Price
There once was a little boy.
The little boy lived in a big mansion with his father and his seven siblings. His father would sing, his brothers would dance, and his sisters would laugh their pure, innocent laughters, and they were all happy. Except, of course, for the little boy, for he felt something was wrong, a detachment, disconnection from the joy his family so freely gave. He could smile and laugh with them, and enjoyed the contentment of their lovely home, but something nagged at his senses, whispering doubt.
So one day, the little boy left the mansion. He walked out into the alien wilderness, chose the furthest mountain on the horizon and marched towards it.
The first day, he came upon a small pond of ephemeral tears of dawn. On the surface of the pond, there was a lily pad, and on that lily pad sat a king. Curious, the boy stopped and started a conversation.
"What land are you the king of?" he asked. And the man with the magnificent emerald crown replied: "The land of Choice, dear child. Would you like to have power, like me?"
"Absolutely." said the boy unthinkingly.
"But power, child, has a price. Are you willing to pay it?"
"Of course." uttered the boy eagerly.
The Jade King waved his hand, and in a flash of emerald light, the boy's beautiful white wings were gone, along with his left foot. And so he had the power to make choices, to have control over his own actions. Shivering from the cold and unbalanced by his missing foot, the little boy moved on from the pond, now empty and dried as if it had been that way for a long, long time.
The second day, he came upon a clearing in the wood. The canopy opened to the sky, letting the sunlight stream in and illuminate a priest sitting in the middle of the clearing. In front of him were two items, an empty bottle and a golden chest carved from the most beautiful gems he had ever seen.
"Who do you worship?" he asked the priest, whose compassionate glowing silver eyes regarded him fondly: "Kindness, dear child. Before me is a jar of happiness, and the greatest treasure in all of the land. You should take the jar."
But the boy couldn't take his eyes off the majestic chest, and imbued with the power of choice, he picked up the chest instead. Opening the breathtakingly beautiful lid, he found himself granted the greatest treasure in the land, knowledge and wisdom, and so he knew that he should have done as the priest had suggested. In a stream of luminescent white light, something was plucked from the boy and sealed inside the jar, and he felt an echoing hollow where something vital had been.
Heart heavy with knowledge and regret, the little boy exited the clearing full of dead leaves and rotten vines, a sight to strike fear into the heart of even the strongest of men.
The third day, the little boy finally came upon the mountain he had seen from home. He climbed it four days and four nights, until he found a cave near the peak of the mountain wherein a dragon resided, crimson scale the colour of his sister's lips and the sunlight at dusk.
"What would you ask of me, child?" grumbled the massive beast, its breath the wind of a summer storm.
"Rightness." said the boy. Rightness to fix the wrong he had always felt in his life.
"And what would you pay for it?" asked the dragon.
Everything, the boy whispered.
And so he fell in fire, for nine days and nine nights until his form was burned away and his Star was no longer of the Morning, until his name was lost to the howling gale of the abyss. Until the frozen landscape of Hell ignited in his arrival.
