RE: Monarch

They were watchmen. Zinn and Sevran both. I recognized it in their stances, their expressions. The way their posture carried the essence of beleaguered sentries who'd suddenly stood at attention, alert faces and stoic brows masking lapses of boredom, moments before. What they guarded was obvious enough. It appeared to be a dimension gate, nearly identical to the artifact housed beneath the Infernal Enclave. The dwarven inscription and craftsmanship was missing, but the towering shape, and lightly thrumming membrane were immediately recognizable.

Why they were guarding it—and why guarding a gate in the middle of a barren wasteland would tempt them from their lives—was still impossible to say.

As I crested the hill, the wounded man in my arms groaning from a mix of pain and relief, they stood to their feet, shifting unsteadily, as if awakening limbs that had slumbered for quite some time.

From Sevran's lack of recognition, it became obvious he'd forgotten me. Zinn's demeanor was different - there was a knowing glint in his eye as he played along with the scenario the lithid had entrenched them in. "Do you wish to transcend?" Sevran extended a hand, palm up. He was adorned in regal armor that, while polished and resplendent, held an ancient quality, bronzed gold breastplate with a series of leather strips hanging from the bottom edge of the cuirass. I'd seen similar armor depicted in illustrations of books detailing ancient infernal spellswords, but in practice it was far more severe than the more fanciful interpretations.

The man's demeanor quieted, anxiety etched in his straining face. "Will it hurt?"

"No more than it already has. Hard part's over." Zinn stepped forward, a whirlwind of blue and turquoise mana actively weaving together in the palm of his hand.

The man looked between Zinn and Sevran, then nodded.

Zinn pressed the weaved spell against the man's breastplate, where it flattened and expanded outward, covering the wound in his head with glowing energy, spreading all the way down to his missing leg, recreating a glowing, ghostly replacement for the limb. He waited a moment, then made a noise of approval and stepped back, eyeing me. "Should be alright now. Set him down."

Carefully, I lowered the man's legs to the mud, supporting him from behind as he regained his balance, watching with wonder as he adjusted to the magical prosthetic.

"Phillip." The man answered.

"And where do you hail from, Phillip?"

"The Dagathi Wetlands."

Sevran's eyes traveled from the man's face, to the leather carrier on his shoulder. "Ah, I remember. It's not every day I have the pleasure of observing a spearman of your abilities, let alone one loyal enough to travel hundreds of wingspans to answer the King's call. You fought well."

There was an awkward silence as Phillip stared at the ground. "You're mistaken, commander."

"Am I?" Sevran raised an eyebrow.

The man shifted in the mud, staring downward, frustrated in his recollection. "All that training for nothing. Whole life spent swinging a sharpened stick around only to stick a few of 'em before they tripped, trampled, and ripped me to pieces."

"Did you stick 'em with the pointy end?" Zinn asked.

The man glanced at him, perplexed. "Of course."

"And despite being gravely outnumbered, you stood and brought arms against the enemy, sparing no consideration of your own fate?" Sevran asked.

"I did, commander." The man smiled bitterly, tears glimmering in his eyes.

"Then you fought well." Sevran told him, proffering his arm again. This time the man took it, and Sevran pulled him into an embrace. "Well done."

Zinn retrieved a stone slab from his satchel, jotting the man's name upon it and then waiting expectantly. When the soldier seemed lost, he cleared his throat. "I'll need the names of your next of kin, and the individuals you'd like your stipend disbursed to."

"Of course. My father and sister are all I have. Should be easy enough to find, they work out of the same tailor shop…" The man continued, listing the names of his loved ones, and giving directions for the payout of his service fund. As he spoke, Zinn grew more withdrawn, the embodiment of quiet frustration, clearly torn between maintaining the facade and breaking character entirely. Sevran remained unflappable, picking up Zinn's slack without so much as an aggrieved look.

Zinn fidgeted. "And when they're notified, what would you like us to tell them?"

"Oh." Phillip paused, thinking the question over for a long time before he answered. "I guess… don't bother mourning. Because I'm kicking around in Valhalla, now. I'll save them a place in the Elysian halls whenever they're ready to make their own way. But not anytime soon. Not for a good long while. Tyrie still needs to live, experience life away from the shop. And… uh… the old man's got too many years in him to even think about it. Don't hold onto the gold outta guilt, either. Spend it on renovations. Fix the damn floor already. If you have any left over, buy some cheese, maybe a little wine. Eat, imbibe. Celebrate that I finally fuckin' did something with my life.”

