RE: Monarch

In the beginning, there was only Elphion.

One god, a being of infinite power and capability, existing on the stage of the infinite cosmos.

Entirely alone.

In his loneliness, or perhaps, boredom, he created other, lesser gods in his own image, carving off pieces of himself to give them mind and presence. At first, his creations were simple reflections of himself, the only true difference between the creator and created that they held only a fraction of his power. These new divinities provided companionship and soothed the creator god’s lonesome existence.

It was not enough.

After a time, Elphion grew displeased with his creations, with the way they bowed and scraped to his every whim, accepted his sentiments and commands without question. He did not know why they failed to satisfy him, only that their presence no longer provided the comfort it once had.

So Elphion began anew, splitting his essence once more, giving birth to a fresh wave of gods. He altered them, bestowing each with unique aspects, altering their minds and souls, until each of these new creations spoke with their own voice, thought with their own mind. The new gods were fractious. They stoked rivalries and forged alliances within their ranks.

Conflict was born.

And, although the new gods still revered Elphion, they developed their own agendas, their own passions and pleasures. The creator god found these defiant, unruly deities far more compelling than their elder counterparts and favored them openly.

The original gods, the simple reflections of Elphion himself, seethed at the new gods’ vaunted status. Over centuries, they grew bitter, conspiring among themselves. Eventually their bitterness grew uncontainable, and they lashed out as one, slaying Sarephel, the Luminous Beacon—Elphion’s favorite.

The creator god’s retribution was swift and righteous.

Once the older gods’ treachery was discovered, he smote them, strangling the spark of divinity from their miasmatic souls, stripping each of their power. But not before he granted them the individuality they so clearly coveted.

Vexul, the Festered Sire

Erebite, the Voidspawn

Threxian, Purulent-Heart

The worst of them all, the god who dealt the killing blow to Elphion’s treasured favorite, was dubbed Zephrion, the Debaser.

When it was finished, Elphion could not bring himself to kill them, as he had made them in his own image. Instead, he cast them down into the firmament, powerless, broken, and forgotten. And just as the new gods formed the divine pantheon above, the elder gods formed one below.

***

The fact that I’d heard it before didn’t make the story any more pleasant.

Vogrin was cagey with the details, but I could glean the basics. Supposedly, Vexul had attempted to restore himself with a similar pattern hundreds of years ago, when the settlement built upon his resting place grew into a populated town that continually expanded. He called on creatures from a nearby plane and bent them to his will, using them to abduct primitive magicians from the city. And once they were in his grasp, Zephrion consumed them, biding his time until the minuscule amounts of mana he harvested became enough to serve as fuel.

The only thing that stopped him was the interference of one of the divine.

Considering that I’d lived to adulthood in my previous life without so much as a whisper about the unexpected rise of an abyssal god anywhere, let alone in Whitefall, I should have been relatively unbothered by Vogrin’s concerns.

But seeing Vogrin’s fear of the abyssals alone, hearing the way he talked about them, was significant enough to get under my skin.

I sent Vogrin to look in on Annette.

After that, we returned to my rooms in silent contemplation. There was a light beneath the conjoining door, indicating that Eckor was through with his work and had returned. I sat back on the plush cushion of the couch and spread out, body aching as I processed the events of the day.

Alten paced, his expression grim. From the looks of it, I wasn’t the only one disturbed by Vogrin’s theory.

“Any detail from your visions that might make sense of this?” he asked, staring a hole in the ground as he paced.

“None whatsoever,” I sighed. “Haven’t had one of the more immediate visions for a while, but there’s nothing long term that supports it. More the opposite.”

“But you don’t always get them.”

“Correct.” I frowned. “And if there’s any truth to it, something is very wrong.” Other than my initial encounter with Thoth, the events that changed significantly could all be at least tenuously connected to the changes I’d put into motion. I rubbed at my face. “Let’s just take Vogrin’s advice not to get sidetracked. We’ll hit the library again in the morning, see if we can find anything of note.”

