RE: Monarch - Chapter 195: Fracture II

The silhouettes of people passed me by. They were shadows, barely definable by form, featureless and empty. Their faces were indecipherable and alien, as if someone had harshly sketched them in the background of some grander image.

There was something I was supposed to be doing. Something important. The simple act of drawing the directive up from the blackness of my mind felt plodding and cumbersome, brimming with primal forewarning, not unlike the feeling that precedes plunging one’s hand into fire. On some level, I knew what was happening to me. My mind was untethered, battered by the turn of events. If I could just find a focal point, something to home in on, I could bring myself back from it. The results would be temporary, and eventually I’d return here, useless in the dark, but at least it would be something. At least I would be useful.

Lillian had been that to me once. My anchor. Even in the darkest moments, when I was discouraged or gravely hurt and dying, and all I wanted was to run away. I’d think of the promise I made. And how much happier she’d be in the safer, better world I was trying to create.

A fool’s dream, perhaps. But it comforted me. Grounded me.

That was all gone now.

There was a cruel cackle somewhere in the background. I spun, searching for a golden eye in the sea of endless faces.

Finding none.

Perhaps therein laid the point. She’d both set the framework and carried it out flawlessly almost half-a-decade earlier. Thoth didn’t have to be here, ready to mock me and throw salt in the wound. Because this spoke for itself.

I laughed, remembering the way my image of her had shifted during our encounters in the Sanctum. Up to that point, she was more of a force of nature than a person in my mind. A natural disaster to be defended against and opposed, with little granularity otherwise. Discovering that she was working to purify the prime ley line, and despite her clear hatred of me still carrying out her original mission to subvert Ragnarok, and that at one point during her many loops we had been allies, completely muddied the waters.

And perhaps, on some level, I’d empathized. While I had no simple method for keeping track of the time I’d spent in various loops, it probably added up to less than four or five additional years. By comparison, she’d been doing this for at least a thousand. Maybe more.

I thought we’d found a span-wide island of common ground. That during our duel, and the clash that preceded it, I’d discovered some small sliver of humanity in her.

That perhaps despite our enmity, we could become allies once again, foes aligned towards a greater evil.

But there was no evil greater than this.

Lillian was a gentle soul. A cooling balm on an incendiary world. She wasn’t a miracle worker, or a grand leader, or a prodigy. But she put in the work. She avoided arguments, judgment, and enjoyed helping people. Lillian and Gunther both went out of their way to aid the needy, sometimes digging into their own coffers to help those who couldn’t help themselves.

Before me, she’d lived a perfectly ordinary, inoffensive life.

And Thoth had shattered it, dredging spite and pettiness from a place so low and base I could barely even imagine it.

No. Whatever I thought I’d seen in the Sanctum, I was wrong. There was no good in my enemy. Whatever humanity she’d held was eroded long before I’d met her. And when the next opportunity arose, there would be no quarter given. I wouldn’t hesitate, the way I had in the Sepulcher.

No matter what it took.

Regardless of what her motives were, or the still unrevealed mystery of what I’d done in past lives to incite such hatred. Using every method, cruel trick, and power at my disposal.

I’d finish it.

“… Airn.” Someone was grabbing my shoulder, shaking me.

I pulled my shoulder away, retreating from the touch.

“Cairn.” Maya said again, expression conveying barely suppressed hurt.

Finally, I came back to myself. The indecipherable faces passing on the cramped throughway regained clarity and detail. We were still on the street, though we’d moved several blocks down, moving with the small groups of Mari and Sevran’s banner as they canvassed the area, asking if anyone remembered the fate of the people who once ran the dilapidated apothecary down the street.

“What?” I said, trying to banish the irritation from my voice.

“They found someone.” Maya said, inclining her head in front of us.

A soldier from my regiment, dressed in the generic grays of a Topside denizen, was waiting patiently with a nervous-looking farmer in tow. The man shod a wide-brimmed hat and apron, and had likely been pulled away from one of the many produce stalls that lined the street.

“You said there’d be no trouble.” The farmer half-whispered, half-hissed to the soldier that accompanied him. “You promised, Cestus”

Cestus squinted in the sunlight. Judging from the perspiration accumulating on his forehead and his wincing-demeanor, he was still nursing a hangover like many of my regiment. “Relax. The commander’s not so bad, so long as you’re not sporting any ribbons. Just go on and tell ‘em what you told me.”

