RE: Monarch

The nauseating stench of sewer dissolved into sulphur, then nothing. When sensation returned, it came wrong—a sticky wetness beneath my fingertips, dense and pliant, with a slickness that turned my stomach. The air hung heavy, carrying neither sound nor warmth, as if the very atmosphere had been bled dry.

Red stained earth stretched endlessly, boot prints telling the story of thousands—yet not a single body remained. Only parts: a severed arm here, an emaciated eye there, each fragment a grotesque reminder of what was missing. The eye, gray and lifeless, stared up from its nest of churned mud as I passed, my boots struggling to find purchase in the treacherous ground. Each step threatened to pull me under, the earth itself seeming to hunger for more casualties.

I pressed forward through the desolation, my thoughts swimming against a current of confusion. The lithid's veil had weakened, but its magic still wrapped around my mind like a thorned crown, each attempt at focus bringing fresh waves of doubt. Above, the sun hung suspended between existence and oblivion—either dawn or dusk, offering just enough light to illuminate the horror without providing any comfort of day.

I was here— Why was I here?

Sevran and Zinn's stricken faces surfaced through the mire of my thoughts, sharpening my purpose. Find them. Find them before the lithid could finish its feast. If this hallucination matched the depth and breadth of my previous entrapment, I faced wingspans of distance with precious little time. The monster had recreated an entire section of the capital with masterful detail—this wasteland could be equally vast.

The terrain rolled out in every direction, each hill identical to the last, each valley promising only more desolation. Nothing broke the monotony of mud and blood and boot prints. No landmarks. No guidance. Nothing.

This made no sense. The lithid had shown me a fantasy before—a cruel reimagining of my life as it might have been. I'd expected similar torments for the others, but this? This was something else entirely.

"Help... someone... help..."

The voice barely existed, a ghost of sound carried on the barest whisper of wind. I stood motionless, waiting. It came again, and I followed, pausing between each repetition to confirm my course. The mud grew deeper as I trudged through an embankment, threatening to swallow my boots entirely.

"Help..." His gauntleted hand reached toward me, trembling with the effort.

I crouched beside him, wariness warring with compassion. My experience in the false Whitefall was still raw, still bleeding. "Rank and house, Silver Sword?"

His eyes, bright with fever or fear, struggled to focus. When he spoke, his voice carried the hollow echo of a funeral bell. "There is no rank here..." A wet cough interrupted him. "And my house..." Bitter laughter dissolved into more coughing. "My house has forsaken me."

I reached for my waterskin, watching the shallow rise and fall of his chest. Blood was already seeping through the mud caked on his right side, turning the brown to black. "I'm looking for two demi-humans," I said, holding the skin to his cracked lips. "An infernal and a dark elf. Mixed blood on the latter. Have you seen them?"

He managed only a few swallows before pushing the water away. His mud-caked finger pointed up toward a barren slope, the gesture almost reverent. "Need to reach... the top."

"What's up there?" I asked, noting how his breathing grew more labored with each word.

"A gate." His voice strengthened momentarily, urgent. "A gate that beckons me home. That it calls at all means the way is unbarred, but it will not always be so." His hand clutched at my sleeve, leaving streaks of mud and blood. "Help me. Please."

Wisdom suggested leaving him. This was an illusion, after all—nothing more than the lithid's attempt to ensnare my banner lieutenants. But the mountain offered the only landmark in sight, and if this gate was a physical construction, it could provide the vantage I needed. Beyond that, if Sevran and Zinn witnessed me abandon a dying soldier for mere convenience, earning their trust later would prove impossible.

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"Your legs," I started, letting the question hang.

He nodded, sweat cutting clean trails through the mud on his face. "I'll make it. With a little support, if you'd be so kind."

I gripped his arm, preparing to lift. The instant I pulled, his body convulsed, breaking free of my grasp. Fresh scarlet rivulets traced juddering paths down his forehead as his eyes rolled back, showing only whites. The mud around his skull came loose, revealing the true horror—his head had been crushed, fragments of bone scattered like broken pottery around a wound that exposed something gray and glistening.