When I dropped my hands Alten had stopped pacing directly in front of me. His posture had changed, weight entirely shifted onto his back foot. A subtle shift that felt vaguely threatening. He scratched his chin with his palm in an up-down motion, his thumb extending upwards, pointing up and behind me, toward the ceiling. “You know. All this. Getting involved with royal business? It’s starting to feel like a mistake.”

Above.

I nearly tensed at the understanding and spike of adrenaline that accompanied it, then forced myself to relax. “Makes no difference to me if you stay or go. Your recruitment was a flight of fancy. But I have to wonder. Have you given it more than a minute or two of thought where you’ll go after this?”

Alten sneered. “Gave it a minute, yeah.”

One.

I leaned forward, sending mana down my leg inscriptions. “I don’t like your tone.”

“And I don’t give a fuck what you like.” Alten’s fists tightened at his side.

“Enough.” I stood, stirring the air in the room, letting it roil around me. “Leave. Or face the consequences.”

“Now?” Alten asked.

“What, play nice and let you gather your things? Not going to happen,” I sneered. “Get out. Now.”

I charged forward as if to attack, unsheathing my sword and gathering air mana into my hand in one smooth motion. Then stopped just short of striking him and spun, angling toward the ceiling and unleashing the spell. The dark silhouette hanging from the ceiling cried out in a high pitch, throwing herself out of the way of the screeching airburst and plummeting to the floor. She rolled to recover but landed heavy, grunting as she immediately darted toward the window.

Alten, already sprinting across the room, slid into the would-be assassin’s legs, sending her spiraling to the ground. She screamed in frustration and reached toward her waist, drawing out a dark shape.

“Knife!” I shouted, and Alten braced her descending wrist against his forearm, just in time.

Dammit.

Demon fire would end this quickly, but I didn’t have enough controlled focus to use it without potentially catching my honor guard in the flames. Air magic might destabilize him and allow the attacker to drive the knife home.

With magic more or less off the table, I rushed forward, slamming my boot into her wrist. Her hand bent backward at a painful-looking angle and the knife bounced free, tinging across the ground. She shrieked, eyes meeting mine, elven features twisted by animus and ire.

I realized she wasn’t just any elf. It was her, the drephin woman I’d spared and followed back to her camp.

“Where’s my uncle?!” she screamed, with enough ferocity to genuinely startle me.

“Who the hells—” I began, only to cut off mid-sentence as she leapt off Alten like a springboard, hurtling directly toward me. I reacted first on muscle memory, holding out a hand to defend myself and only firing the still-healing inscription belatedly. The same one I’d used on the thugs in the alley, only this time directing it entirely forward. Air exploded as my hand slapped against her sternum, wrenching my arm with recoil as she flew backward into the wall as if slugged with a giant fist.

Before she hit the ground, a white light encompassed her and fur sprouted from her skin, and by the time she landed it was on four paws. The now fully transformed wolf growled and prepared to charge.

At least, until Alten landed directly on top of her, blade raised above his head.

“Wait!” I shouted almost on instinct, only realizing why a moment later. She’d asked me a question. Which meant she was here for information first, revenge second.

“Are you—kidding?” Alten jerked back, narrowly pulling his throat from the snapping jaws. He growled back, tossed aside his weapon and seized the wolf, wrapping his arm around the front of her neck and clamping it in a blood choke. The wolf tried to shake him off, dragging him halfway across the room in a panicked stagger as he clung to her like a stable hand breaking a stallion, applying pressure until the wolf collapsed, returning to her Drephin form. But she was out of tricks, her pale skin a significantly paler shade and turning blue.

I strode over to them and crouched above her, gesturing to Alten. “Ease up.”

He gave me a long look, then did as I asked. The woman hacked and sputtered, still staring at me with hate-filled eyes.

I tried to project a sense of calm authority. “Your uncle. The shaman we took?”

“Where is he?” She rasped, exploding in a series of coughs. A hand snaked out toward my leg, falling just short. I didn’t flinch.

“In the dungeon, being interrogated.”

On the topic of why you and yours attacked the caravan.

“Liar. That—” She choked. Alten’s grip had tightened, and her eyes were bulging. I gestured again, and he loosened his grip. “That was the first place I looked.”

