RE: Monarch

A way to end the war before it even began?

The idea was tantalizing. It wouldn’t be entirely wrong to say it was what I wanted more than anything else. If my time with the infernals had taught me anything, it was that working with a group of people and coming to understand them enough to forge the alliances made it even more painful when they were put at risk.

Even now, the casualties were difficult to stomach.

People were lost, maimed, and killed because I placed them in Thoth’s path. As a spy at Thoth’s side, Bellarex was in an astronomical amount of danger. Countless others had fallen in failed loops. Even if the latter was impermanent, it never got easier to see my friends, people I loved, suffering because of my mistakes and failures.

If we could end that now? I couldn’t imagine anything more worth doing.

Which naturally, brought me back to trust. And whether Thoth had seen this before.

With too much in mind, I pored over a series of maps and documents my father had provided, trying to make sense of them as he talked.

“That she’s putting in so much effort recruiting from other continents points to the likelihood that she intends to continue doing so. Ceding the resources of Uskar to Silodan.”

“And you’re sure she’s sailing east?” I asked, staring at the map, hardly able to believe it.

“Thaddeus’s network is confident.” Gil stroked his beard. “We received a messenger from the enclave, hot on our heels confirming the information. Sourced from the very infernal you placed in Thoth’s camp. I’d wager the entire treasury she’s heading to Kragmor.”

“The satyr homeland.” It was a safe bet. Amongst the number of small—mostly uninhabited lands between the two continents, Kragmor was the point of interest. It was an expansive landmass, vast, arid, and landlocked. Few humans lived there because of the climate. But from what little I knew, satyrs tended toward pacifism. They were notorious pranksters who delighted in music and the arts, and were far more likely to get you drunk and waking up with crude drawings on your forehead than kill you. To the extent of my knowledge they’d never even fought in a war.

“Why would she even want them?” I mused, trying to find the angle, a destination Thoth might divert to at the last moment, coming up dry.

“Why does a conqueror seek any ally?” King Gil answered.

“Power. Military, economic, or otherwise.”

“Correct.” He nodded. “Which you can see in the logic of her movements. The orcs are brilliant fighters. As technically proficient as they are brutally strong. But almost entirely martial. A spell-casting orc is about as common as a dragon. Satyrs though? You’d be hard-pressed to find one with only a single element, let alone no magic at all. Their…” His mouth turned downward in distaste. “Whimsical nature, lack of merged power, and general absence of ambition is the only reason they haven’t become a problem until now.”

Martial fighters first. Then mages.

Fingers of anxiety lashed at my heart. I sat back on the sitting room couch, swallowing bile. “She’s still building an army. Different from what I saw in my vision, but just as dangerous.”

She holds all the cards. Knows all the possibilities, all the end results. How the hell am I supposed to adapt to her when her tactics keep changing?

“Before feeling sorry for yourself, I’d advise you to place a satyr and an orc in a holding cell and see how long it takes for them to find common ground,” my father growled. “They’d reach accord well after Ragnarok.”

I couldn’t bring myself to reply. Cultural differences had never stopped Thoth before. At the coronation, she’d had elves, infernals, dwarves, and a handful of other eclectic, isolationist groups working in perfect tandem. Irreconcilable differences between satyr and orc wouldn’t stop her. She probably already knew the key to get the two groups to work together.

“You’ve never dealt with an enemy on this scale before. Even theoretically.” My father’s voice was oddly sympathetic, as he watched me draw the inevitable conclusions. “She’s tireless. Exquisite. Not to mention, more than the sum of her parts.”

“So I’ve noticed,” I said, my mind still spinning. He was more right than he realized.

My father reached towards a bin of koss pieces on the edge of the table. He placed a red matriarch in the center, marking the center of Thoth’s intercontinental voyage. “Most revolutions fizzle out in the stillbirth. This is self-evident, and often self-fulfilling. The way most regime changes are pitched to a populace is as an attempt to create fairness. Fairness is a false construction born from weakness, and by admitting too many heads in the war room they weaken themselves further, opening up something that was once promising to be picked apart and argued over by countless scavengers looking for scraps.”

He placed a barracks piece that, despite its name, looked more akin to a woodshed, next to Thoth. “She cuts through much, if not all of this—the quibbling, the infighting—through absolute power. If reports of this are correct, she’s not making any of the usual mistakes. Killing people who disagree with her on a pragmatic level, considering herself above it all and allowing exploitable dissension within her ranks. If you disagree on a pragmatic level, fine, but you’d better be ready to back it up. If someone’s creating dissension, she cracks down hard. And while she’s mostly stick—there’s enough carrot that her backers won’t start thinking too hard about what they’re replacing.”

