RE: Monarch

My father’s voice was uncharacteristically unsteady. “This does not have to come to bloodshed, Thane Granmire. Your folk are up against heavy infantry and calvary.”

The dwarf, clad in silver-black armor, swung his sword at my father’s head. It came nowhere close, missing by a good five feet. My horse huffed nervously beneath me and took a step backward. It had taken me by surprise the first time it happened, but this was the fourth. The dwarves seemed to have a tendency to speak with their weapons, using swings of blades to punctuate points or refute statements.

“Up yers, Gil. We’ve had enough of yer levies.” Another skyward swing of the blade. It was almost like the dwarf was painting, his sword the brush. “The excavation sites have been sparse enough this year without yer nonsense. Demandin’ a flat amount instead of a percentage? What a load of tripe.”

“We’ve been down this road before, Granmire.” My father’s brow furrowed. “The moment the tax is a percentage, your yields always seem to shrink, as if the gems themselves are sprouting legs and running away from you.”

“And now yer calling me a liar?” The dwarf glared. “What more should I expect from the Oath-Bane?”

I cringed. Actually, physically shrunk down, the weight of my armor clinking around me, awaiting the inevitable explosion of violence. No one called my father that to his face. No one wise called him that at all, for fear that, no matter how far he was, the wind itself might carry the words to him.

But my father did not reach for his sword. He didn’t even blink.

“Very well. If it is such a difficult thing for you to pay what you owe, perhaps we shall collect your obligation another way. Increased taxes on the merchants that frequent your cities… and perhaps sanctions on the water brought up from the coast.” King Gil smiled, and a hint of the wicked tyrant showed through.

The dwarf sheathed his sword. There was an uncomfortable shuffling from his escort that seemed to indicate that negotiations were coming to a close.

“We have a fortified position,” Granmire said. His voice was firm. “There’s only one way out of this canyon, Oath-Bane. You’re locked in. Either see reason, or suffer the consequences.”

I should have felt panic, but I didn’t. I’d seen this sort of thing play out far too many times. No. There was only one way this ended.

But how?

“Please reconsider.”

My helmet jostled against my breastplate as I wheeled around to look at him, flabbergasted.

When was the last time father had said “Please,” to anyone?

“I don’t think so.” Granmire shook his head. “Surrender.”

“That’s not going to happen,” Gil insisted.

“Then hells take you, and may the battlefield sing your requiem.” Granmire turned and rode towards his war-camp, his mount— some garish combination of pony and a full-grown horse—moving remarkably slow for full-speed.

The beginning of alarm began to crawl up the back of my neck. “Father?” I asked. He’d never brought me to fight in an actual battle before, only demanded I watch.

“Silence.” He said. His once calm voice had been entirely supplanted with a seething, simmering rage.

I watched from a distance as our troops began to charge forward. There were less of us than there were of them. We had more men when we left Whitefall. Where were the rest?

Then I watched, conflicted, as a huge cross-section of canyon wall on both sides came loose, the mass of earth and stone crumbling into organic projectiles that rained down on the enemy’s camp from both sides. In their wake they left a ramp, and my father’s men charged down from both sides, perfectly in sync with the group charging from the front.

It was a devastating rout. Even as unexperienced as I was in war, it was painful to watch, but impossible to look away. The dwarves were scattered, sundered, and slain by the thousands.

I was reminded, once again, of Inharion. Of the senseless violence. And for once, my anger exceeded my fear.

“Why?” I asked him through gritted teeth.”

“Why, what?” Gil rumbled. He picked something out of his teeth and spit on the ground.

“If you’d told them you had them surrounded, they would have surrendered. Given you what you wanted. But no. More pointless bloodshed.” The vehemence in my voice surprised even me. I’d pay for it later.

My father looked me over, unimpressed. “Your mother must have fucked the stablehand. You can’t possibly be mine.”

I pulled down my visor and stewed.

“Gods. It never stops.”

In the distance, I saw Granmire break through the line of men. He charged towards us, sword held high.

“Take the horse.” My father commanded. An archer from his personal retinue fired an arrow. It skewered the small horse through chest and it crumpled to the ground. Granmire was thrown and tumbled legs over head, like a discarded toy.

The archer pulled back another arrow, but my father held up a fist to stop him.

“Have you learned nothing?” He asked me.

Granmire was struggling to his feet, almost a hundred feet away. He held his sword aloft again and charged.

“There is value in negotiating with your enemy in from place of weakness.” My father’s voice was cold. The dwarf had closed enough distance that I could hear his hoarse battle cry behind my father’s words. “There is much insight to be gleaned. As long as that weakness is false. It gives them hope. And in that hope, they’ll show you how willing they are to bite the hand of mercy.”

The dwarf was within fifty feet of us now. My father dismounted, and strode away from me and turned, his back to the dwarf.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

He continued on as if he hadn’t heard me. “There is nothing pointless about this. Any of it. If I told them, this would only happen again. Only next time, they’d look for the mages.

