RE: Monarch

I studied them desperately, searching for patterns. Anything I could use, anything that could possibly be exploited.

It was useless.

They didn’t move like mindless sentinels. They moved like massive predators, scouring the barren rock for prey. My mind spun desperately. I turned to Xarmos, who looked equally perturbed. “Any chance you’ve awakened the water element?”

He gave me a tired look. “Yes. At some point, we’re going to have that conversation about how you seem to know so much about my family lineage—“

“Later,” I waved him off, still focused on the problem at hand. “Second stage?”

“I can freeze things, yes. And your abilities?”

“Air and… fire.” Considering the level of incredulity he’d show me so far, I wasn’t about to specify what kind. “I’m not particularly talented.”

“Unfortunate.” Xarmos mused. “Our best bet against this sort of construct would be void magic. Snuff out the flames, stun the monsters and run. Barring that, an earth magician might be successful at redirecting their path and trapping them within the walls.”

I chuckled darkly.

“Just, I came in with a void magician.”

“You were separated?”

“Yes.” Of course, the test had ripped Bell away from me. I hoped they were okay. My fists clenched at the thought of them going through trials like these alone. Nothing could ever be easy, or even fair for that matter. But the more I thought about it, searched myself, my frustration didn’t stem from the current situation. It came mainly from the vision. I had been unable to parse it as anything apart from a memory. But something, like a dark talon, had begun to claw at the back of my mind.

“Well, that doesn’t help us now,” Xarmos said.

“Fair enough. But your water element…”

“I’ve already considered it.” He shook his head. “You were considering flash freezing them, yes? That’s why you asked about the second stage?”

“I know it seems like a long shot.”

“It is not a bad idea, but I am better with spell casting and precision than with raw elemental magic.” Xarmos chewed his lip. “I would be hard-pressed to drench a thing as massive as one of those, let alone freezing it after.”

Fuck. There had to be a way. Something we weren’t seeing, some aspect of the trial that wasn’t quite so obvious. I just had to think. Stare at the problem for long enough and the solution would come to me. Only, there could be no trial and error this time. Maya’s life was on the line. An anxious fist welled up from my gut a pressed against my lungs, making it harder and harder to breathe—

Until I saw Xarmos shrug, and walk past me towards the stairs.

“What are you doing?” I hissed.

“I can tell, by looking, that you are the planning sort.” Xarmos smiled. “Ralakos is much the same. He prefers to sit in his study and analyze data and maps before taking any sort of action. But he also taught me that we do not always get that sort of luxury.”

“And you expect me to just, what, follow you?” I asked incredulously.

His face turned serious. “Of course not. But I hope that you will, Cairn the human. There is still much I’d like to learn from you.” He turned his head sideways and talked over his shoulder. “Planning will only get you so far. Eventually, you must learn to improvise.”

With that, Xarmos turned and began to descend the stairs towards the serpents. His shoulders were broad, his frame thick with muscle. He looked every bit the hero I pretended to be. I wondered, with a sudden sadness, how he had died in the war. Had his confidence led to his fall? Or was it simply a matter of time—the cruel mathematics of war that would eventually claim all men who stood on the frontlines.

With the resets, I’d always been able to cheat, with the assurance that if I did, I could reconvene, at least for a few key moments and find a solution. But the black beast had made it clear that reliance on it was an insidious trap. The people I cared for would always been in peril. And if I continued to rely too deeply on that ability, if the day came I ever lost it, my final death would be a swift and inevitable conclusion.

Could I possibly do what Xarmos suggested? Put planning aside when the situation required it?

No. It wasn’t a question of if I could.

I had to.

But that didn’t mean I had to go in completely unprepared.

/////

Xarmos dashed from one low, craggy outcropping to another, barely avoiding the gaze of the two feuding fire serpents, and nearly tripping as the resulting wind tore at his heels. He adjusted just in time, scrambling the last few steps and turning, his back pressed against the crumbling stone of the shelter, safe and secure.

