RE: Monarch

This was one of the transitional tunnels. The sanctum’s structure was beyond anything I’d ever seen. Massive chambers broken up by bottle-necks that were either equally verdant from that first, staggeringly diverse chamber we’d entered, or almost all rock and devoid of life. This was the latter. The rat-lizard men—I didn’t have time to ask for their official designation before we were under siege—were a new threat. They’d built up a rickety, shanty like residence in the tunnel, staggering in its verticality, and were about as congenial as your average tolls man. As tribute for passage, they had demanded all our equipment. And Bellarex.

That wasn’t happening.

The rat pushed in on me, his incisors flashing in the dim light, spear jutting out. Despite their strange, primal appearance, they were no strangers to combat. He had a sense of my range and took advantage of it, darting inwards, and back out before I could tag him, using his rickety shield to block the magic I cast.

I huffed out in frustration. There were two more approaching on my periphery. I needed to end this quickly.

When the rat darted in to prod at me once more, I called the spark and lit my sword on fire. He looked at it dumbly, then started to shriek, waving it around, trying to put it out. I stoked the fire and turned towards the others.

A massive form shot forward over my head. I ducked, instinctually, as Kastramoth came crashing down on one of the two remaining rat men, pinning him to the ground and ripping his arm off, throwing his head back and swallowing it whole.

He really had a thing for arms.

But Kastramoth was huge, and the bulk of his weight caused the entire platform to shift. I dove, banishing the flame and driving my sword into the spongey surface, hanging on for dear life.

“Get to the center, you moose-fucking asshole!”

He howled something back at me, probably profane, and began to climb, the rats left behind and forgotten as the primary threat became the flora itself buckling underneath us. I saw Jorra, tumbling in an uncontrolled roll down the floor that had become a wall and stuck my leg out. His whip lashed around my ankle as his full weight was halted, jarring me with a horrible judder that made me feel like something might be dislocated.

A moment later, I was corrected. Maya came tumbling down after him, and Jorra swung from the whip still fastened around my leg to catch his sister with one arm.

Pop.

That was what it felt like when a hip popped out of socket. My eyes rolled back in my head and I nearly let go.

“Ow,” I moaned.

“Cairn, you good?” Maya asked, looking up at me in concern.

“No!”

“Okay, hang in there.” Maya said.

I really, really hoped the pun wasn’t intentional.

“Just a few more seconds,” Jorra added. “Kastramoth and Bell are working on it.”

I looked up, through blinding, glaring pain. Kastramoth was slowly making his way to the top. But what was truly astonishing was Bell. She was sprinting across the cap at an impossible angle, knocking down rats that clung to the lower half, ripping the weapons from others in the higher sections and using them to pin the rats in place, slowly but surely evening out the weight distribution.

There was no way that was all void magic. At some point, we’d need to have a conversation, to see if I could get her to spill on the secrets of literally running up walls. The cap evened out. More rats jumped down from either side of the structure. Jorra was up first. His whip lashed out, seizing a rat around the neck, holding it in place as he threw a massive gout of water into it, sending it tumbling over the side.

I struggled to my feet but fell, my left leg refusing to budge.

Damn it.

Maya snarled, and intercepted an incoming rat. Her staff glowed green. A single strike to the side of its head was all it took. The rat fell, eyes blank.

“Little help?” I called out.

The surface was righting itself, but slowly. Maya slid on her knees to me, panic in her voice. “Where is it?” She asked. “Knee?”

“Hip.” I murmured the word.

She slid her staff beneath my lame leg, the top third of her staff nesting right beneath my knee.

“No, hip-” I was cut off as she yanked outward with the staff, my hip clicking painfully back into place. “Elphion that’s a bitch!”

“Breathe,” Maya said. Her hand glowed green and the pain receded, if only for a moment. A rat jumped down from an overhead suspension and ran towards us, spear held over its head. I channeled a gust of air and cut its legs out from underneath it. The rat went down a few feet from Maya.

The platform was still at a sharp angle, though not nearly as sharp as before. I didn’t trust my still unsteady footing with an underhanded blow. Instead, I raced towards the rat and kicked out. The toe of my boot connected with its head, and it flopped to the surface, moaning.

Shards of ice embedded themselves mere inches from me. I ducked, rolling out of the way of another volley.

They had a magician?

