RE: Monarch

Thoth stared into the pool of red, through the stars that were not stars, and slammed her hand through it, shattering the image. The madness coursed through her and magic rippled through her skin, clawing at her pores, begging for release.

It was not that Cairn had won, that rankled. She had left the enclave relatively unchallenged as a test case. It was how he had won seemingly without effort that was cause for alarm.

Break him. Break everything.

The madness was insistent now. She had bled too much. In mere moments it would be beyond the point of no return, and the madness would demand any blood that was not hers. Enemy, ally, it mattered little to the red harbinger that plagued her. Eventually, she would let it feast and have its fill. But it had a use, and in this instance it was more harm than good.

Thoth pulled herself to her feet, unable to fully lift her head, her spine twitching and dragged herself through the dungeon. With every step the madness grew, the twitching becoming more pronounced. She realized with grim irritation that she had overtaxed herself. Prescience was never cheap—both in the blood it cost and the mental strain.

She reached her destination: an inconspicuous section of wall. To anyone else, it would appear like any other in the dungeon. Through mage sight, there was a small black dot, floating and shrouded.

Thoth wiggled her fingers through it and tore it open. It formed a flickering portal no larger than a personal mirror. One of her many caches throughout the lair. Thoth removed the contents one by one, a series of highly concentrated poultices. She loathed them. Hated her reliance on them. But they were necessary.

Isopsilchyzox to stave off the whispers and the need.

Octaimioncin to clear her mind from the languid cloudiness and apathy that the isospsilchyzox would plunge her into.

This was her regimen when she needed to think. To plan.

The series of events up to the aborted attack on the enclave were semi-explainable. First, there were a number of the metamorphosis idiots who had to be dealt with, and the beginning of the loop was always taxing. She was already weakened to an unacceptable degree at the start and projecting herself backwards beyond that point weakened her to an even greater extent, limiting her capabilities for months and leaving her deathly ill and recovering for weeks.

Annoying.

Matters were not helped by the fact that Barion had proved over and over again he was an imbecile—well no, that was perhaps the wrong word. He was a savant. An ideologically twisted, wholly focused savant, with a lens of concentration so narrow it left him open to many vectors of attack. She’d played the scenario out before with no issue, multiple times: sidetracking the prince and luring him into the Everwood, allowing Barion to play his little games. It was a light and otherwise meaningless indulgence. A small one that served multiple purposes, both tormenting Cairn and often leading to an initial awakening which would be useful later.

She smiled darkly. Barion would delight in that victory and take it as a confirmation and justification of his methods. In the process, he would completely ignore the much more obvious reality that it was not the method but the subject that had mattered. Once Cairn awakened and Thoth had regained her strength, she would sweep in and steal the moment, savoring Barion’s hopelessness as he realized the world would never know what he had “achieved,” his memory retained by none but a select few as a monstrous failure.

But Cairn had awakened in the Everwood. That had never happened before.

Still, it wasn’t impossible. Cairn had potential. If he was attacked, if the stress was high enough, an early awakening could be explained away as another avenue through which the variability of time had reared its ugly head. Thoth had learned a long time ago that time was an unreliable mistress. The smallest thing could lead to a drastically different future. A child ran through the street, tripping over a pebble which was knocked into the road. The pebble serving as a final bump for an errant wagon-wheel which shattered, overturning overripe produce onto a lord heading to a party, who would be forced to return home and be more than fashionably late for evening, completely changing the routines and futures of everyone he would have interacted with that eve, and everyone that they in turn would interact with differently, all because of such a small, insignificant deviation.

Then Barion had lowered his Guard and Cairn and Maya had killed him together, taking his greater demon for themselves.

That was harder to explain. But still, not impossible; that there was some strange, less than a percentage chance that a series of events led the slime to awakening early, befriending an infernal—one Thoth knew from personal experience to be highly useful, albeit in need of correction—and defeating a revenant and demon, as unlikely as it seemed.

At the time, the divergence had been amusing. A much welcome change of pace in the face of endless, agonizing repetition.

Then Kholis. Her lip curled. The little town should have been the end of him. She knew she needed to kill him after the Everwood, or break him completely. It would ruin her plans, and possibly the entire loop, but that was preferable to the alternative: the little prince building momentum. In his unaffected, unaltered state, the prince was not unlike a massive boulder at the peak of an endless hill. Harmless. Worthless. Until it started to roll.

Thoth knew too well, how much of a problem that momentum could be, even if it posed no danger to her now. After all, she had once willingly stepped in the path of that boulder, so many centuries ago.

And that had made her what she was today.

She had decided it would be better to kill him in Kholis, just to be safe. But her curiosity had been piqued. She’d used the augury once more to spy on him. It was a process that was imperfect by design. It came at a great personal cost, beyond the blood she spilled, and the image and sound were almost always distorted. Traditional spies were a better alternative, but building a network was tedious and took time.

So she had looked into the blood and seen something that scattered her plans to the ether.

Cairn had confessed to the Infernal that he had visions. That should not have been possible. That changed things.

Kill all distractions until only your path remains.

Her master’s voice whispered to her from beyond the grave. She shook her head. Irritated. Annoyed. The regimen was failing.

Footsteps jarred her, flubbing her concentration.

“I will flay you for your impertinence,” she hissed. Her head whipped to the side, looking for the source of the distraction that had cost her the spell.

The footsteps paused. A voice called out, uncertain. “Is that theater? Or should I come back later. I can never tell.”

Ghast pulled down his furred cowl and sat across from her. His severe features took her in, eyes flicking to the pool of blood and then back to her. She eased back, sitting on her knees. Usually such a pose of weakness would be unacceptable, but Ghast was different. The shadows bothered her less when he was around. In many ways, it was the opposite effect that Cairn had.

