RE: Monarch - Chapter 183: Whitefall XXXVIII

We stopped by the library to solidify the theory. Sera said little as I tracked down a blueprint for the Whitefall sewer system and cross-referenced it with the markings of vanished non-humans Kilvius had let me copy.

And while there were a few dots that didn’t quite line up with the maze of large pipes that ran the length of the city, the vast majority did.

I was tempted to go straight to Cephur as soon as we were out of the library. But I was worried about Sera. Her crestfallen demeanor hadn’t improved. I sent Alten to go check on Maya, both to remove him as an antagonizing element, and because I was concerned.

As a fighter, there was no question Maya could take care of herself. She’d proved it repeatedly during our time in the sanctum, and from everything I’d seen and heard, she’d advanced leaps and bounds beyond that. But no one was invincible. And if a powerful drephin shaman could be plucked out of the dungeons with no one noticing, it stood to reason that an infernal life mage could suffer the same fate.

We raided the noble wine cellar. Or rather, I raided it, while Sera waited outside, staring into the void.

When I returned with the plunder, she said nothing. Just followed in silence until we reached the stables.

“We’re not going riding, are we?” Sera groused, looking over the well-maintained stalls with distaste.

“She speaks!” I said, trying to lighten the mood. When she didn’t respond, merely crossing her arms, I sighed. “You’re not the biggest proponent of riding, I’m aware. So no. We’re here because this is one of the rare few places we can relax outside of our rooms uninterrupted. And. I dunno. It looked like a good place to drink.” I tossed her the wineskin.

Sera popped the wineskin’s cork almost mechanically, upending the skin and guzzling much of the contents. After she swallowed, she cocked her head, staring at the skin dumbly. “That… may just be the best wine I’ve ever tasted.”

I hid a smile. It was a decade old Cerillian red. And it was the best wine she’d ever tasted. A fact I knew solely because she’d told me herself, around two years from now. “Consider it my thanks for… keeping an open mind.”

“It wouldn’t have mattered.” Sera took another sip of wine and grimaced. “You could have shoved me off the skyhold and I don’t think he would have cared. Knew my standing wasn’t much to speak of, but that was the first time he outright said it. Elphion, I think I gained more value by serving as your accessory than I have in the last fifteen years.”

“So, fuck him,” I said.

Sera jolted, the haze of drink fading at my words. “What the hells?” She looked around. “Stables can’t be that private.”

“Fuck him,” I enunciated clearly. “Fuck King Gil. Fuck the king and the swayback pony he rode in on.”

My sister looked slightly panicked. Her mouth firmed. “If you’re hellbent on committing treason, I’m going to leave.”

“It’s… mild treason at worst.” I shrugged. “Seditious incitement at best. But fine, I’ll stop.”

She seemed to relax a little, now that I’d stopped throwing obscenities at our not-present father and corked the wineskin, proffering it to me. I took a sip in solidarity, but kept it small. I had no intention of greeting my regiment for the first time drunk.

“You’re not afraid of him.” Sera shook her head. “And I’m not talking about cursing his name. He was putting a blazing iron to you and you kept your wits. Lied straight to his face. No hesitation. Then there’s me…”—she raised the skin in a melancholy cheers—“folding like a wet rag at the first mild pressure.”

I scoffed as she tipped the skin to her lips. “Nothing about that was mild. And—maybe it doesn’t seem this way—but I’m still scared of him. There’re just others I fear more.”

“The arch-mage.” Sera frowned.

“Oh, yes.” Ozra’s demonic visage came to me. “And a couple more. It’s not that I’m unafraid. More that the range of my fear has expanded.”

“Was she… the one who hurt you?” Sera asked.

I shook my head. “Demons.”

Sera didn’t seem to know how to engage with that, so she left it alone. “There was a time I believed the arch-mage was a fabrication. Some fictional enemy invented to provide an excuse for you to take off and do whatever you want.”

“If only it was that simple.”

“Now half the kingdom is up in arms about her.” Sera rubbed her face. “Elphion, you were off fighting a proxy war against an enemy greater than our father has ever faced, being tortured by demons, while I was here accomplishing nothing, hating you for going on what I assumed to be frolicking adventures.”

“Sister,” I said, trying to think of the best way to word this, “I can say, confidently, without a single doubt in my mind, that you would have done far better in my stead.”

“And then you do that,” Sera growled. “Acknowledge me. Compliment my abilities. Put your own goals at risk to intercede on my behalf. It’s like you’re a whole different person.”

