RE: Monarch

Bell, having clearly run out of ideas, clamped a hand over his mouth, pulled back a fist and punched him hard in the solar plexus. Jorra shot upright. He saw me ready and looking up at the growing light coming through the window as the sand was shoveled out of the way.

A small figure dropped from the window and landed lightly on his feet. Blue-skin peaked out from beneath the shroud that covered his face. His lazy white eyes surveyed us with minimal interest, and came to rest to the empty bottles on the floor. Slowly, somberly, he removed his shroud. His face was a mess of white unkempt facial hair and his eyes were vaguely crazed, the combination reminiscent of the many drunks that wandered Topside. What didn’t fit the image was his horns, coiling backwards, not unlike a ram’s. I wondered how old he was.

Bell suddenly bowed and popped back up. “Elder Saladius? It’s wonderful to see you!”

“Who are ya?” Saladius said, scowling.

“Bellarex,” She said, “When you were still acting as head priest of the void temple, you came to visit me and give me your blessing when I was a baby.”

She recognized him from that?

The elder squinted. “Erdos’s girl. Good memory. Yes. Yes, I remember.” He smiled for just a second, before his lips turned downward in a scowl. “Fat lot of good it did.”

Bellarex’s face fell. But Elder Saladius was not done ranting. “Drinking my wine, defiling my vacation home.” He scowled and pointed first to the broken window, then to the glass fragments on the floor. “Who did that particular piece of work?”

“Oh, that was me… elder.” Maya offered an awkward curtsy, but did not lower her eyes from the man.

“Don’t you ‘me elder’ me, girl. Do you see those wee metal things up there?” Saladius said. “Next to the window?”

“Yes?” Maya seemed completely off-balance.

“Then, let me pose the question. Are ye daft?” Maya attempted to sputter something, but Saladius spoke over her. “Those little bits of engineering there are what we civilized folk call hinges.” He dragged out the last word, making the two syllables sound more like six. It struck me that his accent was not dissimilar to a dwarf’s. Where the hell had an infernal elder picked up a dwarven accent?

Jorra bristled. I stepped in front of him, trying to head off his temper. “We apologize for the intrusion, Elder Saladius. We were looking for shelter from the storm-“

“Oh,” He cut in. “You mean the big slow movin’ one that took hours to get anywhere? That storm.”

I ground my teeth. “Yes. That storm.”

“I see.” Saladius seemed to take me in for the first time, looking me over from head to toe. There was a shift in his stance and the atmosphere of the room changed. If I had not seen Thoth in action, had not watched Ozra through countless battles, I might have missed it entirely.

Saladius’s wrist twitched in a near-instantaneous blur. I flooded mana through the inscriptions in my legs and jumped out of the way of the flash of silver, a small, disk-like projectile moving faster than I could track. It was close, but I’d managed to get out of the way.

Or so I thought, before Saladius flicked his wrist again and the projectile curved almost ninety degrees, slamming against my neck. What followed was pure muscle memory. When Jorra and I sparred with weapons, he almost always went for the same spot. If his whip secured itself the hold was practically an instant win. So I’d learned how to properly respond.

I stuck my hand up flat against my throat. The wire bit into my fingers, drawing blood, but the important part was that I could still breathe. Jorra’s whip lashed out.

“No,” Saladius said, with the same casual disregard one would use decline tea. He flicked a finger and Jorra hit the back wall, emitting a painful “umph,” as he hit. Bell staggered behind him and took a swing at his head—though I noticed she turned the blade to strike with the flat, rather than the edge.

“Nope,” Saladius said again, ducking under her blade and grabbing her foot out of the air, almost casually flipping her backwards where she landed on the ground painfully.

Maya struck at him with her staff. He held out his palm to catch it and I saw Maya grin in victory, the staff glowing green the moment before impact. “Not going to happen,” Saladius said, the staff stopping an inch from his palm. Maya split the staff and struck at his legs with the halved length. There was a wave of distortion and the magic of the stave was dispelled. They remained locked for a moment, then he shoved the staff aside and Maya stumbled after it.

”Air magician,” The thought occurred to me, even as I struggled to work the weapon free. Darkness clouded my vision, my mind. Air and void. Martial expert. It brought me back to the chair the asmodials had held me in, the leather strap around my neck. It had plagued my nightmares. Sometimes it was the strap, or poison. Sometimes, Ozra himself was strangling me.

To overcome the nightmare, I’d done research. Medical and otherwise. Antidotes for the various strangling poisons. Hidden blades sewn into my sleeves.

I hadn’t thought it would come to this. Not really. I had expected the elders of the sanctum would be disinterested in teaching me at most, above the politics of the outside world. But it was hardly the first time I was wrong.

The difference was, this time, I was prepared for that eventuality. The others had bought me time. Saladius walked towards me, taking his time. I drew my dagger, held the broken needle-like point against the necessary spot on my throat and pushed, twisting to ensure the hole was large enough. Then I reached out and called the air into my lungs, wonderful and sweet.

I grinned at Saladius. The smile felt unhinged and savage on my face. I can imagine how I looked; blood trickling from the hole, still standing despite the wire cinched tightly around my neck. He stopped mid-stride, studying what I’d done as if he wasn’t quite sure what he was seeing.

Then, I spent the rest of the mana nested within the inscriptions in my legs, propelling myself forward. My sword flamed to life, swinging towards him in a wide, telegraphed arc. His eyes widened and he dodged the first blow by a hair’s breadth. It felt wonderful to let loose, not worrying about conservation of effort against weaker enemies, not concerning myself with hurting a teammate in a spar, not worrying about anything other than discharging the strength I had built so slowly.

But Saladius was keyed in now. The momentary surprise hardened into a cold expression. I lapsed into a kata that Cephur had taught me, something fast that emphasized swift, light, defensive strokes as I bought time to come up with my next move.