“Unearned confidence falls easily before the knife.” Thoth said.

“You know augury is unreliable, right? That it can work against you in multiple ways?” Ghast questioned.

Irrelevant. It was a temporary measure.

“News, from Panthania?” Thoth asked.

“Yes. The mission went well. We have people infiltrating the various courts of note. And our contacts scooped up that little cabal of mages you wanted. A lot of promise, unless they’re exaggerating.”

“They are not.” Thoth raised her eyebrow. “Unless you doubt my judgment.”

“No. For someone who came out of nowhere, you’ve pulled together a hell of a plan. For the most part.”

She noted with displeasure the emphasis he had put on the last half of the sentence. “Subtlety is not your strong suit.”

He approached the topic obliquely, the way a hunter circles a wounded animal. “I just… find myself reminded of a story. There was a man I knew once. A magician, fire focus. He had a rare disorder. Something that fucked with his magic—only this… asshole… it only made him stronger. He had wealth, prestige, everything a man could want at his disposal.”

Thoth stared at Ghast, unblinking, willing him to speed the pointless anecdote along.

“Anyway. This guy. This moron—I can’t for the life of me remember what his name was—he has everything going for him. But he has a vice. Not women, or men, or booze.” Ghast shook his head. “Clocks. And not timepieces, either. Big, mechanical clocks. The bastard had an entire room for them. Every time he bought a new one, he would take it home, and fiddle with it for hours until it was perfectly in sync with the others. Hundreds of them. Ticking in perfect rhythm.”

Bloody hands reached out from the walls, the floor, the ceiling. Their presence loomed over Thoth, whispered to her. She blinked several times and the apparitions cleared.

“I take it you were not seeking him out as a fellow enthusiast?” Thoth said. Her words were obligatory. The story did not interest her. In truth, she’d heard it before. But Ghast was the sort that grew resentful if he was not looped in. Killing him always felt wasteful.

“No.” Ghast chuckled. “It was a job, one I was not getting paid nearly enough for. Anyway. I couldn’t figure out how to approach it. The man’s control was absurd, he was the only mage in the area, and half the town was infested with fire traps. Numerous contingencies and escape routes, far too many to count, let alone counter. But, like him, I kept coming back to the clocks. It was the only room in the house he left unwarded.

“I’m sensing the moral of this story is fast approaching.”

“Nah,” Ghast said, in a tone that belied the opposite. “Anyway. I modified the door and created a vacuum within the room itself. The wards in the rest of the house were useless. His escape routes, useless. Sucked the air straight out of his lungs. He died, purple, watching his time tick-tick-tick away. All that power. For nothing.”

Thoth reminded herself once more that Ghast was useful. “Another sordid tale of the Mage-Killer,” She mocked. “But those are dangerous parallels you’re drawing. Especially when you keep referring to the man as an idiot.”

Ghast seemed to sense the danger and stopped, letting the story fade before speaking again. “I don’t understand why you didn’t take the enclave.”

“There are other factors.”

“Because of the words of an addled child?” He asked.

“If the gods have reemerged…“ Thoth’s vision swam. She remembered those days vividly, before she’d fully come into her power. Being struck by lightning repeatedly. Torn to pieces by bears. Swallowed by the earth. Fate itself bending to fight her at every turn.

“The gods have turned from us. From everyone. You said it yourself. They are gone.”

She gritted her teeth. Of course, he couldn’t understand the importance of it. It had been hundreds of years since the gods had intervened. Perhaps more. There was no good way to keep count. If there was even the slightest chance of their meddling, she needed to know. Things had diverged far too much, far too quickly, and he was too limited to see the full picture. The theory needed further testing. How much did Cairn remember? How many layers deep did the deceit go? Did he know?

Thoth thought of the way he had looked at her after the fight outside Kholis. The rebellion. The hate.

No. That could not be true. Would not be true for another thousand years, perhaps beyond that. Would never be true, the wretch that he was. But it could be an opportunity to flush out anyone—god or otherwise—who was manipulating things behind the scene. Perhaps there was a way to get answers and assuage Ghast, all at the same time.

Thoth smiled at him. For a moment, it looked as if Ghast might squirm away in discomfort. “You speak unwisely. But not untruly. Perhaps it is time to take a heavier hand.”

“Then, you’ll let me end this… fixation?” Ghast let the question hang.

“It would be wise to kill him while he’s isolated and vulnerable.” She saw his hesitation, his fear, and smiled widely.

“Unless there is a secret you plan to share I do not share your immunity.”

“You dare doubt me?” Her voice filled the chamber and the water trembled.

“No, master.” He said slowly, defeated.

“Putting that aside. There’s something else you should see. An interloper has revealed themselves.”

Thoth channeled magic, warm light emitting from her palms and forming an image. It took on a cast of yellows, oranges, and dull whites as the sun within the image set under a distant hill. The image took focus into the scene she’d watched multiple times, and the prince staggered out into a field, falling to his knees. On first look, he almost appeared to be alone. But there was another person there, a form so thin as to almost be translucent.

The hatred took root in her heart, whole and deep.

Ghast leaned forward, squinting. “A spirit?”

“Of a sort.”

He snorted. “First demons, now spirits. Your plaything is certainly making the rounds.”

Thoth bit back an angry retort. The question of exactly how Cairn had managed to keep the demons from attacking was still a huge blank, and she knew from experience how vital even the smallest piece of knowledge could be.

Ghast pulled a pad from his coat and began to sketch the likeness as she held the image firm. “I’ll look into it. Run it by some of the scholars.”

“Don’t bother,” Thoth said. “I already know who she is.”

“She?” Ghast’s eyebrows narrowed in confusion.

“Her name is Hilde.”

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