RE: Monarch

The sensation of lost time washed over me again. It was strange. I could feel the sun beating down on me, the cold gust of a breeze as uneven pavement met my feet, but I didn’t know where I was going.

Only how to get there.

There was something heavy gripped in my palm. The handle was wooden, round, and thick, not unlike a spear’s. If it was a spear, it was poorly weighted, heavy on the front side. From time to time my focus would ebb and the metal would clang off the ground, drawing glances from those who walked with me.

It bounced off the ground again, tip catching an upturned cobblestone, and I slowed, confusion and disorientation clouding my senses. I wanted to sleep. The dirt-strewn ground below looked enticing, welcoming. If I laid down now, curled up a bit, it would be scant seconds before the void of unconsciousness welcomed me.

Fingers threaded through my empty hand and tugged at me gently, pulling me back into motion and leading me through the streets, tugging me in the same direction as the hand that pressed at my back, guiding me through the haze.

Someone was humming in a minor key, the notes gentle and aching and comforting, all at the same time.

A dirge.

I focused on it, allowed it to fill my mind, distracting me from the fear, the disorientation, filtering out everything but the song.

The cobble beneath my feet gave way to grass, lined by bastions of stone.

“This it?” The woman asked.

“Unmarked. Six down from the gaudy circle of absolution, four to the left. Gotta be.”

The woman squeezed my hand. “Cairn? Are you sure you want to do this?”

/////

Gunther spoke. From the distance in his gaze and the way he held himself, clinging to an old cloth that was as stained and dirty as he was dry, he felt more like a projection than a person. The barracks room, where I’d originally placed him for its warmth and proximity to the familiar, felt cold as a prison cell.

“She woke me first. Put a dagger to my throat. Told me if I made a sound she’d cut me open, so on and so forth. I… should have fought. I know that. Tore into her with everything I had. Didn’t keep weapons in the bedroom back then, but can attest firsthand that teeth and nails make a serious dent from the properly motivated. I wasn’t awake. Wasn’t thinking clearly. Tried to bargain, tell her where the gold was. Business had been good, and if she’d been an ordinary thief, it should have been enough. More than enough. But she wasn’t interested. And before I could wise up to what was actually happening, she’d already dragged me to the living room and tied me to a chair. What she tied me with—I’d never seen anything like it. Reflective as metal, pliant as rope. Once she looped it around my waist and my limbs, it tightened on its own. And once it tightened, there was no getting out of it. She dragged over a second chair, facing it across from me. I thought she intended to sit in it, to question me, but she stayed on her feet. The whole time, she never stopped smiling. That smile haunts me, more than anything else.”

I asked him a question. I can’t remember what it was.

“Probably. She certainly seemed to enjoy herself. A little too much.”

His comment echoed my own thoughts and experiences. Being my father’s son meant knowing, in detail, what bloodlust looked like. He enjoyed a challenge. And for a time, relished in the slaughter that followed it. But once the tide had turned, and the river of war ran with the blood of more innocents than warriors, his interest faded, the fire of cruelty flickering to boredom.

Yet I was almost certain that in his place, Thoth would never grow tired of cruelty. Like a force of nature, her only purpose was to discharge her strength, no matter the target.

I must have said something similar to Gunther, because he nodded.

“It’s hard to explain. You have to remember that I’ve had a lot of time to think about this. Replayed it in my mind, over and over. I’ve met a few monsters in my years—hard to work in Topside without tripping over a few. In my experience, evil never announces itself as evil. But the way she was acting, the way she reveled in it… she was like a smug demon from the fables of old. I’ve never seen its like. And hope I never will again.”

/////

Snap

Maya snapped her fingers twice more in front of my face before I blinked, lowering her arm as I looked at her. A pale-white statue of Onara lingered behind the crest of a hill, hands pressed together in eternal supplication. Offering prayers for the dead.

“He back?” Alten asked Maya, his expression neutral.

“I think so.” Maya answered, staying focused on me. She placed both hands on my chin and tilted my gaze back towards her when it strayed. “Ni’lend, I know this is hard, but I need an answer. Are you sure you want to do this?” She repeated the question from earlier.

I became aware of the weight still hefted in my hand. “Oh… uh. Yes. We still need confirmation.”

“Is that all?” Alten asked, an implication in his voice I couldn’t quite parse.

