RE: Monarch

Again.

I heard the words, but the darkness did not flee. It gathered around me like a blanket, muffling my perception with a dull groaning buzz. I held on to the void and immersed myself in it. Strangely, it was no longer as terrifying as it once was. It felt familiar.

It felt safe.

The great black beast rose from the ebony pools, dark matter drifting off its colossal form. The feel of it had changed. Once, it had the aura of a reptile, like the dragons of decades passed. Now, if I had a bit more definition, it could have easily passed as a beastly horse, its appearance alien and equine in equal measure.

“Why are you here?” It repeated the same question as so long ago, the question seizing all conscious thought.

I opened my mouth to speak, surprised to find that—unlike the last time—I could.

“Because the gods are cruel.” The words were bitter. “I am here because the gods decided it would be amusing to make a coward a hero.”

“Mmmmm.” The great black vibrated. It could have meant anything, but it felt like anger, somehow. “Wrong. You are here because you have not yet learned the lesson.”

“What lesson?”

A surge of anger cut through the terror. “So, what’s left then? Letting the clock expire? Letting Thoth win? I don’t understand.” As soon as her name was mentioned, the black beast seemed to shudder in revulsion.

“The linchpin must be sundered.” The black beast rumbled. “As long as it exists, this world will be forever held in stasis, its gods unable to return to the cosmos.”

“Wait. Thoth is the linchpin?” Even within the fog of my mind, I knew this was important. It was so difficult to think clearly, here. “So what happens if she dies?”

“The linchpin must be sundered,” the black beast repeated in the same tone of voice.

It looked like I wasn’t going to get much more in terms of usable information. Still, the timing of this felt strange. “Why are you telling me all this now? There were plenty of opportunities before.”

The beast did not answer. Instead, a series of images flashed in front of my mind. I saw myself from the outside. I was laying in an infirmary bed on my back, arms resting over the blankets. At first, I thought I was sleeping. But my eyes were open and blank. I stared up at the ceiling. A trickle of drool ebbed from my mouth.

Nethtari was holding my hand while Kilvius dabbed perspiration from my forehead with a cloth, balancing Agarin in his other arm.

“Any news?” Nethtari had deep-seated bags under her eyes, and her complexion had suffered.

Kilvius shook his head, his face grim. “The same word as before. Nothing physically wrong with him. His mind is another story.”

“Maybe we should call for Maya.”

Kilvius snorted. “The life mages are more than capable. I doubt she could do anything they can’t.”

“It’s not about that, Ni’lend. I mean, maybe she could make a difference, but that’s a shot in the dark.” Nethtari rubbed her forehead with both hands. “They’re close. Maybe hearing her voice would make a difference.”

While Kilvius considered it, he set Agarin down next to me on the infirmary bed. Agarin toddled, pushing himself on his knees, so he could pat my stomach. “I think you’re right. But… let’s give it a little more time, Neth. Ralakos’s elven healer could make the difference, once she gets here.”

“Another week. Then we hire someone to find Maya and bring her back,” Nethtari said. Kilvius scooped Agarin back up and left. After a moment’s consideration, Nethtari leaned in to speak to me, her brow furrowed, her monotone voice earnest.

“Hi Cairn. Sentimentality isn’t really my thing, but here it goes. Jorra’s been asking about you every day. He really got used to having you around.” Nethtari wiped at her eye. “You know, you’ve always surprised me. From that very first day. We don’t really entertain visitors, I mean, you remember how much of a wreck the house was. The thought of bringing visiting royalty into my home—regardless of the circumstances—was horrifying. I was so embarrassed. But you didn’t turn your nose up, not in the slightest.”

Nethtari’s mouth turned upwards, slightly.

“At first, I thought, oh, he’s just polite. Then we clashed at the trial. When Ralakos asked you to stay with him, I thought for sure you’d take it. After all, you’d seen our home, how we lived. Why stay in a hovel when you can stay in a mansion? And yet, you surprised me again.” She squeezed my hand. “You’re like family to us. Maybe that’s silly, maybe it’s not. All I ask is that you surprise us, one last time.”

The silence hung, as I watched outside myself.

Nethtari seemed to stir suddenly, gaze shifting towards the window at something beyond my view. “What’s happening out there?”

The auric sun turned red.

“I don’t want to see this,” I said, looking around for the black beast.

“You seem to think, if you hide in the sickness of your mind, that nothing will happen. That you can simply cease to exist.”

“Please stop.”

The demons tore through Nethtari like she was made of paper.

“The linchpin must be sundered.”

Kilvius fell to the ground in a spray of blood, holding Agarin to his chest protectively.

”You cannot hide.”

Jorra opened the door, revealing a boy who looked like me. “Cairn! You’re back!”

I buried my sword in his stomach. He didn’t cry out. Just looked at it like it couldn’t possibly be true, like his mind was playing tricks on him.

“STOP!”

“This has already happened. You have been asleep for too long.”

I watched it, again, and again, and again.

Three times, I lay comatose.

Three times, they died screaming, covered in blood as I floated, incorporeal.

Three times, I failed them.

Again.

----

I wept.