Not that we were safe. It became quickly apparent that the serpents were nearly blind. One stopped in its path, and reared up, long alien face turning and stared straight at us on our initial approach—only to turn away uninterested and return to wandering aimlessly. Unfortunately, it alsobecame apparent that, just like normal snakes, they had some manner of detecting scent. They hadn’t honed in on us immediately, but as soon as we were down in the valley they began to tighten, slithering trails slowly taking them closer to the center and away from either set of stairs.

They knew we were here, and it was only a matter of time until one of them found us.

The two snakes feuded in a writhing, horrible circle of undulating mass. One clasped the other in its jaws and slammed it hard against the ground. Even at a distance, the impact jarred my teeth in my head. A harsh wind tore flung bits of detritus like shrapnel, a series of plinks and impacts peppering the cover I sheltered behind. Xarmos, still stunned from the impact, was frantically waving for me to follow.

I looked around. There was a serpent behind us that was following a slow curve that took him directly towards me. Elphion. I drew in a deep breath. Fine. Fine. I could do this.

I sent a surge of power into the inscriptions in my legs and exploded into a sprint. But the timing couldn’t have been worse. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw one serpent lift the other higher than ever before. There was only a second to shield my face before there was a ravenous hit and the impact blew me clean off my feet.

Rotating wildly in the air, it was impossible to see where the ground was. Bits of stone pelted me and left painful cuts. Still, I kept my eyes open. I finally saw the stony floor, mere seconds before I would have slammed against it. I shoved both hands out, cushioning my fall, my face a finger's breadth from an impact that would have assuredly knocked me unconscious.

“Psst” Xarmos’s face had lost color. He was pointing behind me as if stabbing the air with his finger, and mouthing “MOVE.” A chill nearly paralyzed me. I didn’t bother looking. Instead, I used the remaining magic in my legs to fling myself towards him in a desperate dive.

The serpent had entirely closed the distant, eerily silent, and coiled tightly around the spot that I had landed. It let out a frustrated hiss, poking its nose into the coil and looking for the prey that had inexplicably escaped it.

Xarmos caught me under one arm, using my momentum to drag me behind the outcropping. “Close,” he whispered.

“A bit.” The bravado didn’t land half as well when my entire body was shaking. The infernal leaned out around the rock, barely visible. “It lost you. But it seems preoccupied with that one spot.”

I checked around us for only a second before ducking back down. “It’s not the only one.” Two smaller serpents had drifted towards the section of ground I’d run across, heads poking curiously towards it, but still showing deference to the larger snake.

Dammit. That was going to make things harder. But why had they suddenly caught on to us now. My mind went back to the first trial, the darkness that had extinguished my spark. A cold chill ran through me.

“They’re tracking the magic,” I whispered.

Xarmos’s mouth dropped open, then pulled in tight, his brow creasing. “They’re attuned to it. Stupid, should have realized. That could have gone very badly.”

“We need to keep moving-” I clamped my mouth down over the word as one of the smaller serpents lost interest in the spot, and began to wind a slow, meandering path directly towards us.

What now?

A memory came back to me from the sanctum’s facsimile of the runic desert. I reached slowly for a small piece of rock and began to infuse it with demon fire. Xarmos grabbed my wrist, his eyes wide, then seemed to understand. There was a shifting noise as every surrounding fire serpent began to move towards us. The smaller serpent became agitated, its path less meandering and more aggressive. It would reach us in a matter of seconds.

Making sure Xarmos saw, I held up three fingers and counted down.

Then, all at once, I cushioned the rock in a pocket of air and sent it flying across the room. The serpents scurried after it. As soon as our path was clear, Xarmos and I began to run towards the other side.

Wind ripped by my ears as I ran, not daring to look back, focusing on the obstacles before us.

My solution wasn’t perfect. I’d infused the rock with much more mana than the spell took to sustain, but I was still actively casting a spell surrounded by creatures hyper-sensitive to magic.