From the Farmer’s derisive look, he wasn’t putting stock in that.

Even from my pit of numbness, I had to give my banner lieutenants credit. The last time Lillian was taken from me, it took days to find a lead. And they’d achieved it over a matter of hours.

I nodded to Cestus, thanking him for his work. Then took a step towards the farmer.

Everyone tensed. From the curious pedestrians, to Cestus, to the farmer. With the way the farmer scanned the street, he was a feather-touch away from running.

“Tell me about the apothecary,” I said.

The farmer turned on his heel and started to run, narrowly stopped a few span away when Cestus grabbed him, wrapping his ample arms around the smaller man’s waist and dragging him back before me. As they returned, Cestus looked much more alert, bordering on alarmed. “He—He’s a friend, my lord. One who confided in me out of trust.”

“I will not hurt him.” I said slowly, more confused than anything else. Then glanced back at Maya, trying to ascertain if she understood what was happening, and found her wincing as if in physical pain. “Are you alright?”

“It’s—” Maya turned her back to the pair and leaned in close, voice barely more than a whisper, “Your aura.”

I had no idea what she was talking about. Even waiting for her to explain further felt cumbersome.

“My what?”

“It’s myth. Or at least… it was supposed to be.” She thumbed her chin, looking more uncertain the longer she spoke. “Mages of a certain power, or a high ceiling of potential, were said to draw an abnormal amount of ambient mana to them in times of trouble. This had obvious benefits—faster regeneration that extended to both the magician in question and the people around them. In the ancient legends they were just that. But as time went on and the mythos expanded, subtleties were added. In many, mages capable of projecting an aura of drawn ambient mana—or thrall mana—could passively shape that mana, either intentionally or on accident.”

“You said it was supposed to be a myth?”

“Because it was.” Maya said, her brow furrowing. “When we faced down… someone I’d really rather not name right now… I felt an assault on my senses. It never crossed the threshold into physical pain, more like my entire body and mind were just on the verge of it, and the only way to avoid it was to turn and run away. Thought it was just her. Until I felt something similar in Ozra. And now you.” She quaked a little as she said it, probably aware of the implications.

“And somehow I have a similar aura.” I cracked a smile that felt false. “Gotta say, Maya, I think if I was anywhere near their power, we wouldn’t be in this situation.”

She made a frustrated noise, then I felt her nails dig into my palm.

There was a buzz of warmth, when my vision took on a strange hue, draining to black and white. There were still sparks of color, tiny pinpricks of vibrant indigo that smeared, spreading their shading to the mono-colored surroundings.

“What is this?” I asked.

“A modification I experimented with when I was still… working on myself. Tried it in both-eyes first, then one eye before discarding it entirely. It’s useful, but no matter what, there’s too much loss of detail for anything permanent. The flares of mana you’re seeing are specks of ambient mana functioning normally. Now look up.” Maya pointed with her index finger.

I did. But what I saw puzzled me.

Nothing.

“I can’t see the sky.”

“That is the sky.”

I refocused. At first, it was nothing but darkness, then the color came into clarity. A blue darker than the darkest night roiled before me, every particle unsettled and constantly in motion. It was a funnel of black, trailing down from a jagged cloud formed from the same essence.

“It’s not on their level, no. But that hardly matters. What’s more important is that it’s significant enough that everyone around you can feel it, magician or otherwise.”

“Why is this happening now?” I asked, to no one in particular. If it was as rare and unknown as she attested, Maya wouldn’t have the answer. No one would.

“I can’t tell you that.” She said, then bit her lip. “It’s a useful tool in some situations. Being able to get into an enemy’s head and rattle them before the fighting even starts. But in this moment, where there’s no obvious threat and we’re gathering information? You need to find a way to rein it in.”

“Rein… it… in?” I asked slowly, wrapping my head around what she was asking me to do. Maya had just told me the aura likely had some basis in emotion.

I hadn’t had an aura to manage the first time I lost Lillian. But the result wasn’t all that different. I’d dove from a controlled panic to a downward spiral, circling a drain of void that threatened to swallow me completely. So consumed by malaise and bitterness that even the most mundane actions of others’ felt spiteful, and I lashed out at everyone around me.

The subsequent death was almost a mercy, the reset that followed it an unexpected bonus.

