RE: Monarch

Well, she was exponentially more excitable than me, but the point still stood.

The guards eventually came knocking. Bellarex hid us in one of several meditation rooms within the Void Temple.

I expected the barrage of questions, but Jorra was taken aback. He didn’t seem to dislike her as much as the first time around—I suspect because she was helping us, and his first impression wasn’t a frantic battle spent trying to beat the hell out of each other.

Jorra had tried to swear her to secrecy before answering anything, and instead of a simple promise, Bellarex had sworn an oath, surprising me. She really was the trusting sort, though, I couldn’t decide if that made her an excellent or terrible judge of character.

We sat cross-legged in the meditation room. Bellarex munched thoughtfully on a round fruit that resembled a cerulean plum.

“The part that shocks me,” She said between bites, “Is that you got out of the Dregre Estate at all. She’s not known for being light-handed with intruders.”

“I think you’re underestimating the dwarf’s gravity thing. The worst feeling I’ve ever had. Like an army of spear wielding pixies went to town on my brain.”

“Why would pixies want anything to do with your brain?” Bell asked. “Is it a haven of precious resources?”

“It could be.” Jorra muttered.

“I worry this experience might have ruined drinking for you, my friend. Bad hangovers are not dissimilar.”

Jorra stared at me incredulous. “People pay to feel like this?”

“I think it is more interesting that Cairn is on a familiar enough basis with hangovers to speak on them definitively.” Bell laughed. “They must start them early in Whitefall.”

I nodded. “Oh yes. Alcohol tolerance is a critical aspect of Silodan politics. The inability to hold one’s liquor is considered more vastly more important than petty things like pedigree and moral fibre.”

Bell considered that. “In that case, I believe my father would excel at politics in your kingdom.”

Jorra froze. I wanted to laugh, but Bell had such a nonchalant way of saying things that it was impossible to know for sure whether she was joking.

“I… see.” I shifted uncomfortably.

Then Bell laughed, loud and merrily, and when she laughed it was impossible not to laugh with her.

We spent the rest of the day practicing. The void temple meditation rooms were markedly similar to Guemon’s containment cells, as they made channeling magic more difficult—though to a much lesser degree.

Bell had many talents, but teaching was not one of them. I had to ask her quite a few questions to get direct answers as to what I was doing wrong, and what should be done in its stead. As I summoned the air within the meditation room, I could see small tendrils of wasted energy much more clearly as they faded away. It made it much easier to isolate the problem, and by the end of the day I could summon a small amount of air mana, though not enough to cast anything substantial.

Jorra and Bell got into a small spat when she referred to crevasse-side as the “rundown” part of the enclave. It wasn’t done with any intentional elitism, Bell was the sort of spiteless upper-crust that grew up in and around privilege, and wasn’t used to considering that not everyone she spoke to had the same background as her.

I managed to calm things down between them. Bell apologized, though Jorra refused. The mood was ruined, so we decided to call things for the day, making plans for a second meeting sometime soon. Bell seemed serious about making a schedule and proposed something next few days, then meeting weekly. Which sounded great, but the fact was it only gave us two meetings before the demons tore through the Enclave again.

Bell let us throw away our cloaks and masks in the waste-bins behind the temple. It rankled, especially when money was so short, but I’d be getting a gold-infusion from Persephone very shortly. A substantial one, if I played my cards right.

I hoped I was right about Shear. It had been a split-second decision. There’d been something in his face I didn’t like when he was talking about Ginger and the gravity-field. He’d waited for me to pose the question about it—he wasn’t foolish enough to bring it up himself—but once I’d stated the barest of concerns, he’d leaned in too hard. As if he needed me to believe him.

That was why I’d given Ginger the sapphire I’d pilfered from the gem-collection room, rather than Shear. Whatever game Shear was playing, I didn’t trust him, which was why I’d offered him up to Ephira. She likely had men interrogating him at that very moment.

The image made me wince.

I really hoped I was right.

Nethtari stopped us at the door. She set a handful of folders down to check Jorra’s forehead with the back of her palm, accepted his mumbled excuse that he wasn’t feeling well and sent him to bed. I hid the sapphire beneath a section of carpet where the floorboards had peeled up to reveal a hollowed out section of foundation beneath.

As always, when I closed my eyes, I saw their bodies strew about on the floor, myself standing over them.

What had they thought, in their final moments? How betrayed had they felt?

I thought of Agarin. And my mind shut it all away.

It won’t happen again. I won’t let it.