We crossed most of the valley before our luck ran out. A massive fire-serpent lurched in front of us. Its neck flared like a flaming, billowing cape. Xarmos turned around and swore. The fire serpent’s body had already circled us, pulling tighter and tighter still. We would be enveloped in a matter of moments.

Xarmos scooped a much larger rock from the ground and infused it with mana until it glowed blue, so radiantly it was difficult to look at. He leaned back, throwing it in a high arc, so it traveled over the serpent’s body.

No dice. It didn’t move. Somehow, it knew that it had us.

“I’m going to try to drench it!” my companion yelled over the crackling of the fire. “Unless you have a better idea!”

I did, though I hated having to use it. The smell of ozone was overwhelming, the heat blistering and unbearable. I pulled the glass marble from my pocket.

If you’re ever in a situation that is insurmountable, throw it on the ground and stomp on it. Then run.

Dammit. Persephone had given it to me as a gift—and despite her rather obvious connection to the underworld had been unwilling to tell me what it was. That alone told it was likely powerful, highly illegal, and dangerous. I’d been unwilling to use it during the botched reset because my friends were in the crossfire and I had no idea what I was unleashing. Beyond that situation, I’d wanted to save this for if I got in too deep with Thoth.

“Can you get out cleanly?” I asked Xarmos.

“Yes, but I can’t take you with me.” He replied. The coils were drawing tighter and his back pressed against mine. I looked up at the massive beast and mentally calculated. It would be close, but with my inscriptions, there was a chance I could clear it.

“No need. Get ready.” I dropped the marble to the granite ground and stomped on it. The reaction was spontaneous and horrifying. There was suddenly no ceiling, just a thick red mist that covered a massive swath of ceiling.

“You’re insane! Move!” Xarmos shouted at me, drenching a section of the serpent and pulling himself up and over the scales that had been temporarily extinguished.

I crouched low, my back to the wall of the serpent’s body, gathering power in my legs. They’d started to ache terribly, mana burning as it gathered in pathways that were already overworked.

Come on. Come on.

I catapulted myself upwards in a slow high jump Bell taught me, one meant almost exclusively for clearing tall vertical barriers. My legs ached as I arced through the air, and in seconds that passed terribly slowly, I watched a black clawed hand plunge through the red mist at the ceiling. My gut clenched.

What... is that?

Then, I’d twisted around in the air to land, and ascended the stairs to the exit where Xarmos waited, watching in awe.

I turned back to look. It looked as if the ceiling was giving a slow, painful birth to a living nightmare. A creature that dwarfed the serpents nearly as much as the serpents dwarfed us, had worked a terrible black arm through the fissure, as well as part of its face. Only its mouth was visible: long thin teeth gnawed against the section of ceiling that had remained firm, making a terrible grinding noise as it tried to widen the hole. Blindly, almost casually, it swiped at the serpents below, sending them flying with as effortlessly as a child throwing toys.

“A prime evil.” Xarmos whispered.

Seemingly realizing it was making no progress in escaping—and that the hole seemed to be narrowing, rather than the other way around—the demon reached down and grabbed the head of the most prominent serpent. The snake wiggled in his grasp, but it was meaningless. The demon crushed the snake’s skull in an explosion of blood and flame.

“Let's go.” I said, as the arm rescinded into the hole.

Xarmos kept quiet and followed behind me. The door opened, and I couldn’t help but groan. There was another fountain. This one was much more ornate, surrounded by vases and greenery that looked foreign and hand-tended.

“You’re not from my time, are you?” Xarmos said. It was more of a statement than a question.

I stopped. That was strange. I’d always assumed that there was something about my curse that prevented others from thinking in that direction. But it didn’t matter. As soon as I acknowledge it, his face would slacken, and he would forget. Best to get that over with.

“How’d you figure it out?” I asked.

Xarmos’s face never changed.

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