Thankfully, there wasn’t many. As far as I’d seen, there was only one, situated on the highest level of the shanty platform. I was mentally working out how to get up to him without exposing myself to more artillery when he stopped, looking down at the curved sword that jutted around his chest. Bell ripped the sword free, still sprinting. I had no idea when or even how she’d managed to get up there, but I wasn’t about to complain.

Vogrin floated beside me, watching the struggle analytically.

“Are you going to help or just watch?” I yelled at him. Another rat tackled me from the side. I wrestled it to the ground and dispatched it with the remains of my dagger. Black, foul smelling blood emitted upwards, covering my face.

“I believe you selected me for my analysis and tactical savvy.” Vogrin observed. “Not my combat prowess.”

I wondered, absentmindedly, if he could be set on fire. “I could use a little savvy right now!”

A rat bit into my side and gnawed. I punched it repeatedly with the hilt of my sword until it let go.

“You certainly could,” Vogrin said impassively.

“For fuck’s sake!”

Vogrin rolled his eyes. “It’s almost as if the intelligence of these creatures is little more than that of pack animals. It’s almost as if-“

“Vogrin! I will return you!”

“I am not a household item to be—Fine!” Vogrin snarled. “It’s almost as if you were to locate their leader and kill him, the rats would be likely retreat.” He pointed downwards with a single bony finger.

I wheeled around, surveying the battlefield below. For ever rat we felled, there were a dozen more, storming out of tunnels and from beneath piles of refuse to take its place. There were so damn many of them-“

Then I spotted him. He was huge. The average rat stood about three feet tall. This one was nearly six feet, more than a head taller than me, and exponentially heavier. He roared, his red eyes glowing in the dark, pointing a skull-decorated cudgel up at me.

It was a thirty-foot drop. And even if it wasn’t, he was surrounded by rats. How the hells was I supposed to-

The solution snapped into focus. When I’d watched the never-ending battles for the enclave, I’d effectively been forcing myself to solve for an impossible variable. To come up with a solution for an incredible difficult problem. No matter how creative I was, nothing had come. Nothing had occurred to me for a solution with which to defeat Ozra.

By comparison, this was nothing.

Opening up my bag, I retrieved a scroll. I hated the idea of using them, but what good were they if they just sat there. This particular scroll I’d grabbed on a whim because it reminded me of the heist at Mifral’s estate. I discharged a burst of mana into the scroll, completing the sigil. Then I leapt from the mushroom. The scroll didn’t create weightlessness, but it reduced the effect of gravity, allowing the user to fall in a more controlled state, until the effect was cancelled. I drifted above the rat lord, as if aloft on a gust of wind. He made frantic gestures that jiggled his whole body, and a dozen stones propelled by slings whizzed past me, some closer than others, most going wide.

Somehow managing the precise, minute control necessary, I called the air to me, sending a handful of powder from my pouch downwards. It was invisible in the chaos but surround the rat lord in a circle. Then ten feet above him, I cancelled the effect of the scroll. Air plummeted past my face as I plunged downward, sword held high. He roared up at me.

The roar was cut short as the blade sunk home, lodging firmly in his chest. He caught fire and fell backwards. I clung to him desperately as he topped, his still-flaming body landing touching the circle I had drawn, which ignited, flames surrounding us in a circular gale of unimaginable heat.

The hundreds of rats that had surrounded him sunk back. Hissing. Frightened. The rat-lord’s body grew stiff, bloating.

I pulled my sword out and attempted to run, but it was too late. He exploded, showering me with fetid smelling guts. But Vogrin was right. The rats were too traumatized with the sudden death of their leader to pay any head to the gagging, blood-soaked wretch that had killed him.

They scattered like insects.

Something particularly vitreous sloughed off my chin and splattered against the ground. My shoulders heaved.

Just, ignore it. I told myself.

There was a clatter to the side. Bell had slipped in the stream of… stuff I was trying not to pay attention to. Her entire left side was caked in black.

“You know,” She said, with just the slightest warble to her voice, “It’s weird that they didn’t have more contingencies set up.”

“Uh huh.” I said. Something slipped off my left shoulder. An eyeball stared up at me from a pool of—no, still not looking at it.

“I mean, they’re clever enough to build these structures.”

“Yep.”

“Odd that they didn’t have a better chain of command for... for... Cairn.”

I turned to her. Bell was staring at me point-blank.

“Yes, Bell?”

“This was really, really gross.”