The dwarf crouched down and leapt towards my father, swinging his sword, this time intending to kill. My father raised two fingers. The archer loosed a heavy arrow that punched through the dwarf’s chest plate. He fell face-first onto the ground, lifeless.

My father’s eyes bored into me. “A king has only one use for mercy, boy. To flush out the snakes at his heel.”

----

My adulation at the victory slowly flickered out as it became apparent how temporary it truly was. Ephira would not talk. No matter how she was questioned, and by whom, her silence remained the same. Not even an explanation of why she did what she did, why she chose to oppose the council and betray her people. There was no confession. No flicker of recognition in her eyes when I mentioned Thoth.

I knew her. I understood her. This was no piecemeal defiance or trite act of rebellion. Ephira was holding to the same operational rules she’d held to before. No additional information—because if she told me anything useful, the information could be disseminated to me through a vision.

It was as infuriating and frustrating as it was brilliant, and more effective than she could possibly know. When the interrogations expert under Guemon’s employ attempted to use illusory magic to compel her as a last ditch effort, she slumped, trails of smoke emitting from her ears, nose, and eyes.

I sent Nethtari and her family away, knowing all the while the futility of what was to come.

We prepared for the fight as best we could. Ralakos could use his influence to pull additional infernals from neighboring cloisters, even summon a few masters willing to leave the Sanctum.

In the end, it made no difference. Whatever deal Ephira made with them was still valid, the deal itself thereby either took place either close to the beginning of the month, or worse, earlier than that. The demons attacked at the end of the month, just as they had before.

The only variance front-loading the infernal’s strength caused was for Ozra to appear earlier. Now that I was able to watch him fight, it was clear his element—or at least the one he used most often—was related to metal. He tore through entire regiments of men in seconds, their breastplates caving in on themselves, stabbed and torn asunder by their own armor.

The demons still slaughtered the innocents who stayed. Only instead of murdering them in their homes, they broke into the shelters and shredded them like meat through a grinder.

Meat. We were all meat.

And what did I do?

I watched, from a rooftop. Like a coward. It had been Ralakos’s idea, after seeing how stringently Ephira had stuck to her philosophy. I watched as the people I promised myself would protect died in an ocean of pointless violence, far above the crimson waves.

I watched.

I watched as Ralakos fought Ozra. The fight lasted minutes and leveled a church, before Ozra held Ralakos’s dismembered head up from the rubble and smiled. It was a strangely civilized smile. The sort of better-luck-next-time expression one might give a companion after a friendly competition.

Finally, a demon caught sight of me. It looked like the same one that had bisected me the first time. It scampered up the building.

I pushed mana through the inscription on my chest, and everything went mercifully black.

I told myself that the difference in time was significant.

Thirty days, versus ten. With the knowledge from the prior resets, I managed to prevent Guemon from being poisoned and arrange Ephira’s capture early on.

I was more adamant, this time, about the civilians being evacuated. All of them. Most were. But Ralakos refused to abandon the Enclave, as did Guemon. It was their city, and they would die with it. I told them that yes, they would die. Ralakos just smiled at me and reminded me that if they were no longer here, no one would be left to protect the entrance to the Sanctum, and that would likely be the asmodial’s next target after the enclave was sacked.

I pushed harder and harder to get stronger. My wind magic had come along significantly: I could now make projectiles half as strong as the demon-fire, and lift animals as large as a cat.

I worked the magic as hard as I could, studying demonic and the demons themselves. I stopped sleeping. By the end of the month, my mild hallucinations had turned into full-blown fantasies. I’d seen the asmodials attack three times before they actually did.

The fight with Ozra laster longer than the first time, extending from two minutes to five. Guemon was a talented earth mage and was able to run interference for Ralakos, tearing up paved roads with massive chunks of earth lifted from below.

But Guemon was slow, and the massive bear demon he summoned as Ozra flew towards him immediately cowered, leaving the violet infernal splattered across the ground from the impact alone. Not long after that, Ralakos fell in a dazzling light show.

And I watched.

Again

And I watched.

Again

And I watched.

Again

The last time felt different. It was harder to come back. Like the great black beast had clung to me. I shouted at it, begged it for advice, for relief, for some small clue on how in the name of the gods and hells alike I was supposed to do something against that, that massive, black angel of a demon that felled men with a snap of his fingers.

Again.

I almost didn’t make it back. It had been months since I slept. I no longer knew what day it was, other than the fact that it was the first day and that time had no meaning, I had no meaning, everything was a cycle of light and dark and again and blood spattering the pavement and again and it was too much the gods were dead and the devils roamed free and gods all I wanted was to drink and whore and go back to a time when none of this mattered and guilt was a thing that happened to other people but time didn’t matter because change was an illusion and one person could never hope to change a single fucking thing because that was the world I lived in and gods were dead please make it stop—

Again.

I slept. My mind just shut down.

When I woke, I was in the surface caves.

It came to me, as clearly and strongly as the morning bell. I held my hands to my head and laughed. I laughed until the laughter turned into screams and back to laughter again.

The answer was right in front of me the whole time.

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