Sander Westerberg climbed the terraced steps to his apartment complex, squinting in the brown sunlight filtering through his tortoiseshell sunglasses. The gardener was out amongst the planters, watering the lavender and narcissus, the fragrance of broken stems piquant beneath the dry heat of the afternoon. He breathed it in, breathed it out.

Sander hummed nonsensical words as he kept moving among the uneven pavers. A uniformed man greeted him with an inclined head, pushing the French doors inward to allow Sander access.

"Good evening, Mr. Westerberg!" he said.

"Any messages?" Sander asked. The doorman shook his head, and so Sander continued his quiet, monotonous chanting as he forewent the elevators in favor of the stairs. He took them two at a time, holding his briefcase and folded jacket to his chest so they wouldn't skim the dirty steps. A name tag fell from the jacket's breast pocket, the neat letters 'Sander Westerberg, Head of Communications,' glittering in the artificial lighting as Sander bent and plucked it from the stairwell's runner. The gem at the pin's head was dull and listless, made useless by a simple rune carved into the tag's back. Out of habit, Sander scratched his nail along the indentations.

The interior of Sander's third-floor apartment was well-furnished but austere. The beige walls were bare of any paintings and no family portraits cluttered the barren mantle. There was a remote and a TV guide on the teak coffee table. A full-length mirror was positioned by the main door, the frame comprised of a simple, unstained oak, and the glass reflected the image of a banal, slightly overweight desk worker with mousy hair and a poorly shaved jaw. Sander shivered, and as he threw the deadbolt on the front door he reached into the collar of his mustard stained button-down and withdrew a large stone threaded upon a leather strap.A symbol very similar to the kind of ancient runes once found in the northern lands of Europe cut through the stone's porous surface, and the rune pulsed and clung to Sander's fingertips with tingling, static vigor.

As Sander removed the stone from about his neck, the reflection in the mirror flickered and was replaced by the image of a younger, taller man with a darker complexion, closely cropped hair, and thin, underfed proportions. His office attire remained the same, much to Sander's consternation. He plucked at his plastic buttons as he slid the sunglasses from his nose with a grunt. The rune still buzzed with potential as it dangled from his loose fist, but that potential quickly faded now that the stone no longer pressed to his skin. Without being fed tidbits of energy from his soul, the rune was ineffectual, and soon the glimmering rune would tarnish and be nothing but an etching upon an ugly rock—at least until Sander chose to recharge it.

The mage dropped his defunct charm and his key on the painted credenza and leaned the weighted briefcase against the wall. Sander started moving through his quiet apartment with his mind set on divesting himself of his repulsive attire and cooking an early dinner. As he walked, he traced a finger along the painted wall above the wainscoting, and the script painted there in clear ink shimmered ultraviolet beneath his wandering touch.

Sander strolled by the archway into his study—and stopped short.

A man lingered at the built-in shelves with a hefty, tattered volume propped open in his splayed hand. He must have heard Sander enter the apartment, but he was not inclined to acknowledge his presence. Sander's mouth was abruptly dry and his palms were slick with perspiration.

"You," he barked as he bunched his quaking hands into rough-knuckled fists. There was only one explanation for this man's presence in Sander's home. "You must be the Klau Killer."

The man shrugged a shoulder before executing an indolent swivel, the book's pages fluttering in his motion. "If that's what they are calling me. Not terribly creative, is it?"

Sander saw the way the man's chartreuse eyes burned luminescent before quieting to a listless black. The air in the demure study should have been warm with the afternoon sunshine pouring through the broad window—but it was chilled. Inhaling was almost painful, like breathing around a dagger balanced upon his tongue.

The well-dressed man grinned at the mage in silent challenge.

Sander knew this monster. "Envy," Sander sneered, pulse racing.

"A terribly accurate guess. How did you know?" Balthier asked, drifting from the bookshelf with slow, indifferent motions. He continued to peruse his chosen book, and as the monster ebbed closer, Sander recognized the volume as his Bible.

"It's not hard to guess. Eyes green with envy. That's where the expression comes from, isn't it?"

"Is it?" Balthier issued a brief chuckle of approval. "Ah, that's right. That's right."

"You must know what I am, creature. Why are you here?"

"To kill you, of course." The Sin shrugged as he turned a page. "Is this truly a first-edition King James' Bible? My, you've quite the collection here, little scribe. Who did you have to kill to attain this bit of history?"

Sander surreptitiously stepped toward his desk where a slender brush and inkwell were easily visible. The creature clearly knew what Sander's goal was, but he allowed the mage to move nearer his weapons, even going so far as to circle closer to the doorway, forcing Sander deeper into the study and closer to the desk.

"I'm particularly fond of the Book of Revelation—particularly the bit concerning the Four Horsemen. I always get a kick out of seeing myself in pop culture."

Sander half-bent over the desk and began scribbling the sharp clinical lines of his scripts while keeping the Sin within his sights. Envy had not moved from his position by the window's ledge, the lovely fall of yellow light framing the eldritch creature in its elegance.