My father leafed through the documents. I’d only ever seen this side of him when he was dissecting my childhood stories, and he lacked the long-suffering contempt I’d often associated with those memories. He passed them to me, waiting for me to look them over.

I blinked. Unless I was missing something, these were construction blueprints for a massive engineering project. There were pipes interspersed with filtration points. The infernals had a similar system, but there was a key difference.

“Plumbing?” I confirmed.

My father nodded.

I stroked my chin and tried to puzzle through what I was seeing. “The scale of these looks astronomical. Considering the length of the pipes alone—how the hell do they intend to move the water without magic?”

“Rivers flow downhill. Such is the way of things. The orc homeland is a harsh, mountainous region. Not unlike ours, but on the opposite end of the spectrum. There’s no snow for them to melt. Much of their sea-level water is non-potable, tainted by disease or the many foul monsters that roam freely—and the only reliable sources are harrowingly vertical, hundreds of springs located toward the apex of craggy mountains that are threatening enough to traverse that many orcs die attempting the journey, despite their hardy natures. This was their way of life. Another hardship of the land that was simply taken in stride. At least, until the arch-mage crested their shores.”

I leaned forward, my eyes narrowing. “She created a system to pipe water down from the mountain, using the weight of the water itself. But that’s…”

“A little too clever for a brutal warlord?” My father prompted. “Indeed. Thaddeus reached out to his contacts in the Dwarven Depths, as a project this massive and technical bears their fingerprints in one form or another.”

“And?” I asked, bracing myself for the answer. If Thoth already had her tendrils wrapped around the dwarves, and had dwarven engineers at her beck and call, things were already far more dire than I’d realized.

“There was apparently a miscommunication. Because his contact’s first course was to attempt to buy the plans. Persistently. To where negotiations escalated and Thaddeus’s agent barely escaped alive.” My father’s eyes gleamed.

“So… it wasn’t them?” I said.

“No. Though there were aspects that were clearly based on their work. The dwarves are no strangers to the concept of piping water from another location, given their preferred environment.” He tapped his finger on the table, and I got a feeling this was hardly the first time he’d studied these documents. “What gave them pause—and eventually led to Thaddeus’s agent having a terrible day—was the filtration methods. They’ve been primarily using mana-sieves to filter. An expensive investment, and given the constant dampness, one that lacks longevity. They’ve experimented with non-magical methods to varying degrees of failure… at least, until now. Based on their reaction, either Thoth has a clever researcher in her pocket, or the idea came from the woman herself. Which do you find more likely?”

I paused, feeling an unexpected anxiety at the question. It wasn’t rhetorical. He was genuinely asking for my opinion, waiting for me to make a judgment call based on first-hand experiences. It felt… strange, for him of all people to actually rely on me.

Given all the time I’d had to ruminate on Thoth, on her nature, the answer came to me almost immediately. I doubted it was the one he wanted. “It’s neither.”

When my father waited expectantly, I continued. “Warlords, particularly the brutally deranged sort, are overly fixated on strength, be it martial or magical. Thoth passes herself off that way, but I think taking that at face value is a potentially fatal mistake.”

“You think her brutality is a facade,” my father prompted.

There were two options. I could either veil my observations on Thoth’s nature in a presentation he would like, or present the truth, which I doubted he’d like. So far, he’d been reasonable. Almost reliable. That could change, but if I withheld information, I’d only be undercutting myself.

“I’m not sure it’s entirely false.” I considered all the times I’d watched Thoth revel in someone else’s pain, cackle as they suffered, myself among them. “If I were to guess, she didn’t start as a bandit or thug that slowly gained ambition. Which means she was a tactician first. She used excessive violence to achieve ends, a fire that simultaneously forged her reputation and worked as a deterrent.”

“A tale as old as time,” my father mused.

“But it’s more than that. Whenever you were… campaigning… and the cost of peace was heavy with blood — I remember how you’d get, after the ashes settled. Angry for weeks, despite the victory. Deep in your cups. Unapproachable. As a child who didn’t hold the highest opinion of his father, I thought the source of your anger was that the campaign had ended. That the killing was over. Of course, now I realize that as unflappable as you seemed, what I was seeing was the delayed effect of that violence. You pushed it back, kept it from undercutting you at the moment, but eventually, you always paid the toll.”