“What do you mean—”

“You had me with the regiment!” Sera exploded, her face twisting in frustration. “Somehow you knew. It’s all I’ve ever wanted. Not to rule, not to be a gods damned princess, just, to be recognized on my own merits. Given a real chance to prove myself. You had me. It was the perfect bait, and I swallowed it, hook and all.” Her voice caught. “When father started hounding me, all you needed to do was stay silent, wait it out. But you just… jumped in. Like keeping his favor meant nothing to you.”

I frowned. Were she anyone else, I would have hugged her. But Sera didn’t care for touch.

“Can’t deny that having the king’s approval helps. It’s already greased the wheels in ways I couldn’t imagine. In that, I’m grateful for it.” I gently rapped her head with two knuckles. “But it’s not worth slitting each other’s throats for.”

“So, what?” Sera looked up at me with red eyes. “We just call it a draw? Pretend all the shit we put each other through never happened? Act like I wasn’t a hair’s breadth from blackmailing you last night?”

“I mean, we were never really friends, so it’s not like that’s an immediate expectation. But in my experience, it’s not that hard to stop being enemies, so long as both parties have something the other wants and both will come to the table. You want to prove yourself; I want to survive the arch-mage and unite the kingdom.”

“One sounds a little more involved than the other,” Sera snorted.

“Yes,” I chuckled. “But think of the glory if we pull it off.”

“Gods, it’s hard to hate you.” Sera wiped her face and shoved me. “Okay. Fine. What the hells else am I going to do, sit here and seethe when you inevitably ride off into the unknown again?”

I made a ‘hm’ noise. “Gentle reminder that riding anywhere generally involves horses.”

“Shut up.”

“So we can start over?” I asked, needing one last confirmation before I allowed myself to fully believe it.

Sera nodded. “Let’s go see a regiment about a banner.”

***

“No,” Cephur said, flat and final.

I was sitting across from his desk in the commander’s office, fighting the urge to look back at Sera and gauge her reaction. I was also regretting telling him to speak freely, after he spent the first ten minutes of the conversation glancing at Sera with a cool smile on his face.

“What do you mean, no?” I asked slowly, trying desperately to convey the importance to him without words. “Sera’s a gifted magician and warrior with extensive knowledge of battlefield tactics and improvisation.”

My attempt failed.

The red tint around Cephur’s face brightened, spreading across his cheeks and down his nose until he looked ready to detonate. He slammed his hands on his desk and stood. Then his visage froze in place. He slowly looked over to Sera for a moment, then spoke, his mouth tight. “Are you certain we shouldn’t be having this conversation… privately?”

Throughout our time in the Everwood and the battle outside of Kholis, I’d never seen Cephur this angry. He made no secret of the fact he looked poorly on Sera, but to be fair, so had I. Either they had some history I wasn’t aware of, or there was another reason for his ire. At the same time, I needed Sera to know that Cephur was someone I trusted implicitly.

“No need. I trust your judgment, and my sister is my ally,” I said uneasily, not entirely sure what to expect. “I’ll never punish a man for being honest.”

Cephur left the desk wordlessly and locked the door, then returned, assuming the same desk-gripping posture. He held it for less than a second before he swept the contents clear. “It’s gonna be a gods-damned miracle if the regiment accepts you alone, you log-thick shit!”

I blinked, barely able to process before Cephur knocked over his chair in a full-blown rant. “Build my regiment, he says. Make it diverse, he says. Fill it with men and women who think for themselves, he says. Somehow mold that group of stubborn, jaded, rebellious rejects into a functional regiment, he says.”

I leaned back fully in my chair, blown away by the windstorm I’d unleashed.

“Uh.”

“—And it turns out, once you achieve said minor miracle, the people in said regiment get a bit attached to the ideals you worked so goddamn hard to instill in them. One of them being loyalty, another being indifference to nobility.” Cephur pointed an accusatory finger at me. “Wanna know what it took for them to even consider a change of leadership?”

“… You let him talk to you like this?” Sera asked, in a tone that told me she was equally stunned.

“No, this is new,” I murmured.

Cephur continued. “All five banner lieutenants wish to interview you individually. After that, you only have to clear four trials by combat—including me by the way—which I only agreed to because that purple fire of yours trumps just about everything else in a one-on-one.”

“Elphion.” I rubbed my forehead. It wasn’t uncommon for a high-ranking member of a regiment to challenge a new commander to a trial by combat. But it was rarely more than one, typically the de facto leader in the commander’s stead. And I couldn’t think of a single situation where the challenged individual had been a high-ranking noble. “Wait. Did you say including you?”

“Why, yes.” Cephur raised his hands sky high. “I did. It was a point upon which they insisted. It took weeks of arguing to even get them to that particularly unreasonable offer. And now, you want to roll in like every other noble, dragging along a nepotism appointment with a bad attitude on his coattails—”

“—Hey!” Sera said.