"Boy?" I grabbed his shoulders, trying to still his thrashing. When he finally went limp, I thought him dead until I felt the shallow warmth of breath against my hand.

Even if this soldier was nothing but a monster's fabrication, context demanded consideration. In my own experience, I hadn't recognized the falseness of my situation until consciousness fully returned. I had to assume the lithid controlled every aspect of this scenario, that Sevran and Zinn remained fully under its spell, and that this specific obstacle served some purpose in its game.

I lifted him, his slight frame made deceptively heavy by the quarter plate. The climb proved treacherous—every few steps I had to pause, my boots sliding in the mud, balance threatening to betray us both.

Something about this place reached deeper than mere fear. It wasn't just the scale of destruction, or the unsettling absence of bodies—though neither helped. It was a bone-deep sense of belonging. Of inevitability. If I closed my mind to the circumstances that brought me here, to the monster that authored this horror, some part of me believed I'd always been here. Born from these fields of blood and mud and nothing, only to return here, to fade into obscurity, vitality spent, potential squandered.

It felt like the void.

"You'll be here soon." The voice slithered into my ear as something cold—something with too many points of contact to be a hand—gripped my shoulder. When I continued forward, it didn't resist, but something primal warned against looking back.

"Not a problem," I said, struggling to maintain my footing. "This one barely bothers me, compared to the last."

"Obviously, as it was not meant for you." The grip tightened fractionally. "But that is not of what I speak. What surrounds us is only a pale imitation of the destruction you'll bring. The desolation that will sweep over everything you touch. Everything you love."

"Elphion, give it a rest."

"I wonder." The voice took on an almost contemplative tone. "Will you remember my warning, when that moment comes? Will you return to seek my counsel? Leverage all those questions already bouncing around in your mind—"

"There will be no reunion." The words came out as a snarl. If the creature wanted to play mind games, it could work both ways. My father had taught me that sometimes, threats needed no subtlety. "Does it frighten you? The idea that after existing for centuries, perpetuating on, and on, and on, that it could all just come to a swift and bitter end. At the hands of mortals, no less. All because you underestimated your enemy out of hubris." I let out a harsh laugh. "What a fool."

The grip on my shoulder tightened almost imperceptibly. I didn't bother hiding my smile.

"Do you know what else is amusing?" The voice dropped to a whisper, somehow more threatening in its quietness.

"I'm sure you'll tell me."

"You saw it coming."

My knee buckled, sending me down into the mire.

A dark chuckle followed. "Oh yes. For the part of your mind that wanders to the darkest possibilities and most frightening outcomes, Lillian Gray's death at the hands of the arch-mage was well-tread territory. But you pushed it away."

"Because it wasn't rational," I growled, mud squelching between my fingers as I tried to right myself. "It was the same sort of fear a child has for their parents, terror that they might be attacked by the imaginary monsters that lurk in the dark. It was never supposed to happen. That it even did required a degree of pettiness I mistakenly believed Thoth to be above."

"Isn't it ironic?" The lithid's voice dripped with false sympathy. "The torment, the violent death, all occurring with the oh-so-unfortunate timing that even someone with your divine gift cannot reach. Awful. Horrific." Its breath brushed my ear like winter frost. "Yet regarding the potential maligned fates of Miss Gray, it was only the second worst thing you could think of."

Rage exploded through me. I lashed out blindly, my left arm slicing through empty air where I thought the creature stood. The lack of impact sent me stumbling, barely maintaining my grip on my burden, who stirred and moaned at the sudden movement.

"Stop hiding behind riddles and speak plainly!" I shouted into the desolation. Only silence answered.

"The gate..." the soldier in my arms whispered, urgency raw in his fading voice.

"Right." I adjusted my grip and pressed on.

At the summit, two figures waited. They stood like ancient monoliths, weapons planted in the blood-soaked earth around them, their shadows stretching long and dark across the ruined ground as if reaching out to draw us in.