I was treading dangerous ground. Plainly stating thoughts and theories I wouldn’t have dared giving voice to in my previous life. His reaction was unsettling. Instead of a reddening face, or a raised voice, all emotion seemed to filter out of his expression until it was cold and hieroglyphic.

When he spoke, his voice was quiet. “We are closer to gods than most, son. I can suppress a village, order a regiment to act as a diversion, aware that it will be their doom, and know that—from a strategic standpoint—I’ve done well. Protected my own, prevented further losses. But from the highest king to the lowest peasant, there is not a mortal alive without regret.”

Memories of my enemy’s cackling expression, and the many atrocities of the enclave and sanctum simmered in the back of my mind. “I’m not sure that’s true, father. Perhaps in a world where Thoth does not exist, but that is not this world. She enjoys her work. Revels in it. Basks in cruelty driven by a mind sharper than any academic. Were it not for my foresight, I’d have been dead a thousand times over. It’s the only reason I’m still alive. She likely has experts, researchers that she relies upon for further development. But it’s safest to assume she’s already committed anything critical to memory and is clever enough to iterate on existing ideas and engineer them herself.”

King Gil seemed to struggle to accept my answer. “This is not embellishment or fabrication. You truly believe she is that capable?”

“Yes,” I answered bluntly.

In short, subterfuge wouldn’t get us far. Thoth had been doing this for too long to have any real vulnerability there. My sitting room was quiet enough that we could hear ambient noise from outside the castle doors, servants and lords murmuring, going about their day.

He placed a scroll piece above the matriarch on the map. Then the dais beside it. The three pieces together formed a sort of crown. “Intelligence. And as we already know, charisma.”

I snorted. “I’m not sure I’d call her charismatic. If she is, it’s so overshadowed by her power that it barely matters.”

My father raised an eyebrow and gave me the look I often received after I’d said something stupid, though there was no real malice behind it. “What word would you use to classify her encounter with the infernal orphan girl?”

I blinked. “A lapse. Severe enough that it left a spy in her midst.”

He shook his finger at me. “That’s the last of your naivete talking, boy. Despite the change you’ve undergone, you are still young. If she is truly the monster you believe her to be, do you think the sob story of some orphan stirred her heart?”

I thought back to Bell’s encounter with Thoth, how she’d described the way Thoth’s voice was soft, almost motherly.

“I’d suspected Thoth used her vulnerability to gain Bell’s trust, but you think there was no vulnerability there to begin with?”

“A decent man can play the part of a monster to achieve his ends. A true monster is just as capable. So I ask you, what clothes might the monster wear?”

The clothes of a parent.

I tried to imagine what Bell was doing. The state she was in. If Thoth was still treating her well, or—if my father was right—had discarded the mask entirely. Suddenly, the need to read the missives Ralakos sent with me grew exponentially.

“She’s fully aware of the possibility that your friend is still playing for the other side,” my father stated plainly. “However, seeing that—so far as we know—the infernal remains alive enough to put pen to parchment, I’m guessing the arch-mage sees enough value in her that it’s worth the tradeoff. She’ll continue to draw breath until she is too big of a liability to justify her continued existence, or her value is lost.”

Even the thought made me profoundly angry in a way I couldn’t articulate.

“Then how do we stop her?” I growled. “You said you had a plan. I don’t care where I have to go, what I have to do. If there’s a chance to end this before Thoth reaches her peak, we have to take it.”

King Gil nodded slowly, brushing each of the pieces that formed the matriarch’s crown in term. “Strength. Intelligence. Charisma. A revolutionary excelling in even one of these categories would demand caution. But an individual with all three? We must be swift, and we must be final.” He pressed the palm of his hand down onto the matriarch until the marble cracked, toppling the surrounding pieces.

It took a moment before I gathered his meaning. “You wish to return to our roots.”

My father continued, his deep-voice picking up speed. “Despite her rare circumstances, the arch-mage’s weakness is common. Hubris. You nearly ended her in the sepulchre simply by catching her off guard, attacking when she was most vulnerable. Judging by the small fleet she left with, she did not learn the proper lesson. She expects us to act defensively, shore up our alliances here, and wait for her to engage. But we will not. We will take to sea as our ancestors did, under the cover of night, with only the stars and torches to light our path. And unlike our ancestors, infernal mages and dwarven siege weapons will supplement our navy.”

“I thought the dwarven siege weapons were annihilated. Wasn’t that one of your first acts as king?” I said, my head spinning. Dwarven siege armaments were the stuff of legend, brutal high-steel cannons that shot mana-infused shrapnel, enchanted catapults that flung pure magma. The effect on a ship would be devastating, but they’d been banned and dismantled, any who knew of their schematics and construction silenced.