----

We cleaned off the best that we were able. But there was no nearby source of water. So, we pressed deeper into the tunnel, caked in gore. It had been nearly a week since we left the sanctum. Despite my initial optimism, Vogrin had confirmed that we were being followed by a small group of infernals, led by one of the older boys.

Without better options, Vogrin had directed us towards a detour. And the detour had led us to this. First, came the spiders. Then the lizard-rat things. An endless, tireless supply of the lizard-rat things.

“Do they have a name?” I asked, irritably.

“Smelly,” Bell volunteered.

“Acrimonious,” Jorra added.

“I think they are called ko—lord below, Bell.” Maya stopped the younger girl, a look of horror on her face. “What is that in your hair?”

Bell froze. “I don’t know. I don’t want to know.”

Maya fussed over Bell, and I watched, squeamish, as Maya pulled a forearm’s length of entrail free of Bell’s dark hair.

“At least we won’t get separated,” Jorra said darkly, “I think at this point I can track you all by scent.”

My amulet was cold against my neck. We’d worked out something of a non-verbal system. If Vogrin had something pressing to alert me to, the amulet would burn, raising in temperature just shy of singing my skin. If it was less pressing, it would chill me. Tentatively, I looked inward, and found my mana supply mostly replenished.

I summoned Vogrin.

He appeared, looking out towards the group, then back to me.

“Yes?” I prompted.

He took my arm and led me aside. It was strange. Vogrin was generally happy announcing his opinions in front of everyone. I followed him to the side of the passage.

“They’re exhausted,” he whispered.

I blinked, looking back to the group. “We’re all tired.”

“No. You are tired. Whatever god cursed you be damned. They are about to break.” Vogrin scolded.

“I didn’t realize-“

“Whatever conditioning you went through to make yourself this way, you need to remember that you are not normal.” Vogrin said.

I was about to speak up to contradict him, when I realized he was right. How many days had I spent, slapping myself awake, forcing myself to press on despite every fiber of my being begging me to stop, to sleep. I remembered, vividly, one particular evening when the vurseng had lost its effect almost entirely, in Ralakos’s library. There was likely more time that night repeatedly bashing my forehead against his oak table than reading.

Vogrin pointed towards Maya. “She’s been keeping the little ones going. But life magic has limits, even for a magician of her talent. Eventually, they will crash. And this sort of place, it will likely be at the worst possible moment.”

I felt uncomfortable, ashamed even, that Vogrin had noticed, and I had not.

“Thank you,” I said quietly.

“I don’t expect you to listen to me, but at least...” Vogrin stopped, as if he couldn’t quite believe what he’d heard. “What?”

“Thank you, Vogrin.” I clapped him on the shoulder. “Never stop questioning me. Contradicting me. That’s important. Even if, at times, I disagree with what you have to say.”

Though his eyes were hidden I could feel his gaze. Moments later, he disappeared into the amulet. I still wasn’t entirely sure what to make of him. But it was hard to imagine how even the last few months would have played out without him.

I walked over to the rest.

“Did you get it all?” Bell said.

“I’m a life magician, not a miracle worker,” Maya muttered. She wiped the hand she’d been using to salvage Bell’s hair on her pants.

“Okay.” I clapped my hands together. Their eyes went to me, but the reactions were slow, sluggish. I really should have seen it before. “We’ve been pushing hard. Even if we are being followed still, they’re likely some ways behind us. It’s time for a break. Everyone good with that?”

Jorra visibly sagged. “Please. Any longer and I would have started off-loading gear just to reduce the weight.”

Bell and Maya quickly agreed.

----

It wasn’t ideal. Announcing the break with the condition we would wait for a decent enough spot had only made it all the more tantalizing. There was one more altercation with the rats that nearly came to a tragic end. Jorra slipped, smashing his head against the ground while the lesser rat men pelted him with stones. Bell had managed to find and slay the rat lord in time, but it was a close thing.

Maya paused, pulling something from her bag. I recognized it as the artifact she had shown me at our reunion at Ralakos’s estate. It glowed brightly, the tip of it pointing to a nearby wall.

“Cairn,” she called, urgently, “A passage is about to open—”

The ground shook beneath us. I’d experienced exactly one earthquake in Whitefall. There was a deep shuddering, and a bottle of brandy broke against the floor, accomplishing little more than frightening my guest for the evening.

This was several magnitudes beyond that. Entire sheets of rock and dust rained down from the ceiling. I called the flame, fanning it into an aegis that I held alongside Jorra’s, shielding the group from falling debris. The entire floor seemed to shift downward simultaneously as the wall rose up, revealing a passage that was so bright it was almost blinding—

Gods.