"You see, by the time the New Testament came into creation, there were only four of us left. Four original Sins, that is. We used to be worshiped as gods. We were the Pantheon. Amun-Ra, Seth, Anubis, Ares, Dionysus—oh, the list is endless. When Christianity began to spread in earnest in the Roman Empire and the east, we took on a much more sinister mien. We went from gods to monsters in the turn of a few centuries. Decades, even. The conversion shows the taciturn nature of humans."

Sander held a charged script in his hand, the lined paper dotted with nervous splatters of ink. Sander rose to his full height and turned to face the intruder as he held the sheet of paper up so the jeweled runes visibly glittered in the light. "Leave now, beast. You are part of a black-listed species, and I—a member of the Blue Fire Syndicate and Itheria's Cult of the River—have the full authority of the syndicate to kill you where you stand."

"You could try." The flutter of old parchment turning was loud in the silence stretching between the mage and the Sin. "You would not be the first. You won't even be the first ferryman I've killed. Tell me, mage, what did you hope to accomplish at Klau? What was Blue Fire's ultimate goal?"

Sander grinned savagely, the raw charge of his energy fraying the edges of his fear. The paper smoked in his hand with the strength of the prepped runes. "What our goal has been since the inception of our species—to kill the Sins for their transgressions."

The sound Balthier made in the back of his throat was unpleasant. "Kings above and below, you're transparent. Do you honestly believe Amoroth doesn't know you've 'infiltrated' her corporation? The woman's a gnat but it's not as if your grand plan requires impossible leaps of mental acumen to decipher."

Sander's arm faltered. "W-what?"

"Let me repeat myself with small words; Amoroth is playing with the Syndicate. Playing with you." Balthier laughed as he tossed his head back, mussing his groomed hair. "Little boy, she promoted you to head of communications. Instead of eliminating your prospective threat and thus leaving herself open for a potentially unseen retaliation, the woman kept you nice and close, right in the crosshairs, as it were." He used his free hand to mimic a gun, thumb cocked as if firing. "What's that adage? 'Keep your friends close and your enemies closer'?"

Sander roared with frustration. "You lie!"

"Why would I bother lying? Lying requires effort you are not worth." The Sin leaned farther into the curtained window and his expression disappeared into the oblique silhouette of his form. "Besides, have you not been double-dealing? Falsifying information in your reports to Itheria? Selling Blue Fire information to the Gray Arcanum?" Balthier tutted under his breath as Sander paled. "You've been very naughty, ferryman. Very naughty and very stupid."

Sander's grip redoubled on the paper, holding it aloft again. "None of that explains what you are doing here, monster! You know what I am and what my death will bring upon this city! Why are you here? Why are you killing the employees of your fellow beast?"

Balthier chose not to reply, turning yet another page. The old parchment seemed to burn in the direct sunlight falling across its face. "Would you care to guess which horseman I am?"

"Death," Sander retorted as he summoned his energy again, directing more into his prepared script.

The Sin scoffed. "Hardly. Darius was always the rider of the pale horse. Death is the last to arrive on the scene, the scavenger, the leech. Oh, I am not Death. I am not War, and I am not Famine. I am the rider of the white horse; the first seal to be opened. 'And I saw, and behold a white horse: and he that sat on him had a bow; and a crown was given unto him: and he went forth conquering, and to conquer.'" The Bible closed with a loud clap and the creature moved from the light, grinning. "There's two interpretations of the first horseman. The first, the idea of the Conqueror, the Savior, the righteous one, will always hold a special place in my little black heart—but I think the second interpretation is far more accurate. Do you know what it is?"

Sander threw the paper onto the rug and stamped on it. The energy was forced downward, into the floorboard. The rune he'd drawn, a simple connector, clicked into place with those Sander had engraved onto the bottom of the other floorboards stretched across the entirety of his apartment. The Sin bared his sharpened teeth as molecular walls of pure energy sprang into place, catching the creature in one of the rough hexagonal shapes now radiating from Sander's position. The mage beamed in victory as the heat of his wards broke the pervasive chill.

"That's an interesting trick," Balthier said. The monster winced as he eased away from the charged window. The humming wards singed his suit and forced the creature to kneel in the center of his cage. "Inverted entrapment scripts carved into the floorboards. I imagine that took an age and half to complete and I didn't even detect them. Bravo."

"Speak while you can, beast. I'm sick of your mouth profaning my ears." Sander pressed his two forefingers into the flat sheet of energy stretched before him. The humming wall gave beneath his touch, pliant as cloth while it remained strong as steel against the Sin. Sander dragged his fingertips along the ward, carving a new rune, grimacing at the slow burn building in his arm as the wards devoured his mana. Powerful as they were, they could not be held for long. "Go to Hell."

The new rune, drawn with thick lines in the shape of a tipped triangle, was finished with a final jerk of Sander's wrist. The rune burned so brightly, its imprint remained on the inside of his eyelids as Sander hit the floor with his arms over his head and the wards blushed red and orange as letters of gold ignited the wavering planes. The Sin snarled—and all at once, in tandem, the wards expanded in a great calamity of sound and heat.