We didn’t know how bad it was yet. What Thoth had done. I was jumping to conclusions before I even had any confirmation, allowing myself to think the worst in order to shield myself from the recoil when the worst came to pass. Sometimes that worked as a method of off-loading anxiety. Here, though, it was on the verge of crippling me.

So I forced myself to ask a more troublesome question.

Did any of this really matter?

After all, this had happened countless times before. Endless cycles that Thoth had lived through that ended badly. Every soul still living had shuffled off their mortality so many times that even most of the pantheon had lost interest and left us. That included the people I cared for. People I loved. Caught in a never-ending loop of death and rebirth, joy and tragedy, hope and despair.

The swell of fear and bitterness that rose from within and threatened to lash out at everyone around me was still there. But with that consideration in mind it felt… less. Diminished.

I pushed down the fear and crippling doubt, containing and poking at it through the lens of apathy. Over the last few years, hundreds of Demi-humans had disappeared from Topside, many leaving behind family and friends who loved them.

The truth was, this only felt so monumental because it was happening to me.

I was nothing more than a grain of sand on the coastline of eternity, futilely attempting to change the tide.

The particles before me thinned, growing translucent. The transformation spread upward, translucent streaks piercing up through the tunnel of darkness, stripping away the dark.

Oh yes. I remembered how to do this.

It was a solution for a different problem, a trick I’d come up with to force myself to function when the consequences for failure was a painful death. I simply told myself it didn’t matter. No matter how much agony, or trauma, or disfigurement I endured, it didn’t matter. Because I would endure.

Emotions are temporary and irrelevant. Shove them down. Find out what happened. Piece together why it happened. Respond accordingly. Move forward.

Every wasted day was a day ceded to Thoth. In many ways, I was already losing. If I slowed down, let the despair hobble me, it would all be over in a lightning clap. The priceless opportunity this aberration in Thoth’s loops granted me would be frittered away on despair and self-loathing. And when Thoth failed to stop Ragnarok, as she had countless times before, I’d be returned to the noble-nothing I once was.

The funnel of ambient mana lost the last traces of its midnight blue coloring. Its outline was still visible. But far less oppressive than before.

“What did you do?” Maya asked, puzzled. There was another buzz of mana on my palm, and the altered vision returned to normal.

“Reined it in.” I responded ambivalently

Instead of relief, somehow Maya looked more concerned. “I’m not saying you can’t feel.”

I shrugged. “We can test the limits later. Figure out the best applications and thresholds.”

“You’re not hearing—”

“—I hear you.” I laced my fingers between hers and squeezed gently. “Just let me do what’s needed to get through this. Okay?”

With that, I let go. Her hand dropped to her side, and I felt her eyes boring holes into the back of my head as I returned to the soldier and farmer, still waiting nervously on the verge of the city street.

“Apologies.” I gave them both a thin smile. “It’s been an unpleasant day.”

They both looked unsettled, but seemed to relax some.

“Pleasant nights often carry unpleasant mornings in their wake, Commander,” Cestus joked, wincing slightly. “Though this is probably a little more than unpleasant.”

“Indeed.” I turned my focus to the farmer. “Tell me anything you can about the apothecary. If it bears fruit, there’ll be a reward in it for you.”

“What kind of reward?” The farmer asked.

“Depends on the information. More is better, so long as it’s accurate. The reward will reflect that.”

Enticed, and seeming to pick up from context that my previous demeanor resulted from matters that had nothing to do with him, the farmer openly scowled. “You want his entire life story?”

His shift in attitude surprised me. “Sorry. Whose?”

“Him. The apothecary’s” The farmer pointed. Down the street, I recognized the drunk who’d made a bed on the light layer of snow that covered the dirt-strewn corner beside Gray’s. He looked rough, even by the metric of ‘top-side drunk,’ his wind-burned face lined with wrinkles and crags, a bottle held loosely in his hand. He held the look of many who fell on hard times without a clue of how they got there, shambling through the fragments of their remaining life stricken and exhausted.

And in the clear light of day, I could see the rough state of his hands, layers of burns that accumulated over a lifetime of handling various volatile and acrid ingredients.

With a clashing sensation of relief and horror, I recognized the man who’d welcomed me into his home. The person who’d indulged my curiosity, taught me the more complicated aspects of his craft.

The father whose daughter I’d failed twice over.

Gunther.