I stared, still holding the aegis above my head, not entirely trusting what I was seeing.

“Is that?” I asked.

“I think it is,” Maya answered.

Jorra dropped his aegis, grinned back at me, then ran towards the passage.

“Idiot!” Maya called after him, “Wait!”

But Bell was running too, right behind him, her short legs pumping, passing him in a matter of seconds. Jorra reached out to stop her but she ducked under his arm, laughing. Maya looked back at me, shrugged, then took off after them.

Trap. It’s a trap. It has to be a trap. Call them back. It’s a trap.

I was transported into the past, and that whining, nagging voice was obliterated

A lifetime ago, on a day when I was feeling particularly adventurous, I took Lillian down to the coast. It came up, through casual conversation, that neither of us had ever seen the ocean, and I decided that was a criminal offense that had to be rectified. We were royalty—or in her case, soon to be royalty. Why live through books, through artists’ depiction, when a little gold and a moderate amount of travel was all it took to rectify the situation? It was more for her than for me, or at least that was what I told myself.

And then, we stepped out from the carriage.

The water was so wide and clear it was almost impossible to parse, almost dizzying, sparkling, full of life. Lillian—as if she’d been there a thousand times before, and would be a thousand times again, kicked off her fancy noble’s shoes and stepped barefoot onto the sand. The coastal wind rippled through her dress, teased her hat from her head, lifting and catching the breeze like a bird in flight until it landed and rolled down the beach unpursued, the single blue ribbon bobbing back and forth as if in bittersweet farewell, and the waves crashed down at her feet and she danced away, rotating slowly to face me, joy, pure joy on her face as she spoke the words.

“Have you ever seen anything so beautiful?” Maya asked. She shifted back and forth on her feet, sinking, shifting, then sinking again.

The water was emerald, the sand light-gray and silty, and the sky was cast in the same overcast cumulus white that had covered the sanctum’s impermeable dome. And still, the answer was as clear as it had been a lifetime ago.

“No,” I said. “I haven’t.”

----

After making sure our immediate area was secure, I stripped down to the minimal amount of clothes to maintain decency and scrubbed away the grime from the cave. It was fresh water, rather than salt, and the seemingly endless void of water was mostly an optical illiusion. It was more lagoon than ocean, but I loved it all the same.

We saved our rations, feasting instead upon the conch-shelled crabs that wandered up to us curiously, blissfully unaware of their imminent demise. Jorra had been suckered into buying a tube of butter back at the heart—something I once would have mocked him for, but was now forever grateful.

Jorra, Maya, and I relaxed on the sandbank, using our packs as pillows. Bell delved into the water, floating as she crouched down to her neck and back up again.

“You’re better in a fight than I remember,” Jorra said to Maya, cracking open a crab-leg between two stones.

“Mmm. It’s been a busy year,” Maya said. “You are less annoying than I remember.”

“Guess it helps when I’m the one pulling your ass out of the fire,” Jorra said, receiving a snort in response. He looked over to Bell, who was still repeating the same, strange, bobbing motion. “The hells is she doing?”

“Not a clue.” Maya said.

I straightened up, studying her for a moment. Bell bobbed back into the water, arms making frantic movements below the surface before she bobbed back up again.

“She can’t swim,” I said.

They both looked at me.

“That can’t be right.” Maya squinted, watching the younger infernal.

“Mom taught us to swim before we could even walk,” Jorra seemed almost affronted. “Her parents…” He trailed off.

Were teaching her to fight. All she was taught, all she was expected to do, was fight. But I left the words unspoken. It felt like it would spoil the moment, somehow, to bring Erdos into it. I closed my eyes. He had died because of my actions, however indirectly. As much as I wanted to hide from it, to deny it, the fact remained: I had created my first orphan. And if Thoth was right, how many more would follow?

Someone squeezed my arm. Maya. “Stay with me,” she said, under her breath.

I forced myself to stay present in the moment, to enjoy the peace while it lasted. Jorra looked between us, questioning, the face of someone who was certain he had miss something but was unsure of what.

An idea struck. I pointed towards Bell. “Why don’t you teach her?”

His response was immediate. “To swim? Why me?”

“I mean, I didn’t learn until much later in life. Maya is-“ I came up short, turned to Maya.

“Recuperating mana.” Maya added seriously.