Alten and I shared a look. I turned back to her. “The Whitefall dungeons are large and notoriously well guarded. Even if you infiltrated them—”

“I did… you… arrogant… whelp.”

“—you probably just missed him,” I finished.

She smiled, blood showing on her teeth, then ripped free of Alten’s grasp and lunged toward me.

Before I could blink, Alten had recovered, yanking her back by her hair and slamming her skull into the marbled ground. She went limp, utterly immobile. He checked her pulse first, then pulled her eyelids back. “Out cold,” he concluded.

“Good.” I sat back, leaning against the couch. The encounter had rattled me more than usual, considering the last time I was in my rooms and suddenly attacked by an elf with a knife. “And well played. Got your signal but wasn’t sure they’d buy our little drama. Best I could come up with in short order.”

Alten shivered. “Hells, you half-convinced me.”

I put a hand to my temple, annoyed at my own short-sightedness. If Alten were less capable and this happened on a night I was too distracted to pick up on it, this series of events could have ended badly. “We need a non-verbal communication method. Something faster and less one-sided than my using magic to bend your ear.”

“Guessing you didn’t do that on the off chance she was a mage?” Alten opened my closet door and rummaged around until he found a belt, binding the drephin’s arms behind her back.

I nodded. “As far as spells go, it’s subtle, but if she knows her way around magic and was watching us closely, there was a chance she’d pick up on it.”

Alten snorted. “Smart. Paranoid. But smart.” He glanced down at the bound body. “Well, what now? Grab the real guards and send her off for a reunion with uncle?”

That was the question. I frowned. Given their well-earned reputation, I would hesitate to send anyone to the Whitefall dungeons. Given her skillset, however, there really wasn’t a better option.

But something the woman said stuck firmly in my mind.

That was the first place I looked.

“Alten…” I said slowly, still working through it. “What if she’s right?”

“What? About her kin just up and vanishing out of the dungeons?” Alten asked, raising an eyebrow. “Not likely.”

“Maybe. But what have we been doing for the last few hours?”

I waited, as he connected the dots between the nonhuman disappearances, and an allegedly absent elf in the dungeons.

“Oh. Shit.” Alten stared down at her, then back at me. “Not possible. There isn’t a monster in the Everwood that ballsy.”

“Probably not. But if they are, and we send her to the same place her uncle disappeared from, there’s a good chance she disappears before we get anything useful.” I paused, finally coming to a decision. “If we can get her to the emissary’s quarters, Maya can keep her unconscious until we have a chance to check her story.”

We went to work, tidying the room first so Eckor didn’t immediately sound the alarm when he returned, then placing the elf on a blanket. The castle wasn’t terribly active this late at night, but there were still plenty of people going about their business. And while no one in the castle beyond my parents would necessarily stop me if they witnessed me openly hauling a body through the halls, the resulting rumors would follow me to the very ends of the earth.

There was a loud bang at the door, followed by two more impacts.

Alten’s hand went to his sword. “More drephin? Or someone sticking their nose in.”

I sighed. “Neither.” And walked to the door. There was only one person I knew who knocked in this manner, as if whoever placed the door in her way had dealt her a grave insult.

I opened the door a crack. A girl with a long golden braid and a down-turned mouth stared back at me. “We need to talk.”

“And we will,” I said, trying to strain the irritation from my voice. “Tomorrow, when I’ve slept —”

Sera pushed past me, and strode into my rooms. “Glad you could find the time, baby brother—” She stopped short at the sight of Alten. He’d reacted quickly and covered the elf’s head before Sera spotted them, but in his haste, the entire blanket had shifted, leaving the elf’s immobile dark boots sticking out from the bottom of the blanket.

Her jaw worked. “That’s… a body.”

“Yes.” There was no point in denying it.

“A woman’s body.”

“Two for two.”

Sera slowly turned back to me. “Let me guess. It’s not what it looks like?”

Of all the ways I’d imagined breaking through the thick layer of frigid ice that separated me from my older sister, this wasn’t one of them.

“It’s really, really not.”

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