Glowing leaves, bright and shining gemstones of green and red, fell around them, pushing back the dark. Riordan smiled gently, the expression at odds with the blood still dripping from his mouth. His dusky skin and dark eyes and hair made him a midnight prince, garbed in a robe of authority as he took over as the vessel for the ritual.

“It’s alright now,” Riordan told Phenalope. “You can rest now.”

“C-can’t rest. Can’t stop. Hurting me. Hurting them. Pay. Pay, pay, pay. Gotta make them…,” the ghost of the death mage muttered madly, her voice merely a ravaged whisper. Her eyes darted around them as if in endless vigilance.

“I know. It’s been hard on you, hasn’t it.”

Her scattered gaze whipped around, fixating on Riordan this time. “Should have kept my mouth closed, they said. Was asking for it. Who wants a mouthy bitch? It hurt. But I made them pay. I made them all pay.”

Riordan wasn’t sure what Phenalope was referring to in specifics, but it wasn’t surprising that she’d had some sort of past that had galvanized her hate and radicalized her response to abuse. His fury still filled him, pushing back at the cold with his own fires of anger, but even in his anger, Riordan saw her and understood her. She had been hurt and hurt others in return. He had been hurt by her and had gotten his revenge with her death. It was what was needed, even if it also wasn’t enough.

In this place of spirits and ghosts, he could feel her trembling. She had refused to leave, to let go of the desire for godhood even after it was hopeless. She was fading now, her form becoming increasingly indistinct before him. Riordan couldn’t forgive her, but he could stay with her in this last moment. No one should be alone when they die for the last time.

“You will be beyond the reach of pain now. Beyond revenge. Beyond desire. You made your choice.”

Suddenly, Phenalope jerked as if struck and looked around frantically. Her eyes caught on her hands. She held them up. Her fingers were rotted, dissolved stubs. Her palms were transparent. The edges of her form began to crumble into dust, blowing away in the breeze.

She screamed, clutching her hands to herself as if she could hold herself together if she only pressed hard enough. “No! No, no, no! I’m scared. I’m scared! I don’t want to go! Save me!”

Tears poured down her ruined face. Riordan watched, his own expression stoic and fixed. If she had been someone else, perhaps he would have tried to save her to the last, even if there was no hope of stopping this dissolution. His strength was needed elsewhere. The only thing he could offer her now was his presence. Even that was a mercy she did not deserve. Riordan offered it because of himself, not because of her.

“You were supposed to be a gift,” Phenalope whispered between sobs, finally seeming to recognize who was here with her. “You were supposed to be a pleasure and a challenge at the doorstep of my greatness.”

“If I am a gift, I am so for someone else. If I had been a gift for you, you would have walked through the Veil when I told you to let go,” Riordan countered stonily.

Riordan’s voice had taken on a strange resonance. He knew he shouldn’t spend so much time on her. That this was a self-indulgence, because once she finished fading, only Riordan would remember their words. The tree spirit’s leaves began to fall more thickly around them, reminding Riordan of the third presence here, but he also knew that the tree wouldn’t understand the weight of this.

Or did it? Riordan had forced it to care about suffering, even the suffering of his enemies. Perhaps that emotion, reflected back at him by the spirit that was supporting and funneling the death magic in the place of the ritual, was why he could not turn away or hasten her end. He had made a demand of the spirit and now the spirit demanded that Riordan himself live up to it. Demanding that he remain true to that concept of mercy, even without forgiveness.

Phenalope sobbed and paced, rocking gently side to side as she moved. Her eyes kept returning to him. Riordan waited and watched. It would not take long now. She was more threadbare every second. She stopped in front of him, gazing up at the darkness that had blended in with his spirit armor, crowning and robing him in bitter glory.

“You are beautiful,” she told him in sad awe, “Like a warrior king. You would not bend for me. You humbled yourself for the safety and wellbeing of others, your honor unbreakable even if I made you climb through mud and filth for my satisfaction. I wish I could have been unbreakable. I think I broke a long time ago and the cracks grew and grew. I’ve hurt so many people, haven’t I.”

“You have,” Riordan confirmed, “You hurt those you had meant to protect and those who were fully innocent. Your punishments were not justice. But make no mistake. I am not unbreakable. I’ve just been reduced to dust once before and know how to live on anyway.”

Pain, peace, fear, desire, sadness. Phenalope struggled with her broken heart and mind inside her breaking soul. Her voice was desperate, seeking solace, as she asked, “I want to kiss you. Will you kiss me?”

Riordan’s compassion for his enemy only went so far. He remembered the disgust he’d felt when she’d forced that drugged kiss on him before. Now he could only taste blood, ashes, and rot, the signs of the death magic’s invasion, but he felt tasting her would be somehow worse for him.

He shook his head. “No.”

For a second, Riordan thought Phenalope would explode into one of her mad fits, but then the tension drained out of her, leaving only a resigned acceptance in its place. Riordan thought he was seeing Phenalope as she had been before her descent, calm and poised with a sad smile upon her lips.

“I deserve that,” she said, “I’ve done the unforgivable to you. You never wanted to be here and you wouldn’t be if I hadn’t dragged you into it. Still, I think at the last, I shall be selfish one more time.”

Riordan immediately stepped backward, wary. She had no ability to overpower him, a bare wisp of a ghost now, but her psychological weight against him remained significant, quietly added to his ever-growing pool of trauma. Her desires were as suspect as her sanity.