Jorra’s whip lashed out. Saladius snatched it out of the air, trapping it beneath his arm.

“Stop,” He said. The word carried a power of command with it that had been absent in his grousing speech before. Maya and Bell froze in the process of rushing forward. “Count yourself lucky, king-spawn, that these here children are willing to throw their lives away for ye. This goes any longer and they might get hurt.” The metal bola around my neck loosened, then fell to the floor with a clatter. And with that, he turned, grabbed Maya’s unfinished Naisen Wine bottle from the floor, and began to clamber one handed up the rope. I watched him go, at a loss for words, still not entirely sure what had just happened. Even with the obstruction gone, my breath ragged, and I held a hand to the hole in my throat to plug the leaking of any air.

Maya crossed the room to me, nearly tripping on a discarded bottle. “That was reckless, Cairn.” I shifted to look at her and she averted her eyes. Her hands glowed green, and I felt the wound begin to close. “Just you have means of healing, does not admit you going out of the way to get yourself hurt.”

My blood was still boiling from the fight, and the sudden, abrupt cancellation of it. The last thing I wanted to do was displace the anger somewhere it didn’t belong. So, I kept my tone carefully neutral when I asked, “What should I have done, Maya?”

She shrugged. “Let the three people who were not asphyxiating handle it, perhaps?”

I frowned. She wasn’t wrong, exactly, but the elder had practically manhandled the others, playing with them for a moment before batting them away. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Jorra and Saladius making increasingly crude gestures at each other. The elder tired of this quickly and called down to us.

“All three of you need to come with me.” He pointed at my teammates, then to me. “I don’t care what that one does.”

Nobody moved, and Elder Saladius threw his hands up in frustration. “I’m going to make an educated guess from that announcement that the group that just started making their way here through the same entrance you all did isn’t looking to make friends. Now, either you come with me, rest, refill on supplies, or you take your chances with them. Your call.”

Three faces turned to look my way. I forced myself to look past my initial bias and the pain in my throat and consider it. The elder clearly disliked me, and though what had just occurred was in too-poor of taste to be considered a “test,” he had apparently decided to treat it as such.

I nodded an assent. We were here to learn, after all.

----

Elder Saladius led us on a long trek across the desert, turning around to bark orders if our pace lagged even a fraction. Jorra sidled up beside me.

“What I said…” He started.

“Don’t worry about it.” I shrugged.

“Okay.” Jorra looked for a moment like he might leave it at that, before continuing. “No, I think we should clear the air.”

I sighed. “Okay. Honestly, it will probably drive me crazy if I don’t know. What did Nethtari tell you?”

He connected the dots slowly. “If you’re talking about what happened with the asmodials, she didn’t.”

That threw me. “Really? Nothing at all?”

Jorra shook his head. “No. Not intentionally, at least. I…” He hesitated, “I went down to get something to drink one night and heard them both talking. My parents. Didn’t hear the beginning, or the end of it, but mom seemed upset. Like, I could hear it in her voice. The flat tone wasn’t there at all, she was actually inflecting. Really upset. She kept talking about how she’d failed you and Maya both.”

“Why Maya?” I said, confused, looking up ahead where Maya and Bell walked side-by-side.

“I don’t know. That bothered me too, so I kept listening. Dad kept telling her that she did the right thing, she did everything she could, said something about it not being her place. That just made her cry,” Jorra struggled to describe it.

I understood the difficulty. There was a well of emotion in my chest as well. For as long as I’d known her, Nethtari was rock-solid. I hated what I’d put her through and the resulting wedge that was driven between us.

I pushed the emotion away. “I’m not really seeing how that connects to the friction between us.

Jorra shifted uncomfortably. “I’m getting to that. Mom never talked bad about you or said anything. But when she was giving me advice for the sanctum, you know, just mom stuff, she’d throw in these little tidbits.”

It was easy enough to fill in those blanks now. I closed my eyes.

“It’s not as bad as whatever you’re thinking,” Jorra continued. “Just little stuff. Like make sure you’re there for Cairn. Help share the burden if anything stressful happens. Try to be mindful of situations where he feels trapped, prioritize deescalation.”

I stopped him, then. Looked him in the eye. It was hard to keep things from him. We’d trained together almost every day, and I’d spent more time with him than anyone else in the enclave. “I’m sorry I never gave you a straight answer about what happened in the Twilight Chambers.”

“Don’t be sorry,” Jorra said, shot me a wry smile. “Just tell me what happened.”

I shook my head. “I can’t. But suffice it to say it was dark, it was bloody, and it changed things. But that only happened, Jorra, because they forced my hand. I was out of options. An entire rogue demonic legion was threatening to run rampant.”

“And you did something you regret?” He probed.

“No.” I was surprised to find that even after plenty of time to think about the ramifications of my choice, it was still true. “I don’t regret it. But I don’t want to go back there again, any more than Nethtari does. And I don’t want you to feel like you have to monitor me.”

“I don’t.” Jorra said, then amended. “Okay, I kind of did.”

A musical yelled back to us. “Boys, you’re getting left behind.” Bell waved at us. Saladius stood ahead, his arms crossed.

After using Vogrin to complete the—according to him, excruciatingly painful—task of removing our a good portion of our tracks and sending another set somewhere else, We arrived at Elder Saladius’s home. Although calling it a “home,” was a bit generous. It was more like an oversized hut, formed with bricks of sandstone, and held together with mortar. There were two almost comically barren planters that decorated both sides of the door, any plant that had once called planters home either long gone or recently decimated by the storm.

Saladius must have seen our expressions because he offered an explanation unprompted. “I got tired of rebuilding. Simple is better.”

Now, it was just a matter of convincing him to help me.

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