RE: Monarch

This was different. There was no ebb and flow. There was violence, immediately followed by death. Over and over.

This time, I’d tried lighting the abomination on fire with pure elemental magic, as I had with Barion. It worked to keep the abomination from biting Jorra, but before I could quench the fire it latched itself to him and flattened its body against his chest, burning him badly. I’d pivoted away to help Bell with the water magicians, and when I’d turned around, Maya was bleeding out from a dagger in her back, and Jorra had died. I wasn’t quite sure how. The burns didn’t look extensive enough to kill him. Some part of me wondered if the way Maya had collapsed on top of him had restricted his breathing.

“Cairn.” I started as someone took my hand and looked down to find Bell, her face pale and drawn, eyes glued to the bodies. Her hilt was empty.

“Where’s your sword, Bell?” I asked, answering my question when I saw it, discarded a few feet away.

“I want to go home,” Bell said. She sounded young, far younger than her age. I hugged her to me. “Please don’t make me keep going. I want to go home.”

“Okay. We’ll go,” I said, my voice raw. “Just need to do something, first.”

//////

I learned more and more about them. Things I had wondered but never truly wanted to know. What their triggers were. What made them break.

I’d tried being more brutal this time, going out of my way to break or permanently maim every mercenary I could get my hands on.

Jorra’s fist lashed out. I could have stepped out of the way but found I didn’t care to. That would only drag things out. His blow landed, sending me spinning to the ground. We were the only ones left, and with no other outlet, he clearly blamed me. I began to channel mana into the inscription on my chest when the heel of his boot connected with the side of my head, flooring me and dissolving my focus. I saw stars.

Slowly, I sat up, fixing him with a stare. “Are you done?”

Tears ran down his cheeks as he stood over me with his fists clenched at his sides. “How can you be so cold?” He wiped his face with his arm. “Bell was my friend. Our friend. And my sister… I thought you loved her. She loved you.”

The words hit like a slap in the face. I almost felt them. And I wanted to comfort him. But the truth was, this was the only time I had to think and plan. The ice in my chest grew, became more fortified. I told myself it was because it didn’t matter because he wouldn’t remember any of this. But I think the truth was it was starting to lose impact. Watching them die over and over again with no downtime in between. Maybe that was what the beast wanted. Or maybe I was supposed to find the optimal result and just stick with it, letting it go.

I couldn’t give him the answer he wanted. So, I stayed silent as he cried, vowing to myself that the next time would be the last time.

//////

I was getting faster. I’d nearly perfected using air magic to communicate simple sentences. That meant I could tip Bell off about the water magician’s blind spot, ending that part of the conflict far more quickly. Bell almost always made it through now, thanks to that small change. And this was the first time Maya lived. It should have been a considerable victory. The problem was, Kastramoth didn’t always crush the electric abomination, leaving it free to pelt us from afar. I’d been preoccupied with it, and because of that we’d lost Jorra. He’d stumbled near the captain, and the captain sliced through his left leg, severing an artery, which he’d bled out from before Maya could get to him. It was the first time the captain had interfered, and I found myself frustrated. What was the point of being able to repeat a scenario if small elements could set off such massive changes?

Maya held Jorra in her arms, in a scene that felt all too familiar. She held him to her chest and sobbed. She wasn’t angry. There was no lashing out or assignment of blame didn’t blame me. She didn’t shut down. She just grieved, weeping in big gasping breaths.

“Your sight did not warn you?” She asked between grit teeth.

“No. Nothing,”

“Then we must be more careful—“ She cut off, choking, “in the future.”

“I’m sorry, Maya.”

Maya whispered in Jorra’s ear. “Why did you not keep your mind in the fight, Ni’lend? What am I supposed to tell mother and father? What is the point of being a life mage if I cannot even save my own blood?”

I remembered holding my own sister, her body burned and broken. How powerless I felt. The ice in my chest thawed. Slowly, I reached out a hand towards Maya’s back. Then I let it drop. I didn’t deserve to comfort her. Not after I’d let her down so many times.