Zinn's expression grew darker. His pen had stopped halfway through Phillip's message, and his shoulders were shaking.

Smoothly, as if it was rehearsed, Sevran stepped in front of him, offering Phillip his arm. The soldier took it for support as they strode towards the portal, conversing quietly, leaving Zinn and I alone.

My banner lieutenant stared at me with something approaching hostility, giving the impression he was displeased with my continued presence. "Do you wish to transcend?"

No. Obviously not. But the words died in my throat, definitive yet unutterable. My many deaths stretched outward in my mind's eye. Skewered, shot, burned alive, or sundered limb from limb. No matter what it was, it never stuck. Supposedly there was a limit. But I was beginning to wonder if the magic that fueled the reversals would outlast the integrity of my mind and soul.

"It isn't my time." I finally said.

"Maybe you can get through to him, then." Zinn cocked his head.

"What does that mean?"

"Naivety." Sevran returned, regal bearing slightly relaxed now that the man had departed, jutting a finger in my direction. "He has yet to realize the obvious."

I nodded along, taking in this new side of Sevran for the first time. "About me?"

"You have the eyes of a man fighting for so long he has forgotten why. He cannot relinquish the blade because the blade is all that remains. To forgo it is to deny his very self. By equal measure, he cannot move forward, and he cannot die." He studied me, "And with us, he is in good company."

"Enough of the philosophizing." Zinn rolled his eyes and walked away, drawing his curved sword from its long sheathe and pacing to a flattened patch of devastation just past the gate. "Do what you can?" The last sentence was directed at me, muddying the waters further. I wasn't sure if Zinn actually recognized me, or if this was yet another wrinkle of the Lithid's hallucination.

Still, I got the sense, given how obviously displeased Zinn was with the state of things, that it wouldn't be hard to bring him back.

Sevran was another matter.

I scanned the scene, from the sentries, to the gate the dying soldier had disappeared into, and made an educated guess. "You're harbingers of the dead. Like the ferryman. Delivering the souls to their inevitable resting place."

He listened agreeably until the end, when he scoffed. "Mostly correct. Though nothing about the resting place of a soldier's soul is inevitable."

"How do you figure?"

"Have you ever fought in a war?"

I shrugged uncomfortably. "I've seen my share of violence. In terms of long, protracted engagements, I've only fought in one. If you could even call it that. Less a war, more a one-sided slaughter."

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"And did you witness many scribes scurrying about the battlefield, cataloguing the casualties?"

The attack after the coronation replayed in my mind. I didn't have to think long. "No."

"Then you are uniquely aware of how quickly flesh can be rended from bone. Vitality robbed. How quickly the young and healthy are beaten and exsanguinated. The pile of corpses that grows ever larger, trampled, melted in fires, splay of limbs and death muddled together until nothing identifiable remains. For every one of the fallen recovered, five are lost to the annals of time. Damned to the meadows. Condemned to wander forever. Even so, I tried to learn their names. Their faces. Even as they blurred together, each falling and replaced more quickly than the last, I tried." He grew distant at that, the lines of age that framed his face darkening, becoming more defined.

"The Blotted Meadows?" I confirmed quietly.

Sevran nodded, staunching grief, finding solace in the silence. He extended his arm outward towards the horizon, and I followed it. Viewing the surroundings from a higher vantage made it clear that we were not nearly as alone as I'd believed. Broken and maimed figures, spread out across the horizon, slowly made pilgrimage towards the gate, their progress halting and unsteady.

"The soldier I accompanied was a Silver Sword." I recounted, thinking it through. “Did you know him from your tours in the plains? Was he important to you?"

Sevran hesitated. "He was important in a manner that he was not important. I broke bread with him. Shared a fire and the warmth of the stew it heated. Never asked his name. Never even wondered what it was until I found his body, skull cleaved open with an axe."

"And you could never offer him passage." I connected the dots, slowly working out the Lithid's game. "Things move quickly on the plains. Not a lot of neutral territory, and what's there is so contested and hostile it's not always feasible to retrieve the fallen. If you didn't know his name, you couldn't have reported him missing, either, not if your unit was moving at a decent clip. You left him there. You had to."

