Micah trudged through a dark, leafless forest. Ice covered every branch, a relic of the storm he'd weathered on the way here. He couldn’t tell for sure how far north he'd come; the storm took away all sense of direction until he could only follow the prompts of the imp on his shoulder. He couldn't say how long he'd walked. Long enough that the bare branches tearing at his clothes didn't do more than turn rags into tatters.

He spared a moment's exhausted attention to glance at the sky, hoping to see stars he recognized, or even catch a glimpse of the sun. He had no such luck; leaden overcast obscured the sky, as it had for as long as he could remember. If his quest held any less urgency, or he’d taken it for anyone less important to him than Ophilia, he would have turned back long ago.

Sudden pain pulled him to a stop. The imp yanked at his ear hard enough to feel like it might tear it off. He swatted the thing away, but it dodged and kept tugging at him. After a few moments he made sense of its words.

"We're here. She's here. I'm done, got me?"

Micah blinked, brought his gaze down from the sky to the endless forest in front of him. There, in a clearing barely large enough to deserve the name, stood an ebony throne that grew from the frozen earth itself. The blonde he'd last seen hanging upside down in a lonely cabin sat on the throne, now dressed in a simple crimson wrap. The wound on her throat gaped, the blood running up into her hair, holding it above her head in a single frozen, congealed mass. Her eyes closed, her chest still, her fingers toyed idly with the spikes on the ends of the chair's armrests.

"Hey! Mortal! We're here, right? I led you to her, right?"

Micah's voice, harsh with disuse, came out in a croak. "I'm not mortal."

"Yeah, whatever. My job is done, right?"

"That's her?"

"That's what I'm telling you. Anyone sitting in that chair is the Morrigan or is gonna be real soon. Now, can I go?"

Micah's brain, frozen by the endless numbing cold, made his thoughts as still as the stone he'd been hewn from. "Yeah. Sure."

"Are you gonna need me again?"

"No. I've got..."

"Okay, then, I'll be taking this!" With that, the imp reached down into the remains of Micah's coat and snatched the second scroll. Micah grabbed for him, but his supernatural speed failed him; his Words didn't care about pickpockets, just art thieves. Before he could do anything but grunt with surprise, the imp and the second scroll both disappeared.

Micah sighed with frustration. If worst came to worst, he could follow his own tracks out.

"No, you cannot, son-in-law."

The Morrigan's voice was unmistakable. Even sweetened by the throat of the young woman whose body she wore, it echoed with the harshness of a raven's caw. Her eyes had opened, and stared at Micah with an intensity that even he found disconcerting. He forced himself to keep his gaze on her; if she said his tracks were gone, his tracks were gone.

"So, you trust me, then?"

Ophilia's plight was the only thing that kept him from walking away. Sometime during the storm, his head had stopped echoing, but the ache of the cold kept him from noticing. If he walked away now, he might be trapped in The Morrigan's realm forever, but at least he wouldn't have migraines here. Art couldn't survive in a place this barren.

"Oh, really? This," she waved at her hair, which on closer inspection had been carefully styled to resemble an inverted bloody waterfall, "isn't artistic enough? What about this?" Without moving through the intervening space, she stood beside her throne, one hand outstretched to indicate the ebony throne itself. "Your standards must be high indeed, son in law."

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Micah was too tired and cold to play games. "Neither you nor your chair are in any danger. I doubt you could be in any danger."

"You underestimate the Powers that range themselves against me, boy. Still, if you do, you might be persuaded to help me fight them."

Micah forced himself to silence. He couldn't match wits with the Morrigan in her own domain. He would lose.

"Damn right you would, son-in-law."

"Get out of my head, Morrigan."

Again, he didn't see her move. She was on him in an instant, the long, lean, frozen body she'd stolen pressed against him in a mockery of an embrace. Her hand stroked his hair, her fingertips sinking in to press against his scalp. Then they pressed straight through his skull. Only her grip on him kept him from falling.

"This is me in your head, Golem. The other is you in my realm. Know the difference."

