Chapter 12
Sloth leaned back. "You're . . . turn," he told Greed.
Like Greed was going to forget. He rolled, moved . . . and landed on Sloth's dark blue monopoly. Wait. He couldn't afford that. He'd spent all his money the very last turn buying hotels. Why hadn't Sloth landed on any of his?
"Wh-what?" Greed asked, staring at the board.
"Hah! You lose too Greed!" Envy shouted, pointing at him.
Sloth read off how much Greed owed him. Envy was right. He was out. Greed could do math quite quickly, and he did not have enough for that.
"I told you not to buy all those hotels!" Ling shouted, apparently at the end of his rope. "This is why! But oh no, if you want something you have to have it right this minuet. No foresight at all, just-"
"Shut up prince!" Greed shouted. "How do you know so much about Monopoly anyway?"
Ling mentally shrugged. "I'm a Prince of Xing who smuggled myself into this country. I've played Monopoly with a lot of people."
"Oh."
Lust meanwhile, seemed to have figured out something the others had ignored. "Hang on," she said. "Did we just all lose to Sloth?"
There was a silence filling the room, despite seven people in it. Eight if you counted Ling.
"Yeah!" Gluttony finally confirmed. "Yay Sloth!" He started applauding Sloth.
"I . . . won." Sloth let a smile slowly spread across his face. It wasn't a very enthusiastic one, but still probably the most emotion any of them had seen in him.
"Can we all just pretend this never happened?" Lust asked.
"Fine with me," Greed agreed.
"I'm not even here," Pride added.
Actually, his shadows did seem to be emptying from his vessel. Maybe he was off to kill some poor humans who'd stumbled upon the tunnel.
(No, I'm not quite done yet. But Sloth won. He deserves it.)