The End of Greed
Screams crackled with static, never ceasing.
Inside the cathedral—a place where silence and serenity were meant to coexist—something was being crushed, shattered, broken. Split apart, melted, splintered, ground down, and fused back together.
"Shall we try a chisel this time?"
"S-stop it!!"
The rest never made it out. Before the words had even finished, a heavy chisel had already been driven into bone. Something gave way with a sharp crack, and the black bone split apart, piece by piece.
His teeth no longer met. Perhaps he could no longer manage even a scream. And yet the creature still hungered for life. It coveted the very state of being alive—so its body repaired itself whether it willed it or not. Skin regrew; organs crawled back into place. And then I tore them out again.
With that, the screams rolled on without end, like a tape recorder caught in a loop. The voice that poured out of him despite his missing vocal cords no longer craved life. It craved death.
But his remains refused to listen. Fragment by fragment, the shattered bones kept seeking their places, and Greed's expression rotted in real time.
"Ugh... ughh..."
"What's the matter? You're right, after all—I still can't kill you."
"K-kill me, then... you could do it..."
He had a point. I didn't know why, but I held this creature's power. Probably the status window's doing. If I put that power to use, I could kill the skeleton in front of me in an instant.
But.
"Why would I?"
One of Greed's eyes wavered at my words. His half-broken shinbone rattled, and his teeth crashed together like a madman's.
"Wh... why..."
"Because I want you to live."
"...."
"Don't even think about running from this into the mercy of death. You don't get to suffer only this much and be done with it. Die with the stones of your victims' families raining down on you. Be executed beneath the cross of the Order you defiled. The guilty and the innocent alike will hurl their stones at you—and whether you survive that will be for them to decide as well."
Greed's face drained white at my words, then flushed red again as he shot back a rebuttal.
"I-I never did anything to y—!"
"Can you take responsibility for finishing that sentence..?"
"...."
The instant I reined in the killing intent that had burst from me, Greed—who had heard every word—seemed to find himself with nothing left to say, and simply dropped his head. A faint sound reached my ears, and when I leaned in close, I heard it: the gnashing of teeth, gnash after gnash.
"Why... me... why..."
...muttered over and over, beneath the grinding. Watching him gnash his teeth without a shred of remorse made me feel my nonexistent affection for him take a sudden nosedive. Not that repentance and contrition would have earned him mercy anyway.
To the arm of the creature, still muttering away to himself, I pressed a chill length of metal.
"...Huh?"
"Break time's over."
I set the keenly honed edge against bone and drew it up and down.
"A... AAAAAGH!!!"
"So you still had the strength left to scream."
The keen blade from moments ago was gone; in its place was a rougher, cruder sawtooth edge. It rasped and grated, and bone dust sifted down—dust so fine, so delicate, it seemed a passing breeze could carry it off. As the powder scattered, the sawteeth slowly dulled, and I paused my work to restore the worn edge.
Perhaps he took the pause for his one chance, because his teeth set to work in earnest.
"I-I'll talk! No—I'll tell you everything!!"
"About what?"
"Everything you want to know, I'll tell you, so—"
"Do you really think there's anything I want to know?"
He seemed to choke on that for a moment, but then, as if a thought had struck him, he clung to me all over again.
"I-information on the other cultists, then—not just me..!"
"..."
"A-and I'll tell you where the Order's branches are, too."
"...And why should I believe a word of it?"
"Uh... w-well, that's..."
"...Go on, then. Talk."
Seeing that my reaction wasn't entirely unfavorable, his eyes finally took on the look of a man who'd been handed a chance. As if hope had truly sprouted that he might live through this, he threw himself into the explanation with desperate earnestness.
Thanks to him, I came away with a rough picture of the Seven Deadly Sins, the system by which the Order's priests were ranked, the locations of the Church of the Moon's branches lurking across the Empire—and the fact that every last one of them had me in their sights.
While I was frantically scribbling down his rambling account, the Pope stole up behind me and gave my shoulder a tap.
"That's about enough for now, I'd say. Could you lend us a hand sorting things out outside?"
I turned and looked him over. His eyes flicked between the sight in front of me and my face, then slipped away to somewhere else entirely—and I caught the blood-tinted water squelching beneath his shoes, and the fine dusting of bone powder clinging to them.
Whatever I thought about having soiled his shoes, I had no desire to help him tidy up outside. The knights and priests who'd promised reinforcements still hadn't shown their faces, even now that everything was over.
Hoping he'd feel exactly how unwilling I was, I deliberately flattened my tone.