The tears blurred out my vision, white and hot. A large figure leaned away from me, pulling his hands back. Theros backed away from the infirmary bed as if threatened by a poisonous snake.

“I didn’t do anything—“ Theros started.

Kilvius pushed him aside, though in actuality the larger man barely moved.

“Cairn, you’re up!” The relief in Kilvius’s voice was palpable.

I was back. The thought flooded me with terror and relief in equal measure.

“Where’s Nethtari? Where’s Agarin and Jorra?” I panned the room a half dozen times in quick succession, the panic raising bile in my mouth.

Kilvius’s enthusiasm turned bemused. “Nethtari took Agarin home for a bit, Cairn. Everyone’s okay—“

“What day is it?” I interrupted him, my teeth gnashing together as I gripped the blankets tightly.

Kilvius seemed to understand how important the information was to me. He thanked Theros for his help, and the large man slipped out through the doorway and waved to me awkwardly in a gesture I did not return.

Then he pulled up a chair and sat next to me. “It’s the thirteenth, Cairn.”

Eleven days. I’d already lost eleven days.

The wind rose around me, stirring several pieces of paper and knocking a metal stand over.

Kilvius did not falter. He put his hand on my wrist gently. “It’s okay. You’re safe.” The contact felt comforting. I felt the tears begin to start again.

“You just collapsed, a few minutes after Maya left. Nethtari and I thought—“ Kilvius paused. “Well, we thought it might have been something else. Can you tell me what happened?”

I had a vision.

The words stuck in my throat. How would I explain it to him? What? That I’d had a vision and it’d rendered me comatose?

No. That was pointless.

“I don’t know,” I said numbly, too tired to make up a better lie.

“It’s important, Cairn.”

“I don’t know, dammit!” I shouted at him. I wanted to rant and rave, but the way Kilvius leaned back from me made me sick to my stomach. “It’s all a blur” I said, my voice emotionless.

“That’s okay,” Kilvius said. He reached over to hug me. His touch made me feel nauseous. I didn’t want understanding. I didn’t want compassion. They were useless emotions, and neither of them would help me fix this.

The light from outside seemed inordinately bright. Everything in the infirmary was poorly aligned irritated me further, and the fog clouded my thoughts.”

“Can you get a life mage to fix my head?” I asked.

Kilvius blinked. “They already did, Cairn. That’s why Theros was here. To see if an alternate element would have a better chance of awakening you.”

Not good. Terrible, in fact. The way I felt now was worse than how I’d felt immediately following Kastramoth’s ending of my escape attempt in the Everwood.

Something played at the edge of my vision and I jumped. I’d thought for sure I’d seen the arch-fiend there leering—

Watching silently as the woman signed her name demonic name within my flesh, the stroke of the scalpel her calligraphy pen, the blood leaking from me her ink. Over and over she asked me the same thing.

”What happened to your soul, little human?”

I told her frantically about the soul damage from my overuse of the demon-flame, but that did not satisfy her. She cut and cut and cut until my explanations spanned hundreds of lies, anything to make her stop, but she would not believe me no matter what I said simply holding her pen to her lips and whetting the tip before the writing started once more—

“Cairn? Cairn.” Kilvius shook me gently, his eyes full of concern. I did not deserve his kindness.

I did not want his kindness.

“Let me be,” I said, my entire body shaking.

Kilvius looked torn.

“I need to think. Alone.” I said. My voice deepened to a timbre that was not my own, but one I’d heard many times, all throughout my childhood.

Slowly, Kilvius stood. “I’ll be back later.”

I didn’t respond.

----

I walked barefoot throughout the enclave. Practically everyone I passed paused to gape, hinting at what a bizarre picture I made. My bare feet grew sore against the pavement, but still, I trudged on, following a familiar path to the surface caverns.

The shadows and whispers assaulted me at every turn. I could hear them laughing, taunting me. Chiding my weakness. Reminding me of the way I had begged, over and over, for it to end.

Maya. I wanted Maya back.

Mind entrenched in the depths of the memory, I found myself in the surface cavern that Jorra and I practiced in. The straw targets loomed distantly.

I let the mana wash over me in a torrent. It did not bring me peace. Nothing brought me peace. I breathed out air and began to weave the spell. Then, I released it.

Over and over, the invisible line of compressed air struck against the target, bits of yellowed straw splitting and flying free.

It wasn’t enough, not even close. But it was an improvement.

I cast projectile after projectile until my vision began to gray at the edges and my mind buzzed.

Exhausted, I immersed myself in the crystal lake. I heard my father’s voice. He was laughing at me. In my mind’s eye, I saw him lean over the shallow pool, his arms crossed.

“Weak.”

For the first time in my life, I agreed with him wholeheartedly. I had been weak. I’d been afraid of failing. Afraid of dying. The demons had shown me exactly how useless that fear was.

There was something I needed to do. Something critical. This reset was almost certainly lost, but that didn’t change the fact that I could not let what happened to me happen again.

Never again.

I trudged back to the empty house and gathered all my gold. Then, having donned my clothes, I left the mask behind and made my way to the Thulian district.

There were many spells I wanted to have inscribed.

But one stood out beyond the rest.

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