Someone groaned. I surveyed the field, looking for the source. One of the younger mercenaries was dragging himself across the ground, making a painfully slow escape towards the tree-line. I studied him through the lens of detachment, and finally decided I would grant him his wish. I left Maya’s side and grabbed him by the backplate of his armor, dragging him towards the trees. He tried in vain to reach back and free himself, his groggy voice rising in alarm.

A few feet past the clearing, I lifted him to a sitting position and propped him up against a tree.

“Can’t—“ He licked his lips, tried again. “Can’t feel my legs.” Then, his eyes glazed over, and he seemed to drift away.

There wasn’t time to be delicate. I drove my fist into his thigh. He yelped, tipping over and trying to crawl away from me with only his hands. I lifted him up and pushed him back into the tree.

“Sorry. Thought you couldn’t feel your legs. What’s your name?” I asked.

He blinked away tears. “Carvir.”

“And how old are you Carvir?”

“Fifteen.” He said.

My jaw worked as I absorbed that and forced myself to recontextualize. In my mind they’d become the enemy, nothing more. Just mercenaries of an opposing force. I’d forgotten how damn young they were.

“And how long have you been in this group of idiots?”

He shook his head. “Only a year. Most of them have been in for at least two, going on three.”

“What can you tell me about them?” I asked.

He looked confused, then bitter. “What does it matter. They’re all dead. Or changed.”

“Only three.”

“What?”

“Only three of you changed. I originally thought it was tied to damage sustained. That all of you would change once we hurt you enough. But no matter what I do, only the three changed. The electric magician at the start, the fire magician, and the void magician. Why?”

He shook his head. “Skaron, Teos, and Caschar? I don’t know. Different elements. Don’t really get along. They have nothing in common, other than their age.”

Maybe it was as simple as that. Whatever the cowled mage had done to them had affected the older, more magically developed infernals first.

“Nothing else? They didn’t dip into the supplies more than the others?”

“No.” He cocked his head. “Why would that matter?”

I shook my head. “Not how this works, Carvir. I ask. You answer. If you’re wondering why you should answer, I’ll explain. My friend back there is a life magician. She could, theoretically, fix your legs.” I paused, letting that sink in, waiting as traces of hope came back into his eyes. “The only problem is you bastards went and killed her brother.” I drove my fragmented dagger into the section of tree right above his head.

He started to moan again, and I tried not to think about the fact that I was tormenting a child, reminding myself that none of this was permanent.

“Tell me about the others. Everything. Their strengths, their weaknesses. And keep in mind that I’ve already put more than a few things together, so if you lie to me, I’ll know.”

“And you’ll ask the life mage fix me?” Carvir asked.

“Of course I will.” I delivered the lie with a winning smile.

By the end of it, Carvir told me everything I wanted to know.

I channeled mana through the inscription on my chest. And the world went black.

//////

”You are pushing the limits.”

The black beast droned on about how my time was growing short. I ignored him. In truth, I didn’t trust myself to speak to him without making things worse. He asked me a question, and I kept my mind blank. Instead, I focused on the task at hand. I had all the information I needed. Now, I needed to lock in and make it count.

The void pulled me back. I snapped back into my body. My eyes focused immediately. I threw my arm back, the captains blood spattering the face of the infernal behind me, blinding him.

It took less than a second to find Bell at the edge of the clearing. I was already casting, air carrying the necessary sound waves across a small network of portals. She was fighting the water magician. He took a step backward, which was good. That meant she was getting the better the exchange and wouldn’t end up trapped in the sphere.

I’d said the words so many times I no longer needed to physically form them, saving precious time. ”He’s partially blind in one eye. Batter him from the left, then rush the center.”

I saw her head shift minutely. She’d heard me. I didn’t wait to see the result. I gathered the air around us, the breeze ruffling through my clothes, and drove my heel down as Saladius had shown me. My ears popped as the surrounding air displaced, and the distance between Jorra and the abomination shrunk by half. The powered inscriptions on my legs carried me the rest of the way, well ahead of Maya.

Jorra wasn’t doing as well. The abomination was exerting more weight in the correct place, and Jorra would lose his grip at any moment. I wrapped the whip around the flaming abomination’s neck twice, ignoring the flames that nipped at my unprotected skin, held it tightly in my left hand, and expended the power of the gauntlet and the inscriptions on my legs for maximum leverage. Several of the control orbs in the whip shattered as the length pulled taut, and the abomination’s neck collapsed, windpipe flattened as it flew over my head.