"...Is there some particular task that requires my help?"
"I'm sorry to be heaping so much on you. But for me—and for all of us—every pair of hands is precious right now."
"...."
"I know full well how shameless this is... but could you not find it in yourself to help us just one last time..?"
I wasn't used to goodwill. Kindness without a price attached was something I'd rarely known. And requests? Less still. People gave me orders; almost no one had ever stooped low enough to ask me for anything. Which was exactly why I couldn't refuse—you only learn how to turn down a favor once you've had plenty asked of you. And besides, when a man of the Pope's standing bowed his head to plead his case, how was I supposed to say no?
"...Very well."
"Thank you. Truly..."
"...Heh."
The Pope was so moved that he clasped my hand as he nodded—and Greed, watching the whole display, let a scornful laugh slip out. On his face, regrown again at some point, a faint trace of hope had seeped back in. No doubt he believed that once I was out of the picture, escape would come easy.
Looking at that expression, I found myself wanting to shatter his hope all over again. Completely, this time. And forever. I wanted to hand despair to a creature that still dared to hope.
Behind him, I conjured a massive tub—roomy enough to swallow a grown man whole. Then, beneath it, I inscribed a single magic formula. Meticulously. Painstakingly so. At last the circle stood complete, its lines glowing a beautiful, deep red.
"You."
"Uh... y-yes?"
"Get in."
"...."
"If you'd rather die right here and now, you're welcome to stay out."
Perhaps he confirmed that I meant every word, because Greed scrambled into the tub in a panic. From this moment on, he would taste hell. Whatever hell he had imagined, he was about to see something far worse.
"Your Holiness, give me a hand, would you?"
'I'll kill you... I swear it... I will kill you..!'
Meanwhile, Greed—still not fully in possession of himself—remained consumed, thought after thought, with revenge against Jenison. He had no idea what his fate held from this moment on.
'I'll tear you limb from limb... I swear it.'
How much time had passed? Beads of sweat had gathered, unnoticed, on the skin of the man still vowing his vengeance. For some reason, it felt as though the temperature around him had risen. At first he chalked it up to the heat of his own fury, but as time wore on, that explanation stopped holding. The inside of the tub kept heating and heating, until it felt as though he'd been sealed inside a sauna.
"Haah... hck... haah... what... what is this..."
"Finally figured it out?"
"You... you... what did you do..."
"I gave it some more thought... and realized I never once said I'd let you live."
"Wh... what?!"
"So I've decided to simply kill you."
He sensed something was horribly wrong and made to bolt—but the instant his hand braced against the wall, agony lanced through it. A pain he'd known several times of late. Scorching, searing torment.
"Do you know of the Brazen Bull?"
"...What?"
"In some western land, so the story goes, they would shut criminals inside a bull cast of bronze, and heat the thing until they died."
"...You can't be serious."
"I've grown curious how long you'd last. I've left you air holes, so do your best to survive."
"H-hey—w-wait, just—"
And then the presence vanished. As though he had truly left the place behind.
"W-wait... hey..."
No matter how he shouted, not even an answer came back. All that reached him was the crackle of something burning. Greed threw himself at escape then and there, but the attempt was sealed off completely—the tub he had climbed into so obediently was now locked behind a barrier. And no ordinary barrier, at that: a sacred ward woven by a high priest at the very least, or by a hand beyond even that. However hard he strained, his spent strength couldn't put so much as a crack in that wall.
Worse still, with the black tendrils Jenison had stripped from him, his power had been cut by more than half. There was nothing left to try.
"AAAAAAGH!! I'll... I'll tear you apart and kill you!!!!"
Screaming was all that remained to him. He vomited curses from his throat. He shrieked. He spewed pain. He wailed his agony.
By the time the heat grew fierce enough that his falling tears evaporated before they landed, he could no longer even lean against the wall for relief—the moment his skin touched it, it seared and stuck fast. For the same reason, sleep offered no refuge, and no hand ever came to bring him food.
What becomes of a person stripped of every basic human need? No—what if the needs remain, burning as ever, but are never granted? Anyone who has given the question even a moment's thought arrives at the same answer: a person denied even one of their basic needs will, almost without fail, give up on living.
Five days after that, as the Order set about rebuilding itself, a rumor wound its way through the streets: unidentified bone dust had been found in the wreckage.
Greed
For a man who had lived coveting everything that belonged to others, it was a death that suited him perfectly. At the very end, after all, everything of his own had been taken from him.