I pointed to her, smiling. “See? We’re both either unavailable or unqualified. You learned before you could crawl, right?”

“Before I could walk,” Jorra said dryly, “And that was hyperbole.”

“I don’t know what that word means,” I lied.

“Who knew my brother was so bookish,” Maya said.

“You’re both impossible.” Jorra threw up his hands and turned, stalking off towards Bell.

We watched the proceedings with glee as Jorra awakened his inner teacher. The light refracted from the water as Jorra pantomimed the motions of swimming for Bell, cupping his hands and demonstrating a simple stroke. Then, he supported her from as far away as he could manage, palm held flat against her stomach. Bell sputtered, came up for air, looking panicked and betrayed, peppered him with questions, and then repeated the process all over again. Eventually, he removed his hand, and Bell took off on her own. Jorra had to rescue her a few times she went too deep and panicked, but beneath the facade of grumpiness, he never seemed to lose patience.

Maya leaned over to whisper conspiratorially in my ear. “How long do you think before we add a void magician into the family line. Mother will pitch a fit.”

“Nethtari would do no such thing,” I rolled my eyes. “And I think you’re getting ahead of yourself.”

“Maybe. I have a knack for these things.”

“Says every romantic ever.” I smirked, ignoring the fact that I was including myself in that statement.”

The silence stretched out. It reminded me of those early days in the Everwood, when my flame was just a spark, and Maya was content to sit beside me, eyes lifting from her book every so often to watch me practice.

“What went wrong with you and mother?” Maya asked.

“Did she say something?” I asked, suddenly self-conscious.

“No. It was what she didn’t say.” Maya shook her head. “The way she talked around it. What do artists call it? The negative space.”

I sighed. “What did you want to do before everything?”

“That is a drastic change of topic.”

“It’s a polite and loving way of asking you to read the room,” I raised an eyebrow at her, and she raised one right back.

“Alright. I will drop it. For now.”

The silence stretched out again before Maya broke it. “Life magic always seemed so wonderful to me.” She trailed a shape in the sand idly, “The ability to heal any wound without a scar, to rectify painful disfigurements, to fix that which was broken.”

She trailed off. It was tempting to prompt her, but I let her take her time.

“There was a girl. Her name was Rospira, and I called her Ros. Her father worked at the earth temple. I saw them from time to time, whenever we made our monthly visitation. She stood out to me because her father always carried her to the temple in a harness, while I was made to walk. That always struck me as unfair.” Maya smiled, sadly. “I did not realize how unfair it was until one day the day I wandered into the earth temple and found Ros pulling herself across the floor.”

“There was no way you could know,” I said, a bit too quickly.

“Perhaps. But that image stuck in my mind.” Maya’s expression gained a far away quality. “We became friends. And I visited her every time mother let me out of her sight at the temple. Then, one day, I awakened. The power to heal, at my fingertips.” Maya held her hand palm upwards, light glowing in her palm. “I was such a stupid child. I rushed to the temple to show Ros, to show my friend. ‘I can heal you,’ I said. ‘You can walk once more.’” Maya cringed. “Ros let me try. As if to satisfy my curiosity. She wasn’t even angry when I failed. Somehow, that made it worse. That night, I wept to my mother and father. It didn’t seem fair, that I had this power, and yet I could not help my friend.”

“Noble to a fault.” I smiled.

“Perhaps. Mother told me that was the way of things. That disparity was the way of life, as difficult and painful as it is. But my father snuck into my room and told me the story of Kathor, the legendary healer. That maybe, one day, if I worked hard, though it was only the smallest of chances, I might be able to help my friend.”

“That’s... quite a burden to place on a child.”

“I do not think so. I think, in his own way, father was showing me that there was more than one way to view the world.” Maya looked at me, and the deeper meaning struck me like a hammer. “That there is a chance that things can be better if we work harder, and strive with all we have.”

The weight of it settled on me. “I don’t know if I can make things better, Maya. I don’t know if I’m the right person, if I’m even capable of it.” I remembered Erdos, teaching me how to ward off the trauma of panic. His face was replaced with the image of Ephira dying on the floor of the twilight chamber, the light slowly leaving her eyes.

Maya squeezed my arm. “What matters is that you try.”

A splash of water hit Maya in the face. Jorra cackled and retreated into the the water. Maya chased after him, and after a moment, I followed, temporarily leaving the weight that had pressed so heavily on my shoulders forgotten on the shore.

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