The universe was pain and weight and fatigue. The only hope was enough pain to end it all. Micah couldn't remember how long he'd trudged, step after step, through the snow. Vaguely he realized he felt no snow under his feet now. Instead, his feet rested on smooth, polished wood. Apparently the soles of his boots had worn through.

The Morrigan's voice echoed through the room, "Now, Wyrm, you have something of Ours."

A voice of scales and old, cold, malicious greed answered, "She is mine. I have won her, whether from your enemy or from you, but I have won her in a fair challenge. I will consume her, and I will consume the Muse, and there is nothing you can do about it!"

Even through the haze of pain Micah envisioned the arch look on the Morrigan's face from her voice alone. "You think not?"

"I know not, Raven. I am mankind's greed given form. You may be their fears, but I am that which makes them stand up to their fears and grab madly at the prize. If you stand against me, you will lose."

The Morrigan's voice dropped to a disinterested, conversational level; overmatched, but unafraid. "So, you have taken them both in a fair duel?"

"I said that, Raven."

A sigh escaped the Morrigan's lips, the last dying gasp leaving a body. "We have something belonging to the one in your coils, Wyrm. If you consume her before We return it, it forfeits to Us."

A pained squeaking cry came from the great Wyrm's coils as he slithered about in agitation. "What are you playing at?"

"We play at nothing, Wyrm. We follow the rules, just like our counterpart in the Court of Sun. Of course, if others choose to allow Us a forfeit..."

"No! No, you will return my meal's property immediately!"

"Bring her here. You need not release her completely, but she will need her hands free to claim it."

"No! Give it to me!"

Now the Morrigan no longer feigned disinterest. She embodied the essence of offended royalty, her voice a garrote that choked Micah, weakened his knees, dropped him to kneel on the ground before her. "You dare demand of Us, Wyrm? We may not be as strong as We once were, but if you think to test Us, you will rue this day. The property is hers, not yours, and We will return it to her, or not at all."

The dragon didn't reply, but after a few silent, seething moments his coils undulated, carrying a limp form over to Morrigan and Micah. A sheen of blood covered Tee from her shoulders to her waist, where her body disappeared into the dragon's scintillating coils. Her old canvas coverall had all but disintegrated; only a thick collar of gray fabric remained. Micah heard the growl of hunger leak from the Dark Queen, so low that he doubted the old Wyrm heard it.

The Wyrm had. "Do you envy me my meal, Raven? Perhaps I will allow you the offal. Now, return its property to it!"

The Morrigan's putrescent breath echoed through Micah's soul, "Are you tired, my beast of burden?"

He had no defiance left in him, no patience for petty games. "Yes."

"Would you die for my daughter?'

The last image he clung to, his beautiful Philly Chick, danced before his eyes. He thought she might be real, but he couldn't tell. "Ophilia...

"Yes. The Muse of Madness. The restorer of mortal art and creator of beauty from pain and scars and ink. Would you die for her?"

"Yes."

Micah felt the Morrigan's cold, cold hands roam across his shoulders as if his burden weren't real. She ran her fingers across his tear-stained cheeks, down the sides of his body, examining every inch of him like livestock.

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"If I told you that death would be a thousand times more painful and prolonged than what you have suffered as my beast of burden, would you die for her?"

It wasn't even a question worthy of consideration. "Yes."

"Hurry it up, Raven."

"In good time, Wyrm. Her property is secure, and if forms are not properly followed, it will be lost." The dragon went silent. Not that Micah cared. He would die, but the Morrigan would use that somehow for Ophilia. It was enough.

"Now, the most important question, Micah, creation of Leonardo the Polymath."

His name pulled at him, but he hadn’t enough left in him to raise his head. He simply waited for the next question.

"If I told you that you would live forever, and each day would be agony ten thousand times worse than this, that you would never see your precious Ophilia again, would you live for her?" There was a deep and abiding hunger in the Morrigan's words. She wanted his pain like a druggie in need of a fix. Micah couldn't raise his head, but his path was clearer than it had been in ages.