Maya made a threatening gesture in his direction, but I turned towards him. My honor guard had forgone his armor and was wearing a dark tabard. He was holding a shovel in one hand, its dark-iron head gently touching the dirt. Nearly identical to the shovel in mine.

“Yes.” I said, only recalling the reasoning as I spoke it out loud.

His eyes trailed to the grave at our feet. “You realize there’s only one thing we’re going to find down there?”

Worms.

“Enough.” Maya said. “Even if that’s true, his rationale is sound.”

“Illusion magic.” I smiled thinly. “Can’t just pretend like it doesn’t exist. Gotta rule it out. It’s rare, but I don’t doubt for a second it’s an arrow in Thoth’s quiver. Only way to know for sure would be to let Vogrin examine the remains.”

I’d faked my own death much the same way. And if I’d thought of it, Thoth had too.

Alten grunted in frustration. “Even if it is, to what end? Why would she go to all that effort to feign killing your friend?”

My mind was finally catching up. “When it comes to Thoth, it’s best to assume the absolute worst. Then worsen that assumption by an order of magnitude.” I stared down at the grave. “Obviously, sometimes I still get it wrong.”

“Preparing for the worst is one thing. But I’m not sure how keeping her alive could be worse than this.” Alten said. From the way Maya looked away, I could tell she agreed.

“Really?” My voice was bitter. “Death is worse than keeping her alive and torturing her for years? Or transforming her into some terrible abomination that I’m forced to fight and revealing that at a critical moment?”

Silence answered.

Finally, Alten blew out air in a long hiss. “That’s who we’re up against?”

“Yes.”

He nodded, absorbing that for a moment before gripping his shovel with both hands and plunging it into the dirt.

Maya put a hand on my arm before I could follow suit, the rhythmic clang of Alten’s shovel undercutting her whisper. “I understand that you feel like you need to do this—”

I was reaching the end of my fraying patience. This was hard enough with them fighting me every step of the way. “Stop. I just explained—”

“And I heard you.” Maya cut me off before I could spiral. “It has to be done. But you don’t do it.” She held a hand out. “Give me the shovel. Summon Vogrin, leave him here, and go get a room at an inn. You need sleep.”

Between the mock battle the day before and the horrible, sleepless night, I couldn’t deny it. I was barely on my feet. But that wasn’t why Maya wanted me to go. She wanted me to leave for the same reason I needed to stay.

I turned away from Maya’s proffered hand and drove my foot into the shovel’s tread, burying its head and hefted dirt into Alten’s growing pile.

“Judging from the state of the ground, this will take some time.” I murmured. “Save your strength for when mine wanes.”

When Maya spoke again, her voice was pitched low, almost too low to hear. “You never found her body, did you?”

/////

The longer Gunther spoke, the more pale and drawn his features became. He never cried. Not because he didn’t care. I suspected the story he was telling me was one he’d relived, over and over, the serrated nature of the memory wearing down the jagged edges of his grief until all that was left was the numbness.

“At first, I was relieved when she left me there. That’s how overwhelming she was. At this point I still thought I was being robbed. Then… the minutes ticked by, and I started to panic. Lillian hadn’t been sleeping well lately, and the intrusion wasn’t quiet. Her bedroom was directly across from my own. I thought about shouting for her to run, or stay in her room, or shouting for help, but the thought of potentially putting her in more danger terrified me almost as much as the idea of her blearily stumbling into that monster’s path.”

I told him it wasn’t his fault. That there was nothing he could have done, knowing damn well how worthless those words were.

“Maybe not. But I could have tried, instead of just sitting there, waiting, like a lamb to slaughter. When she returned—she…”

I waited as he composed himself, lost in the splotches of the cloth he held in his hand. There was a small patch of lace on the corner—once white, now gray.

“Thoth… dragged my daughter in by her hair. She was crying, trying to hold herself up to relieve the pressure. Gods. She was so scared. She’d seen the aftermath of violence before—that’s part of being an apothecary—but she’d never seen the violence itself. Let alone been a victim to it. Everything changed in that moment. Shifted. Like my mind had been clinging to the possibility that this was some lesser crime out of denial and desperation. Then. She killed my baby girl. Snuffed her out like she was nothing.”

/////

Thunk

Thunk

Thunk

Thunk

It was taking longer than it should have. The graves outside the chapel were uniform and deep, but at any given time there were two of us working in tandem. The problem was the earth. It was dense and packed. Sweat rolled from my sodden hair down my forehead and freely into my eyes, with a sting that left them aching and raw.