My father’s mouth widened, his smile wide and wicked. “They were surrendered. And yes, most were decommissioned and destroyed.”

“Most. You kept some.”

“For… posterity.” He chuckled wickedly.

I listened numbly, as he described it. It was far more of a plan than I’d expected from him. We’d attack Thoth on the last third of her journey to the satyr homeland, with hundreds of miles of ocean between her and any landmass. King Gil was insistent on that point. As of this moment our primary advantage was the lack of magical firepower—not of Thoth herself, but of her followers. We’d lose that advantage if she turned the satyrs to her cause, and judging from her previous track record, there was no reason to doubt that she would.

Once we’d surrounded her small fleet with enough of the royal navy to obliterate a small nation, while maintaining a strict distance, we’d begin a methodical, round-robin method of targeting the ships themselves, using the supplemental infernals to shield against any large-scale attack that Thoth managed, my demons held in reserve for when she inevitably called hers.

At the core of the plan was a simple, humbling truth. It doesn’t matter how powerful, well-trained, or capable you are.

Everyone drowns.

The key was the distance from landmass. If she accepted the loss, abandoned her ships and dove in the water to swim away—hundreds of miles from shore, the ocean would eventually kill her for us. Even a water-element mage would drown if they treaded water for long enough, and any magic she used to speed up her escape would work towards her eventual demise.

It had to be said. King Gil was a bastard. The sort of bastard that other bastards looked at and shook their heads in judgment. But he’d come up with the one piece of the puzzle I’d been missing since day one. A way to take the fight to Thoth.

It was a good plan.

When I voiced my last concern—that Bellarex would attend Thoth during the attack, I was shocked that the king had expected it, instead of writing her off completely.

“You can communicate from a distance, yes?” He asked. When I confirmed I could, so long as the air wasn’t static and I could see the person, he nodded. “Then I’ll make sure you’re in one of the leading ships. All you need to do is pass along the message to jump overboard before the fighting starts in earnest. Once she’s in the water, there will be other forces ready to scoop her up.”

“What sort of forces?” I asked, curious despite myself.

My father cleared his throat. “There’s… a small contingent of merfolk that—how do I say it—owe me a favor for their continued existence. Since we’re elevating the demi-humans, I figure it’s time for them to make good. They’ll be sinking any emergency vessels and drowning anyone from Thoth’s side that falls in.”

“I thought the point was to let the ocean kill them.”

“It will, son. But contingencies are the strategist’s grace.” My father chuckled again, and there was no doubt in my mind he was imagining Thoth’s forces diving into the water to shield themselves from the onslaught, only to find the long swim cut short. “Even if we lose sight of her, they’ll be on the lookout. There’s little purpose in pointless sacrifices.”

The fact that he would was left unsaid. If it came down to letting Thoth go or assailing the ships with Bellarex inside, his choice was obvious. I’d need to do everything I could to make sure that didn’t happen.

“When do we leave?” I asked.

King Gil rose, extending a hand. I took it, and he hoisted me to my feet, nearly wrenching my arm from its socket. “When the weapons are ready. Months. In the meantime, I’d advise you to train, prepare, get to know your regiment, and enjoy your last stint of freedom.”

My hand subconsciously went to my side as I processed what he’d said.

He spotted the movement and sternly shook his head. “I never intended to reign forever.”

“What? Abdication? Now? You can’t be serious.”

Wherever I’d thought this conversation was going to lead when he let himself into my quarters, it certainly wasn’t here. It was entirely unlike him. Even when he’d ceded the throne once I’d reached the proper age, he was begrudging about it.

My father sighed deeply and took me by the shoulders. “My sovereignty is compromised. Many are displeased with my handling of Uskar during your childhood, and even less charmed by my more recent decrees integrating the lesser races into modern society. And the lesser races—for obvious reasons, are not my most stringent supporters.”

Not least of which because you insist on thinking of them as lesser.

Somehow, I kept my mouth shut.

“Truth is, I should have done this years ago. Let you take the crown, allowed your mother to lead by proxy until you came of age.” He rubbed his beard, and the circles beneath his eyes seemed more pronounced, ancient. “I’m of stubborn stock. Same as you. But not so stubborn I can’t scent the nascent coup forming beneath my nose. If it wasn’t the arch-mage, it will be our own people. And they will be equally kind.”

It sounded like he was handing me the keys to a burning building. When I said that—albeit in a more diplomatic faction—he laughed.