He smiled. "Yes."

"That will do."

Quite suddenly, the pain disappeared. All of it. His Words had gone silent. He wasn't dead; he saw his wife standing, one hand covering her mouth, viridian tears streaming down her cheeks as she stared at him. He wanted to go to her, but the sudden cessation of pain proved too much. He saw her running toward him, and he collapsed.

***

Phil saw Mother reach right into Micah and pull something dark, wet, and steaming from him. Flashes of light too bright to look at flickered in the swirl of midnight, but she didn't care about her mother, the vortex she carried from Micah's body to the body of the fallen custodian, or anything else except Micah. She ran to him, and just before she reached him, he looked up at her, smiled, and collapsed to the ground.

She grabbed at him, pulling his head to her breast, careless of how many studs she ripped away as she pulled him close, clinging to him and wailing. His breath warmed her belly, and that had just registered when Mother's voice echoed through the Hall once more.

"Misty, beloved of Mic, We laid claim to you before you existed. Tee, student of Tama, We gave birth to you in the moment you sold yourself to a demon."

A confused, worried whisper sounded from the Dragon. "Tama?"

The Morrigan didn't slow her speech in the slightest. Each word came louder than the last, shaking the very foundation of the building. "Your Fae heart was Ours the moment you set out to destroy another by violence. We stole that which was Ours away from you before the devil could despoil it, and it has been nothing but pain to Us since. We return it to you now. Misty, lover things ethereal, Tee, lover of things beautiful, Teresa who became Gelt, fallen Medic Knight of the Sidhe, We return to you your memories, your soul, your self."

The air stilled, but a rushing noise like a tornado tried to rip Teresa free of the serpent's coils. Phil knelt, stunned, as a vortex of light and dark whipped around the Sun elf, scouring the blood from her skin. When it touched the old canvas collar around her neck, the collar exploded into a thousand fibrous fragments, which knitted and shredded themselves a thousand times over until they settled, gossamer fine, around her neck, her wrists, her waist. Spider web gave her a false modesty as the vortex narrowed, focused on her head.

Waves of golden hair spilled from Teresa's scalp, flowing down her body as the vortex narrowed tighter and tighter about her skull. The pitch of the storm changed to a shriek, the light and darkness chasing one another about in a band so tight, so thick, that it looked like a circlet of night and day ringing the Sun elf's temples. Suddenly, all sound in the Hall ceased, the vortex constricting itself below the surface of her skin. Her eyes snapped open, nothing but glowing gold beneath the lids.

"Our work here is done." The Morrigan wiped a hand across her neck, flinging a line of blood into the air, where it burned a portal back to her realm. "Do with her…” The Morrigan’s smile chilled Phil’s heart, for she knew it meant some great power would die this day. “…what you can."

The Morrigan stepped through the tear in space and was gone.

***

Teresa lost herself in a whorl of sensation. Thousands of years of memories hammered into her all at once, she remembered youth, reveling in the beauty of the things that humans created. She remembered a thousand years spent in pursuit of the wealth of art that humans squandered so cavalierly. She remembered the anger at their waste, the greed to have it all for herself, the jealousy that if they could not appreciate it, they must not have it. She remembered a man and woman who stood in between her and the art she loved and hated and would not let her damage it.

Memories of confinement washed through her. Memories of forty years of seething hatred, refined until it flowed through her veins so pure it called to a thing that hated everything in creation, itself most of all.

The memories after that slammed into her like bricks dropped from orbit. They all felt fresh and new, with none of the edges worn off. In a single instant, she experienced the death of self, the ranting, seething hatred of a demon that made her look like a child.

Then she remembered toil. She remembered dirt, and sackcloth, and sweat. She remembered boredom, and servitude, and work. She remembered peace, and acceptance, and satisfaction. She remembered kindness given and received. She remembered beauty restored and displayed. She remembered love.