RE: Monarch

A frantic pounding consumed me, each impact reverberating through my skull with enough force to pop my ears, leaving me momentarily deaf. Through the lingering ring, I caught a voice with an unsettling cadence. Though the words blurred together, the rising panic in its tone spoke clearly enough: immediate threat.

Naturally, I crawled in that general direction.

Our surroundings were... domestic. Rural isolation pressed in from all sides. Through the disorientation of waking in an entirely different space and time, a sense of creeping familiarity cut through the fog. The dread it carried had nothing to do with the din or the shouting voice.

I hauled myself up using the corner of a low table, its legs wobbling against a thin rug near the fireplace. The surface held only a small gray cloth and a jade bowl, yet even these sparse elements stirred something in my memory, an echo I couldn't quite place.

"For the love of the gods, help me with this door, child!" The voice pierced through the window, its urgency barely muffled by the wall between us.

Somehow I knew he was talking to me. I jarred myself from the fugue, tearing my eyes from the bowl illuminated by the roaring fire, and threw open the cabin's door. The surrounding trees towered high enough to blot out the remaining dusk sun, leaving only daggers of light piercing through small openings in the copse. My dark robe—apparently, I was wearing a robe—trailed behind me as I crunched through grass in the direction of the voice, fighting the sense of dreadful nostalgia all the while.

A man donning a similar robe was laying atop a double cellar door, arms spread wide as if imparting an oversized embrace. From the sweat on the back of his neck and total absence of dignity in the pose, at first glance, I might have assumed him drunk.

CRACK

The man grunted as both cellar doors were battered outward, jostling him enough that, for a moment, his sandal-clad feet left the ground. He turned his head, facing me for the first time, visage red with effort. His voice was oddly high, as if a merge between male and female. "Better late than never. Now—" There was another loud crack, and he struggled to hold on. Even as he held on, he shouted through the crack. "He's already here, fiend."

Against all odds, this actually seemed to work. Instead of continuing to barrage the door, the creature within roared an angry retreat, its inhuman voice growing more distant.

The man in the robe gestured towards the grass to the side of the cellar. A long High Steel chain snaked through the grass, untethered. "Quick. Help me secure this before it comes back."

I picked up the chain, giving it an idle swing. "What's in there?"

He stared at me as if that was a particularly stupid question. "The monster we made."

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Ah.

Understanding, and the associated coldness it imparted, swept over me in a moment of frigid clarity. The angle of the delusion, and the purpose it intended to play out. I approached with the chain, intentionally keeping it out of reach as I calculated how to proceed, playing out the moment. "So we attach the chain, then what? All the roaring isn't for show. She sounds beyond anger."

"I believe it is time to deploy countermeasures. Not my preference, but it is better to suffer a minor setback if it means preserving our own lives." Barion still clung to the doorframe tightly.

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I nodded along, as if it made perfect sense. And in a maneuver I had fantasized about pulling countless times after the tranquility of that fated clearing in the Everwood faded to chaos, I reached over and, as if brushing the dirt from his garment, set his robe on fire.

He screamed, jumping away from the cellar door, monster forgotten as he slapped at the growing violet flames, attempted to strip off the garment, failed, then eventually fell to the ground and settled on rolling erratically. I kept the spark lit and withdrew a pipe already loaded with Vurseng from my satchel. It seemed the lithid's delusions often drew wholesale from memory, complete with extraneous detail—such as the pipe.

I took a long drag, not bothering to look at the quickly darkening corpse, though the way its head turned unnaturally to stare at me while it spoke was not lost on me. "It was difficult to create this vessel."

"And?"

"You wasted it." The lithid finished, accusation heavy in its voice. "I prepared for the intrusion this time, and you still wasted it."

"A middling effort. Barion never meant much to me. And that was before we parted. Even now, it could be argued that by wearing his face, you're doing me a favor." I struggled to stay still.

"Would you like to know why I selected this place?"

The answer was a profound no. I held more interest in the Panthanian practice of racing oversized birds than the inner workings of the lithid's mind. Purely by process of elimination, I was pretty sure that was Maya in the cellar, and from the sound of it, she wasn't quite Maya anymore.

"I'm still not sure it was worth the price I paid."

As I would have preferred to disregard the lithid entirely and rush down to Maya, it had stupidly informed me it had my interference in mind. Which meant that might be exactly what it wanted.

"Tell me," I commanded, with an utter lack of enthusiasm. "From where I'm standing it makes little sense, if your intention was to keep her placated and contained. She hated this place. We both did."

The lithid chuckled, body juddering as it remained afire on the ground. "It was quite rude what she did. Even under the guise of warfare. The simple, human equivalent would be if you'd just sat down at a table after slaving for hours to prepare a meal, and some undesirable kept coming in and snatching the food from your mouth, just before you dug in." It chuckled again. "So you understand why I'd be motivated to make this particularly unpleasant for someone who posed such a thorn in my side."

Wood cracked beneath my fingertips. "You changed her."

"Oh, no." Its chuckle grew into a wretched laugh. "I didn't change her at all. I simply took a peek into her mind and arranged the circumstances. It was the noble prince of Whitefall that abandoned the girl for her own good. Stayed away even long after his enemy was gone, for fear of the augury, terrified that the slightest lapse could signal his enemy's return. Saved her life by draining the soul from her slowly. All I did was return her to what she truly is, beneath the glamour. And warned her you were coming, of course." It rolled in laughter, still aflame.

When it finally clicked, I grimaced at the cruelty and looked down, absorbing the blow. "She didn't let me in to this place at all, did she?"

"If you truly believed the ardor you held for each other manifested in the arcane, you've read far too many stories." The lithid laughed. Its shrill ecstasy reached a fever pitch, echoing across the ethereal plain until it finally died. When I finally looked over to ascertain why it'd fallen quiet, I found it studying me, a thoughtful expression on its charred face. "It's strange, the way you feel about Barion. The place of malice he holds in your mind. For all his crimes he never accomplished what he intended. Creating a monster. Where he failed, you've already created two."

I walked over to the immolated corpse, stepping on his head, pressing the heel of my boot down directly on the jaw until something cracked. It made a pained noise. I leaned down and whispered, "Inviting me here? Was hubris." There was another crack, and its bones creaked, lending a strange sensation as the flesh quickly knit and the bones tried to set themselves. "Assuming she'd buckle once you revealed her shame? Also hubris." I pressed harder until it snapped. The lithid didn't attempt to speak or communicate. It just glared at me as I turned and approached the cellar.

"Maya? I'm coming down." I paused, waiting for anything. An invitation, or warning to stay away. When neither came, I descended the long span of stairs, just as I had ages ago.