“When you return from our voyage of old, the criers will shout the truth. The arch-mage is felled, with Cairn, the prince of Uskar the bringer of our salvation. At first, they’ll love you because you aren’t me. Eventually, they’ll love you for who you are. If you bring the demi-humans to the table, create the unity you promised the infernals, all the better—it will usher in a time of peace and prosperity greater than any we have ever known. Disappointing, but prosperous.”

Of course, that wouldn’t be the end. Ragnarok was coming. But if his words were true? If Thoth met her ultimate resting place in a watery grave, and he abdicated as he promised? We’d have ample time to reform the kingdom and face the end of the world. Together.

With that, he turned to leave. I watched his movements slow, graceful, as his furred cloak trailed behind him. For the first time in my memory, he didn’t look like a thug, or a monster, or a bully. He looked like my father.

He looked like a king.

I called after him, softly. “Is it really so simple?”

With the same grace and poise, he turned to face me. Nodded. “Aye.”

A voice told me to leave it there. Let it go. But I couldn’t. In my previous life, I believed that people never really changed. They either realized who they were, or remained ignorant, in the dark. My thoughts on the topic had altered, based in no small part that I was living evidence that change was possible, but it had never been easy. I paid for my transformation in a river of blood, every step a living hell, every mistake a disaster. Yet here he was, completely different from the father I’d left.

“Why?” I asked.

“Why what?”

I stalked towards him, fists clenched at my sides. His eyes widened as I closed the distance, but he stood his ground, unmoving. “You expect me to believe that—what—your son fucks off for a few years and that’s enough for his father to find his benevolent side? That suddenly he’s seen the error of his ways? Maybe I’m still a child, but I wasn’t born yesterday. Giving your power away freely, when it’s not even expected? Don’t make me laugh. All you’ve ever done is take, and take, and take, until there’s nothing left.” I grabbed the lapels of his coat. He didn’t budge, didn’t blink. “So tell me, why?”

King Gil didn’t strike me. Didn’t so much as raise a hand. There was a profound sadness in his eyes, too deep to be anything but real. “Yes. Naturally, you’d see it that way. I haven’t given you any reason to believe otherwise, I know that.”

Finally, he looked away, his gaze drawn to the inscribed patterns in the floor. “The night of my coronation was like entering a footrace with a devil slow of stride, but one that never tires, never sleeps. There’s no comfort in power, son. That’s what they don’t tell you. It’s never enough. You’ll never feel secure, or safe. Your only true recourse is to continue to expand, cultivate more power, sire legitimate heirs, and run, and run, and run—hoping that it’s enough, praying to any gods that will listen every time you go to sleep. That tonight isn’t the night the devil closes the gap.”

“So that’s what this is? You’re tired of running?” I remembered myself suddenly and released his lapels, stepping backward.

“I was tired of running before you were born. Still, it was my role. My duty. But when your mother’s mystery illness bared its ugly head, I reexamined everything.” His gaze grew far away. “What would be left of me, after she was gone. And the answer was hard to stomach.” All at once, his attention returned to me. “The infernal attended your mother in her chambers this morning. She said the work wasn’t complete, but even the immediate results were startling. Elaria’s skin lost its pallor. She didn’t need a servant to help her out of bed. And once she was up, she was as alive and beautiful as the day I met her.” My father reached out and placed a massive palm on my head. “That’s thanks to you, son.”

It was the closest to fatherly, physical affection he’d ever come. I swallowed, choking back a lifetime of emotion struggling to break free.

“You asked me why,” King Gil said. “And I think, fuck Valhalla. I’d like to grow old with your mother, now that I have the chance. Is that… alright?”

I chuckled, still unable to look him in the eye. “Yeah. Yeah, I… think she’d like that.”

“Then we’ve come to an accord.” My father clapped me on the shoulder. “One last thing. No need to rush, but a future king should eventually have a queen.”

I got caught up on his wording. How unimportant it seemed to him. “You don’t have anyone in mind?”

King Gil shrugged. “Nope.” His nose wrinkled. “Much as I hate to say this, it should probably be a demi-human if you want to play it diplomatically. You could always take a noble mistress, if you’d prefer human heirs. Other than that, you’ve shown remarkable judgment so far.”

“I’ll—uh. Take that under consideration.”

With that, King Gil left. He pulled the door shut behind him and his footsteps sounded down the hallway, still heavy, but somehow lighter than before.

I slumped, asking the empty room the question I couldn’t ask anyone else. “What the hells is happening?”