!"

Power ripped its way from her body, blinding her. Drained, she fell to the floor, exhausted near to death. Her breath came in weak gasps, her heart pattered erratically in her chest. For an endless moment, she lay motionless on the floor, wondering if her plan to end herself would be needed or not. With aching slowness, her heartbeat steadied, her breathing deepened. Finally, she lay quietly weeping at her continued existence.

And then, with a single whispered word, full of wonder and doubt, her torture came to an end.

"Misty?"