I still hadn’t decided how to handle everything, but this was the first reset. I needed to get comfortable with the idea of winging things and seeing what happened. If everything went poorly, Kilvius and Nethtari knew the date and time of the invasion. They’d be able to get out. Something about that felt selfish and unselfish, all at the same time. Like I should have cared more for the rest of the infernals.

Don’t get me wrong. I did care for them. As a whole they’d been welcoming, kind, and surprisingly inclusive. Much more so than the city of Whitefall would have been, if the roles were reversed.

But Maya’s family had taken me in and cared for me, despite the unenviable position it put them in. At the end of the day, they were the priority, Enclave be damned.

For the first time in nearly a week, I slept. There were no dreams or interruptions. Just a darkness so sweet and whole that it consumed all worries and fears, even if that tender moment of peace was nothing more than an illusion.

----

I awoke to Nethtari shaking me. Her hair was uncharacteristically messy, and the barely withheld panic in her face jolted me to high alert, my heart racing.

“What’s wrong?”

“Ephira’s men are outside. She sent a carriage. Said you’d know what it’s about.”

The relief I felt was marginal. No one was attacking, no one had died. I still had a likely irate politician to deal with and a story to spin that I hadn’t quite finished forming.

“We have minutes, at most.” Nethtari said. “When I told them I wasn’t sure if you came in last night, they tried to push their way in.”

I shook my head. Even if I wanted to escape, Ephira likely had someone watching the house who saw me come in the previous night. She wouldn’t skimp on security, not on something like this. I needed to deal with it head on. Delaying would only make things worse and potential ruin my plans for the rest of the reset.

I took my time getting ready. Ephira was the sort that would judge me if a hair was out of place—normally not the sort of thing I’d care about, but at this particular moment I was the one who needed something from her, and coming to our meeting frumpled and unkempt would be detrimental at best, disastrous at worse.

I’d be less concerned if she hadn’t set the carriage, rather than letting me come to her. It sent a definitive message: We do this on my terms.

Ephira’s carriage was lush, but I wasn’t able to appreciate the fine silks and ample space for long. Her guards, dressed in their frilly green tabards, piled in and surrounded me. Two on either side, three directly across.

I wasn’t sure whether to take it as a compliment that Ephira thought so highly of me, or an insult that she was trying to dominate me right from the beginning.

The image of Jorra soaking her with a massive globe of water came back to me.

Maybe the pettiness was justified.

The carriage creaked and bumped, the ride extending beyond an hour. I tried to talk to the guards, but they simply stared in return, regardless of what I said. I went through a long-list of jokes, trying to get at least one to crack a smile. When the one about the donkey and the honeycomb failed—though I didn’t know how, everyone with a soul laughed at that—I fell silent.

I reminded myself that there was no reason for alarm. Ephira would be a fool to kill me—especially when dozens of people had seen the carriage come and go. This was all just part of how the game was played. Ephira was a controlled, reserved person who hated to lose, and I had unsettled that status quo. Now it was her turn to show how capable she was of responding in kind.

The carriage finally rolled to a stop. I stepped out and found myself in an unfamiliar section of the surface caves. One half looked strikingly similar to the cave that Jorra and I practiced in. The other half looked closer to something out of the twilight chambers: a miniature ocean of clear blue water that led out to a platform no larger than a hundred square feet.

Ephira was sitting at a table covered in a rich green tablecloth. The table itself was set right at the edge of a sheer cliff. If the person in either chair were to attempt to rise on the wrong side of the table, they would fall screaming into the abyss below. I nearly rolled my eyes.

I get it already.

There was a small gondola waiting at the rocky shore. One of the guards, whom I’d been referring to in my head as the quiet one, ferried me out to the table where Ephira waited, hands held in her lap, eyes staring unblinkingly at me as I approached.

Careful to keep my footing, I stepped off the Gondola onto the shelf and bowed. “Greetings, Councillor.”

Wordlessly, Ephira indicated the chair across from her with a graceful gesture.

I swallowed, and eased into the chair, trying unsuccessfully to avoid looking over the precipice and inevitably failing. Far below, I could hear things snarling and fighting in the dark. Distant shapes collided and tore at each other. The legs of the chair were uneven, and it shifted. My stomach flipped, and I grabbed onto the table in fear.

Ephira studied me silently. The raging warrior that had been boiling beneath her demeanor only yesterday was nowhere to be seen. She was cold, serene, and calculating. I let the silence drag out. This was her meeting, her prerogative.

Ephira finally spoke over steepled hands. “I have some questions.”

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