But the angle was off. It slammed into the mossy ground, missed the electric abomination by a foot. Kastramoth was behind.

I swore. The abominations were the most unpredictable part of this engagement. Perhaps their minds were unstable or they simply had poor eyesight, but they had a nasty tendency to randomly switch targets.

The electric abomination glanced at his fellow, then raised his right arm, aiming past me. Bell was facing off the earth and void magicians that tended to rush Maya from behind, but the electric abomination was aiming at them. Maya was helping Jorra up, both unaware of the imminent danger.

I had no plan for this. It was the first time I’d managed to communicate with Bell at the beginning and successfully use the displacement technique, and between that and powering the inscriptions in my legs I was running dangerously low on mana. If I summoned an aegis, I wouldn’t have enough left to deal with the void magician when he broke away.

I glanced at Ozra’s gauntlet, remembering how it had protected me the first time against the abomination’s projectile. But the aegis had partially broken the impact—

Before I could finish the thought, the abomination leveled its arm, ball of electricity flying towards Maya’s exposed back.

Fuck it. I dove to intercept, bracing the gauntlet with my free-hand. The impact blew me backwards, cancelling out sideways momentum, and a million tiny daggers danced up and down my arm. I tapped my quickly depleting mana supply to right myself, miraculously landing on my feet. The abomination was already following up with another sphere and about to fire.

But I had other problems. The black gauntlet glowed dark blue and the feeling of tiny blades piercing my skin intensified. Unsure of what to do but overcome with the feeling something was about to happen, I held my hand out, away from my body. An arc of lightning shot from the gauntlet with enough force to make me take a step back. It collided with a tree, gouging the the surface and showering the abomination with splinters of wood. It reeled, screeching, and I realized some of the shrapnel had gotten in its eyes.

Kastramoth landed on top of it, crushing the abomination against the ground.

I couldn’t revel in the victory. Not yet. I turned, looking for the void magician who always seemed to slip through at the last moment. He’d managed to get past Bell and was rushing towards the softest target: Jorra, who was still looking for his weapon. Jorra saw him coming and tried to leap away, but a soft patch of moss caught his boot and sent him stumbling to the ground.

I called the wind and the wind swelled up for a moment before dissipating. The color went out of my vision. My mana was tapped. Correcting my fall had taken more out of me than I thought it would. I closed my eyes. This had all happened before. Maya would intercept, put herself between Jorra and the void magician, but she’d miss the dagger in his hand.

I ran through the mental checklist in a fraction of a second. If I used demon-fire, I risked disabling myself, making another attempt far more difficult, if not impossible. Alchemy was out, not fast enough. He was too far away to reach him with my sword. And my sword-breaker—

I opened my eyes. It was beyond desperate, pushing into the realm of borderline impossible. But I’d come this far. I pulled my sword breaker, minding the weight. Mentally, I tried to keep everything Bell had tried to teach me in mind. Rotation. The movement of the wrist. The distance the blade would have to travel. I didn’t think about the fact that the weight of the sword breaker was off, or that I’d barely been able to stick a knife into the surface of a stationary target.

I held the shattered sword breaker up, next to my ear, and flung it forward. It spun through the air, and I felt my heart sink. It was rotating horizontally as well as vertically. There was no way it would connect. It would miss. And Maya would die. Again.

I looked away. But there was no scream.

When I looked back, the void magician wavered on his feet. His eyes were blank. He held a single hand up towards his face, where the sword breaker had buried itself up to the hilt. Slowly, he fell to his knees, and slumped to the side.

After so many failures, I could hardly believe what I was seeing.

The remaining two magicians ran, as they had the first time. I nearly commanded Kastramoth to run them down, but then remembered the fear in Carvir’s face. The realization that, at no matter how misguided, they were children. Victims. I let them go.

We made it. All of us.

The black beast had been wrong. I didn’t have to choose. Maybe I would, in the future. But for now, I’d savor the victory, and try my best to forget how perilously we had teetered on the edge of the abyss

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