A warm magic plied the back of my neck and swept down over me, soothing my pain, keeping my mind cognizant and present. It faded to the sensation of Maya’s cool fingers on the back of my head. I reached up to knock her hand away—but the healing magic had given me enough clarity to realize what I was doing and stop. I let my palm rest on her wrist instead, taking small comfort in her presence.

“Alright. My turn. Up you go.” Maya’s grip on my forearm tightened, and she hefted me up out of the earth with enough strength that had I resisted, it would have taken more fight than I currently had to stop her.

“You should take over for Alten, not me.” I said, hesitant to release the shovel when she went to grab it.

“And on any other day, you’d be right.” Maya smiled. There was a burst of magic, and my hand popped open unbidden. She took the shovel and dropped into the grave, straightening her skirts and squaring her shoulders before she began to dig from the opposite side of Alten.

I lingered at the edge of the grave, feeling as if I should do something. “Are you sure you’re not needed at the castle?”

“Wouldn’t care if I was.”

“If this is some sort of self-inflicted penance for not telling me about this earlier, it’s unnecessary.”

“That has nothing to do with it.” Maya said, grunting as she drove the shovel home.

Giving up on her for the moment, I looked over to Alten. He’d shed his tabard and was working shirtless. The first beads of sweat formed on Maya’s brow. Beyond them, there was a small crowd of common folk, pushed up against the cast iron rods that made up the fencing lining the cemetery. A few members of my regiment were present, making sure no one—including several angry looking priests—interfered. All at once, a wave of embarrassment washed over me. “Neither of you have to be here. I can’t… remember if I gave either of you an out earlier.”

Maya and Alten shared a look, then returned to work almost simultaneously.

“And maybe the regiment shouldn’t be here.” I muttered, quietly enough that I thought they couldn’t hear. The priests would be louder in their displeasure, but they wouldn’t dare to stop me. Not with the threat of the king hanging over my head.

Alten jabbed his shovel into the dirt and leaned on it. His cold blue eyes carved through me. Then he stuck a thumb towards Maya. “She’s the political mind, but she likes you too much. So she’s not gonna say it.”

“Say what?”

Alten glanced at the people lining the fence. “You’re not seeing the full picture. Right now, this is a peculiarity. Digging up a grave in the middle of the day is a disquieting sight, but with the regiment folk barring the way and the three of us working in tandem, it more or less passes as official. What do you think it’s gonna look like if we all leave you to your own devices?”

My mouth was dry. “Like an unhinged noble heretic digging up commoner graves.”

Alten nodded. “To tell the truth, I don’t care why you’re doing it. Whether it’s truly for confirmation or if that’s all noise and it’s some twisted manner of punishing yourself. I don’t care. That’s your choice, and none of my business. But it’s my job to keep you safe from all threats. Doing this? It’s exactly where I’m meant to be.”

I was outnumbered, so I let it drop, taking a long drink from my canteen as they continued to work, waiting for the next rotation, Gunther’s words echoing in my mind.

/////

“The intruder slipped the knife between Lillian’s ribs. It must have been sharp because it went in easily, to almost no reaction. My baby just… stiffened, went pale and slumped over. I started screaming. All that time I’d been holding it in, trying to keep things from getting worse. But after that, what was the point? Picked up pretty quickly that there was something wrong with my voice—loud at first, but it immediately died off, like I was being muffled.”

The confirmation I’d been waiting for, stated as bluntly and clearly as it could be. I felt nothing. Not because it meant nothing to me, but the repercussions were so broad and immutable I couldn’t unpack them. Instead, I focused on the finer details, used that fixation to distract myself while the sensation of being slowly crushed intensified.

I steepled my hands and stared down at them. “Was there anything unusual about the knife she used? A green glow, perhaps? Something off with the blade itself?”

“Uh… no. The knife wasn’t glowing, green or any other color. No visible magic of any kind. And there was nothing noteworthy about the blade. All that stood out was the strange suppression of sound. And—there was a haze to my vision. It may have been strain, or anxiety, or just the blood rushing to my head. It felt surreal. Alien. Probably nothing more than shock, but it lingered until she left. No idea when she started it, but right around then I realized the walls around us were on fire.”