“—and just expect that they’ll accept you not only taking your place at the top of the chain of command, but unseating one of their own!” Cephur snapped, a vein pulsing in his forehead. Slowly, the pulsing calmed, and he sat down and cleared his throat. “That is my… honest… opinion.”

“Well. That was honest,” I said.

Now that I had the full picture, I could understand why Cephur’s reaction was so volatile. From the first day I’d met him in the Everwood, he’d struck me as a good leader. The kind that placed the wellbeing of those in his charge first, even at his own peril.

That, along with the way he’d given his life to save mine before I’d died and time reverted, was why I’d chosen him.

And now I was asking him to do something that conflicted with those ideals.

“I need some air,” Sera said. And without fanfare she let herself out and closed the door behind her.

Cephur visibly relaxed in her absence. His eyes remained on the exit, and he leaned back, crossing his boots one over the other on the desk. “Well. Might have gone worse. She could have tried to have me executed.”

“Yes, she really could have.” I put my face in my hands and rubbed my eyes. The lack of sleep from the previous night was catching up with me. And I was concerned by the reaction, or rather, the lack of it. That Sera hadn’t threatened him or even risen to Cephur’s level, spoke volumes to how lost she was.

“Alright. Fine. I’ll bite. Why’s she so important to you?”

“She’s my sister.”

“Ain’t your only one,” Cephur said thoughtfully. A gilded pen spun idly in his fingers. “And from all accounts, the other’s easier to get along with by a country mile. Yet you put special emphasis on her back then too, asked Tamara to get close to her, right before you sent us on our way.” His face twinged in guilt. “I don’t want to seem ungrateful. We appreciate everything you done for us, Tamara and I.”

“You don’t seem ungrateful,” I said, slouching in the chair until my head touched the cushion. “And the fact that I smoothed the path before you doesn’t make you beholden to my every whim.”

“Yeah,” Cephur smiled. “You were always like that.”

I stared at the off-white tiling of the officer’s quarters. “You remember my vision? The far-reaching one?”

“Not the sort of thing a fellow forgets.”

“Well, in that vision, Sera betrayed me.”

Cephur was quiet. I could almost hear him thinking, and that led you to want to give her command of one of your banners… why?

“It was my fault,” I finally said. “I let our father drive a wedge between us. And despite knowing it was there, understanding that he was manipulating us to compete, I just… didn’t bother trying to fix it. I didn’t like her. To me, she was too arrogant, too judgmental to bother wasting time on. So was I, but a mirror reflecting one’s self rarely lends clarity.”

“And involving her in your military endeavors is a method of righting past wrongs?” Cephur asked.

“Yes, and no.” I hesitated. “There’s no doubt in my mind she’d make for an excellent lieutenant. Soldiers in particular love her. She’s rough and tumble, not above getting dirty. They’ve always appreciated that. But yes, guilt plays a role.”

Cephur drummed his fingers on the desk, his mouth tight. “I feel for you, kid. Really do. But I have a responsibility to this regiment.”

“I understand.”

“And I’m speaking from experience when I say foundation is the most important part. Guess that’s true of any relationship.” He leveled a gaze at me. “But especially for a regiment. Morale can be a killer, if it gets out of control. I do mean that literally. And unfortunately, with these folk in particular, your noble status doesn’t carry much weight. A little. But not much. Especially if you bring a tagalong who hasn’t earned her stripes. They’ll eat you alive.”

I shook my head. “There’s no way you can think that both of us could prove ourselves at the same time?”

Cephur sighed. “Not really. You might hold more pull with the infernals on account of the dimension gate, but short of the two of you doing something approaching legend status? Such as taking on the entire regiment and winning? Nah.”

“…Huh” I said, noncommittally.

“No. No.” Cephur leaned forward, eyebrows furrowed in concern. “That wasn’t meant to be an actual suggestion.”

“I said nothing.”

“Uh-huh. But I’ve seen that look before. Usually before some manner of dog-fuckery is about to ensue. Even if you could use that magic of yours to cheat your way through the entire regiment—which you couldn’t. They’d see it as just that. Cheatin’.”

That made sense. If I was a soldier, and my new commander set the entire barracks on fire as a method of instilling my respect, I wouldn’t respect him much either. I smiled. “So… what you’re saying is we’d need to beat them in the proper way. A way they’d respect.”

“No one’s that good, kid,” Cephur warned. “Not even you. And Elphion, even if you managed that major miracle—and it would be a major miracle—it’d crush morale.”

“Just let me think about it for a while,” I said.