The king sat on his ancient throne, the dark orb resting in his hand. He stared at it, watching the gray smoke swirl within it. “What would you have done?” He asked the chamber. The room was tall and long, and menacingly quiet. His voice echoed back and forth below ornately carved archways barely visible in the dim light of flickering wall torches. “What would any of you have done!” He shouted. The empty room replied with a heavy silence. “You think it was easy, do you? Do you?! You think I wanted this?” He stood from his throne, puffing his chest out with confidence. “It was that witch,” the king said, pointing toward the giant chamber doors. “She is to blame. She made me do it. It was her who told me to descend into the mountain- she’s the one who told me of the stone and it’s power!” He looked down at the orb in his hand and lifted it high into the air. “This beautiful, powerful stone. She told me what it could do. How could I not have sought it out? To see my queen once more by my side, that wretched coldness pulled from her veins. To feel the warmth of her kiss.” “But no - no, that witch spewed lies! Yes, the stone has power. See? See?” The king jumped off the pedestal and waved the orb around the cavernous hall. The stone filled with brilliant light, chasing the darkness. As he walked, flowers began sprouting from the ground beneath his feet in beautiful reds, blues, and purples. “It can do many things. She called it the Provider,” he said, looking at it with awe. “Think of all the good it could do, she told me.” The flowers began to wilt, and soon there was nothing but black ash upon the ground. “But it was a trick,” he sneered. “She wanted it all for herself. She told me the stone would raise my love from the dead, but that witch already knew the spell. She wanted the stone for something else, something foul.” He turned around violently. “Don’t you see? I couldn’t let her have it. Whatever she was planning would have changed our world, ruined our lives, scathed our lands!” His voice boomed in the space, flickering off the walls over and over until silence returned. “I couldn’t let her have it.” He bowed his head, his gray hair covering his face from the endless glare of the vacant room. “She cursed me,” he whispered. “I did not give her what she wanted, and so she did not give me what I wanted.” A tear escaped his eye and dropped onto the stone. As it did, the smoke within it churned and crimson crackles of lightning sparked deep inside. “That witch!” The king shouted. “She deserved to die! She deserved what she got!” His eyes darted around the room searching, probing for a response. For an affirmation that he had done the right thing, but there was nothing. The king fell to his knees, the orb clutched tightly in his hand as it’s color seeped away into the dim light. In the silence, he wept. There was no-one left. No-one to hear his lament, to care whether he had made the right choice or not. He only had himself, and he felt nothing but regret.