Knife-work. Fire. Chaos. The insistence on playing with her food. Absent the mystery spell, the murder was almost identical to the way she’d ended my first life. Even in the numbness of shock, that fact stood out to me. If our paths hadn’t crossed in the sanctum, I’d undoubtedly believe she’d carried it out that way by design, out of some sick sense of irony or symmetry. If her purpose was to inflict as much strife as possible, it was likely a tactical choice. After all, I didn’t have to imagine how Lillian felt.

I knew exactly how painful it was to die that way.

But preceding our final clash in the Sanctum, Thoth had insisted that the memories from my last life weren’t from the most recent cycle. There’d been other loops I wasn’t aware of in-between. And seeing how she’d used that method to kill Lillian before we’d had that conversation, it didn’t track.

Someone is screwing with us both.

So, what? Was a blade to the lungs a go to method, and she just enjoyed killing people that way?

Or was her appearance of frustration and the brief moment of vulnerability in the Sanctum nothing more than another mind-game.

Every word she uttered was a lie.

“Lillian was just… gasping… struggling for every breath. Smoke made it worse. The intruder put a finger on my lips and silenced my screaming. Once I realized no one heard me, that no one was coming, I stopped. Because when I saw her injury, my medical instincts kicked in. There was a chance I could still save her. The shortness of breath came from a deflating lung, and the knife was blocking most of the bleeding. If she left me alive, there was a chance. A possibility I could save my daughter.”

I didn’t bother with hope. Just held my silence as he continued.

“There was a sense—a feeling, really—that she wanted something from me. So I listened. She told me her name. Thoth. And after we made introductions, the sense of theatricality faded. She took the liberty of telling me I shouldn’t grieve for Lillian. Because she’d be nothing more than a disappointment. Squandered potential. That by the time she amounted to anything, it wouldn’t matter, because the world itself would be over. That she was doing me a favor. Freeing me from an unnecessary burden. That the echoes of her death and how they affected others were the only significant achievement my daughter would ever manage. I got angry. Because of course I would. I had no expectations, no demands. She was a child. My only child. After she was born, there was a time I had ideas for what her future could hold. Nothing unreasonable. Just that I hoped she’d follow in my footsteps and planned to eventually pass on the apothecary to her. But after her mother died, that disappeared. All I ever wanted for her was a comfortable life. A good life. Funny, right?” Gunther laughed, the sound a hollow rasp.

I smiled grimly, my face taut. “Few children speak as highly of their parents as Lillian spoke of you. She had a good life. Far too short. But good, nonetheless.”

Gunther choked a little at that, cleared his throat before he continued on. “Thoth told me that not long from now, a boy would come looking for Lillian. And then she gave me the message. After she’d made me repeat it several times, something Lillian did—my view was blocked, so it’s impossible to say what—set her off. Thoth raised her voice, started screaming at Lillian for looking at her. Said her face was so weak it was disgusting. Threatened to carve it from her skull. But she didn’t. Instead… like it was nothing… she tore the knife out of my daughter’s chest.”

A sense of weariness rolled in like a fog. I had confirmation that Lillian was gone. That Thoth had taken her life. This was enough, wasn’t it?

No.

“What was Thoth’s message?” I asked.

Gunther’s face lost the faraway look, and he peered at me, almost irritated. “I told you. It was poison.”

Perhaps it was. But from the beginning, nothing she’d done was simple. There was always an angle, a hidden motive. I needed the poison.

Maybe on some level, I wanted it.

/////

THUMP

The noise was distinctly different from the previous dour rhythm of the shovel. The resonance was sturdy and unyielding, as if the shovel had struck a root.

Or wood.

Alten and Maya shared another look, much heavier than the last. We were all sweating and exhausted, but a surge of energy pushed me forward. I tossed aside the last of the dirt, the lighter brown of rotting wood that made up the front cover of the casket became more and more prevalent as I frantically swept it away.

As we hefted the coffin out of the pit, I tried not to pay attention to how heavy it felt. The shift of something within.

Once we got it out, Maya and Alten both stepped away.

I didn’t. The sense of urgency wasn’t rational. I knew that, even as I tore at the nails, ripping them off with the head of the shovel, going down on my knees to pry the more stubborn ones free.

All throughout, I fully expected someone to try to stop me. Maya, perhaps even Alten. Tell me to step back and prepare myself, to hold off, to give myself a minute.

To wait.

Neither of them did.

I pried the lid open.

And found the coffin empty.

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