Pain so intense he couldn't even scream paralyzed him. He could only dangle in her embrace, muscles tensed, teeth grinding against one another. She smiled up at him, then leaned in. Her lips brushed against his, her tongue lashing out to taste where he'd bitten his lip through. After torturing him for an endless embrace, she pulled away, her hand covered in black and red and gray.

"Just so we understand one another. No one speaks to me uncivilly in my own realm."

Micah swiped a hand across the back of his head, but it came away clean. The pain still echoed through his skull, but it was nothing next to the pain of his Words at their loudest. Even if it wasn't, he’d come here on a mission, and pain wouldn’t stop him.

"That's an illusion, mother-in-law. I don't have gray matter, or blood, or whatever that black stuff is, inside me. I was carved from a solid block of marble."

A smile spread across the Morrigan's face, cruel and cold. She moved the fingers of her bloodied hand, and Micah's limbs danced of their own volition.

"You are in my realm, Golem. I say what is in your head and what is not." Her smile turned coy. "Is that why you've come to me? Would you like to be a real boy?"

For a moment the pain spiked, so intense that he couldn't recall why he’d come here. Ophilia needed him, but he stood here, and that didn't make any sense. The image of his wife, covered in Art, filled his mind like a balm. Despite the jerking of his own limbs, he brought his gaze square with the Morrigan's before speaking.

"Something is wrong with your daughter, Morrigan. I am here for your help. If you're not going to help, let me go. She needs me."

The Morrigan was in his face again, her pupils a broad sea of black beneath the clouded lenses of her eyes. "Here, in the heart of my realm, you would speak to me so?"

"For her."

The Morrigan froze, a stealthy smile creeping across her lips. She clenched her hand, and the pain in Micah's head became a vise clamping down from all sides. Ophilia needed him, needed her mother to act on her behalf. She could torture him all she liked, as long as she helped his wife.

"Oh, really? Do you mean that, Micah?"

Hearing his name cross her lips made his gut clench. For a few moments, he barely kept himself from falling to his knees. He could only manage a single choked out word. "Yes."

Suddenly the pain disappeared. For the first time in his life, his head held no whispers, no shouts, no words. His knees buckled, and he fell forward, barely catching himself before he plowed face first into the ground. He pulled himself up until he knelt before the dark goddess that was his wife's mother.

"Please. Help her."

"Oh, be silent. I cannot help your wife." His heart fell, and he bowed his head, weeping. "Ah, well. If you offer up such pleasant songs for me, I suppose I might be persuaded to see if someone else could help her. Would you like that, son-in-law?"

"Please."

"In exchange, you will be my beast of burden. The one being that both can and will assist my daughter in her mad quest to be free of madness will need something I've been holding for her, but carrying it to her would annoy me. Do you accept this bargain?"

"I carry your baggage; you get Ophilia help controlling herself?"

"Yes. Are you ready to begin?"

Micah was suspicious; his mother-in-law never rushed and departing so quickly seemed strange. "Now?"

"Of course. I have shopping to do on the way. You'll need to carry bags as well."

"In for a penny, in for a pound. Lay it on me, mother-in-law."

At her smile, ice ran through his veins. "Oh, son-in-law, you have no idea how fun this will be."

Quicker than thought, she stood behind him, her hands on either of his temples. Her long, lean fingers pressed inward, pushing through his skin. Pain filled his head until it seemed it would leak from his eyes, his nose, his mouth. It found his spine and flowed down through his chest, leaking into his arms, turning them to fire. His legs cramped and twitched uncontrollably. A huge weight pressed down on him, smashing him to the ground like the heel of a titan.

"Come along, son-in-law. We have places to see and people to do."

Micah pushed his face up out of the frozen soil. His Words had come back, echoing faintly through his skull, lending him strength even as they pained him. An inch at a time, he levered himself to his feet until he stood, hunched beneath a weight of darkness heavier than the world. He could push no further, his screaming Words could push him only this far.

Protect the Art, Protect the Art, Protect the Art.

To those, he added his own mantra, chanting silently with each trudging step.

For Ophilia.