The resulting explosion rocked Sander's entire apartment building and imploded the windows.

Jagged bits of clouded glass bounced off Sander's hunched shoulders, a fine mist of ash and shredded bits of paper dusting his hair. Clouds of debris choked his airways as Sander raised his head from the crook of his arms to survey the damage.

His collection of tomes had been decimated to a blizzard of charred parchment, and the intricate scripts he'd inscribed beneath the floor had eaten through the boards like acid to leave corroded impressions and smoking holes. The woven rug smoldered, and large drapes of the damask wallpaper had been peeled from the wall by the heatwave. Distant cries of distress could be heard, as could the shrill wail of fire alarms on the floors above and below.

The Sin was a blackened husk hunkered below where the window had once been. Viscera and other indistinguishable pieces littered the tight cage allotted to the downed demon. Half of his face was missing, the skin melted to reveal pale bone and sinewy muscle, his arms skeletal with lingering memories of meat and tissue. If he hadn't been so viciously satisfied, Sander would've vomited from the stench alone.

"Be dead," he hissed, wincing as what remained of his wards flickered and died. His final rune had depleted his mana to the extreme. Dizzy with the onset of mana sickness, Sander fumbled at the splintered drawer of his desk, refusing to look away from the immobile Sin. He found the slender, warm mana pot by touch rather than sight. "Be dead," he repeated. "My faith in my magic is strong, so please be dead—!"

The demon's remaining eye opened and swiveled to fix Sander with a violent stare. "I must admit," came the guttural rasp of the Envy's decimated voice. The body jerked, fractured bones and torn limbs creaking and snapping as the cold hit Sander so hard it jarred his heart. His lips parted, and with utterly gruesome fascination and terror, he watched the Sin of Envy resurrect himself, flesh flowing over exposed muscles like rippling silk being drawn across a body. It swept upward from his neck, molding the creature's face, defining its irritated expression. The other eye solidified with a sickening sound of liquid suction. "I wasn't expecting that. That was a bit of black magic, wasn't it? Nasty stuff."

The Sin tipped himself onto his feet, his once pristine suit hanging from his limbs in tattered clumps—though the Sin hardly noticed. He was just as comfortable and composed in rags as he was in his finery, the tanned skin beneath the suit's remains unblemished by Sander's attack. Cowering beneath the desk, the mage muttered an oath and used his teeth to rip the cork from his mana pot.

"You never answered my question," Balthier said as he crossed one of the numerous charred lines ruining the floor. The Sin's bare feet were cut by the pieces of eviscerated window, leaving bloody footprints on the charred wood.

The mage drank the mana pot in one swallow, convulsing as the liquidized energy dispersed and pinged within his system. "Stay away!" Sander snarled as he inscribed a hasty rune upon his upheld palm with his own blood. He'd bitten his tongue in the explosion, and now the bitter taste of copper flooded his mouth and colored his lips. "Touch me and you'll be blasted again!"

The Sin halted, brow quirked. "Touch you? Whoever said anything about me having to touch you to kill you?"

Sander was dizzy again. He attributed the disorienting vertigo to the early warnings of mana sickness, but consuming the mana pot should've absolved that problem. He was short of breath. Every inhalation sent shooting pain through his lungs that had nothing to do with the biting cold, and blood dripped from his chin—too much to have come from his bitten tongue. Sander's rubbed his blurry eyes, fingers coming away red and blotchy.

"Maybe you can answer now," the Sin said as he knelt, his charming face a gruesome mockery of civility and grace. "Who was the first horseman?"

Sander felt so strange. All his strength was concentrated on keeping his rune between him and Sin, but his arm was falling, his strength utterly depleted. Dark lines spread, illuminating his veins in ashen skin. Sander could barely hear, but answering the monster suddenly seemed crucial—vital. He racked his muddled mind as he squinted at the looming monster.

His heart raced. It raced so quickly his own voice crackled inaudible below its ugly thumps. "P...Pestilence."

Sander Westerberg's heart emitted one final jarring thud and stopped. The mage collapsed without another word, his milky eyes open and sightless to the decimated room, and the Sin's mocking grin fell as he stood, bored with the exchange. Someone pounded on the apartment door, yelling the dead mage's name. Envy sniffed as he picked at his ruined attire and tugged his fingers through the tangled length of his regrown hair.

The pounding continued. Police sirens wailed incessantly beyond the shattered window. Balthier remained at the sill for a moment, facing north, where the dark lines of Verweald's pitchfork shot up from the horizon. "Yes, Pestilence," he murmured, running his thumb and forefinger against one another, the dormant, inherent magic of disease writhing just beneath the skin. "That does remind me, though....where has the pale horse slunk off to now? What is Darius up to these days?"

Authorities were breaking apart the front door. Balthier could hear the thick oak splitting beneath the blows of the battering ram. The Sin stepped into the Realm and disappeared before they ever knew he was there.

* * *