His caution appeared to be warranted as she spread her arms wide and threw her head back, no longer holding herself together. Her body began to break apart into glittering mist. Her voice became strong and clear, no longer terrified or mad or furious, but commanding. She could have been something truly good, he thought, if her path in life had gone down a different fork.

“I am Phenalope, born Penny Warren. I am the prophet of the Goddess. I am the leader of the Daughters of the Divine Feminine. I am an advocate for those who are abused. I am also a sinner, blinded by my own greed. Instead of being an advocate, I trampled on the abused and vulnerable for personal power. Instead of being a leader, I manipulated my daughters into the same sins, twisting their healing into new pain and fear. Instead of being a prophet, I sought to replace the Goddess by becoming a god myself. I lived. I loved. I hurt. I healed. I existed. I failed. I was real. I was here.”

The mist that had been Phenalope’s body whipped up in a wind faster and faster. Riordan couldn’t tell if it was the tree’s guiding breeze or the death magic’s tempest that the failed goddess danced to now. The air felt electric, chasing off the chill of death and the pressure of power. The leaves rose from where they had fallen and danced on the breeze, casting a glimmering mosaic of red and green sunbeams around the space. They were in the heart of the ritual, sheltered by the spirit who was its roots, and Phenalope finally let go of it, all the power falling onto Riordan in a weight that nearly made his knees buckle despite the spirit’s protection.

Phenalope’s voice rose louder and louder, seeming to come from everywhere and cadenced with the chant of magic. “Of my own free will, I gift you my death. Everything that I was, I give to you. Everything that I should have become, I give to you. Everything that I dreamed of, I give to you. May the Goddess hear me. May it be granted so.”

Riordan shook his head, trying to deny this unwanted offering. He would have backed away further but found himself pinned to the spot. Around him, Riordan could feel that the tree spirit was pleased with this turn of events. For the life of him, Riordan couldn’t tell why. He wanted nothing from Phenalope. Certainly not to be the recipient of her dreams and fate. She had tied him in too many ropes already.

Before he could refuse her, she smiled and then her ghost broke apart entirely, leaving only the glittering mist. It swept forward, washing over him and settling on him. Riordan growled, firming his intention to reject any outside influences on his mind or soul. To his surprise, the mist did not try to invade him the way the death magic had. Instead, the remains of her ghost settled upon him with the air of a benediction, wrapping him in a blessing powered by the power of her final dissolution. The taste of blood in his mouth faded slightly, the rot becoming sweet. The chill that was trying to numb him receded slightly, letting Riordan think and act once more.

He could feel the tree spirit’s touch as well. It guided the motes of powdered soul to coat Riordan while somehow keeping it apart from him. Strange markings appeared on his spiritual skin in a shimmering silver, a bloom of leaves, blossoms, and berries that covered his right shoulder and traced down his arm and up the side of his neck. He felt them and knew what they looked like without seeing them. It made a neat counterpoint to the black rope still knotted around his left arm and the plants rooted in his chest around the starry void. A crown of death rose from his glowing badger armor and shadows draped from his shoulders in a cloak that connected to the huge weight of power behind him.

Good god. What was he becoming?

The last trace of her voice whispered beside Riordan’s ear and then she was gone.

“Remember me,” she had said.

Riordan was pretty damned sure that he wouldn’t be forgetting Phenalope or her effect on his life and soul for the rest of his life, however long or short that ended up being.

As the last of her existence faded away, the darkness of the heart of the ritual parted, flowing around the cage of leaves to join in the heavy, icy mantle he was wearing. He lifted his hands. Black oily tar coated them like gloves over his spirit armor, dripping constantly, much like the stream of fluid he still coughed from his mouth periodically. Sometimes the representative nature of the spirit realm was distinctly unpleasant.

In front of him, the maw into the Veil stood open. This close, Riordan thought he saw movement and depth in that abyss. It reminded him of the way Zeren’s many bodies would press out against their current skin at any moment. A multitude, condensed and distorted. Riordan looked away.

Behind him, the tree spirit stood strong, leaves whirling through its still bare branches of glittering light. Ropes draped over it, looking more like decorations than webs this time. The raging maelstrom of the death magic surrounded them, having picked up speed again now that the tree spirit had taken over managing the flow of the power in place of the original ritual. More and more shadows crept up over Riordan’s body, layering garments of shadow over his badger armor as it tried to transform him.

A pressure grew around and inside him even as the shadows slid deeper and deeper into his soul. Riordan spat out another mouthful of bile and black tar. He could feel it. The power was watching and waiting for him. It was ready to fulfill his every desire. It would cost Riordan his soul, but he could have anything he wanted. It offered domination. It offered knowledge. It offered love and life and illusions. Gods and miracles, in a single wish.

All Riordan needed to do was flex his intention and that power would rush to do his bidding. And he better decide fast because that power was already moving. Riordan had the choice of guiding the magic or being crushed by it. All around him, the spirit realm waited for his decision.

Regrets and desires flickered through Riordan’s mind. His experience with Frankie’s safeguard helped him hold them back from full intention as he remembered lives he wished he could have saved and decisions he wished he could have changed and people he wanted to help. Any of it would be a good use of this magic, born of death and suffering, right?

Right?