He paled, the words seeming to physically pain him. "In time, I left them all."

"Tell me."

Sevran gazed into the distance, still stricken and drawn. "They were never pleased with my presence, at first. A full-blooded infernal stealing a coveted post that could have been more competently filled by a human. I didn't need their help or approval, nor want it. Hubris, of course. On both counts. Across all planes, there is no greater judge of character than the man who fights beside you. So when I did not buckle, or break ranks, and slayed whatever foe was before me, and finally received their approval, I ignored it. Solidified the belief that it meant nothing. Even as they died, and I remained, shunted from one regiment to the next.”

More dots, more connections. More shambling bodies on the horizon. "The military keeps troop units small on the plains. Increased mobility, easier to hit and run, quicker to retreat if the fighting grows too contested. But it's not uncommon for the smaller squads to run afoul of something they can't handle or flee from and be wiped out entirely… How many did you lose?"

Sevran's smile was thin. "You're aware of the policy, I'm sure. If a squad's lieutenant is lost, the squad loses more than a third of itself in casualties, the squad is disbanded, the survivors broken up and reorganized into new units. Allegedly, better for morale."

"I'm familiar." I hedged, running what he'd just said back through my mind. "But why would you expect me to be?"

He ignored the question. "I was 'reorganized' so often I lost count. Sometimes with others. But more often than not, alone. The officers would gossip. Raise eyebrows. Voice discreet questions, entirely too loudly, of why it was only me. Why I lived when my more competent human counterparts and lieutenant had died. At first, I think they suspected sabotage. Eventually, they accepted the truth. I was—"

"Cursed by the gods to live forever." I finished, understanding the sentiment entirely too well.

Sevran started, finally pulled away from the slowly advancing soldiers on the horizon. "Yes."

"The lithid isn't fooling you at all." I shook my head. "Not in the slightest. You know who I am, and you're willingly staying here, letting this happen. Why?"

The rims around Sevran's tired eyes grew red. "Because I had forgotten. Or at the very least, believed a regiment chock-full of non-humans acting at the service of the prince was a novelty. Joining was an excuse to finally abandon the plains and pay the ranger back a favor. Placing myself somewhere the curse couldn't take hold. But you're different than expected. More driven. Unafraid to fight back the darkness.”

"You're wrong." I swallowed. "I've always been afraid."

"But you do not let that fear dissuade you. You treated us like equals. Earned our respect, rather than demanding it. I cannot allow the darkness haunting my wake to infect the men who follow me, or the other banner lieutenants, or you yourself."

My father's anger flashed through me. "Perhaps your judgement isn't as unaffected as the lithid would have you believe."

"What—" Sevran started.

"I don't believe you're cursed. I don't believe what happened to your prior charges was anything more than cruel, piss poor luck. You're among the best fighters I've ever seen, and that is no insignificant list. You never deserted, despite ample reason to do so. Everyone who died passed on despite your efforts, not because of them. To. This. Point." I pressed in on him. "But now, you're at a crossroads. Because if you continue to feed this thing, if you let it feast on your weakness, your despair, the men who die out there, right now, fighting desperately to buy us time to save you?" I stabbed my chitinous finger into his chest. "That will be on you."

For a moment, his eyes were alert, stoked with anger and alarm. Then the fire went out, and he stood there, motionless, unseeing, a statue with a pulse. Behind him, Zinn was repeating the fluid steps of a kata, maintaining it at a painstakingly slow speed.

Not trusting myself to push Sevran anymore without losing my temper, I approached Zinn from the side where he could see me. "Here for the same reason he is?"

"Not exactly," Zinn said, his voice dropping to barely above a whisper. "I've been aware for a while now. Sevran pulled me out of the initial delusion, but when he refused to leave himself..." He glanced at the infernal. "Well, someone had to stay and watch over him until you showed up."

"I appreciate the loyalty." I said, studying the distraught infernal from a distance.

"Not sure my efforts did him any good." Zinn swiped downward at full speed.

"Mine neither." I sighed, rubbing the bridge of my nose, trying to come up with a solution. "To be honest, this is unexpected. Do you know anything about him I don't?"

"Well…" Zinn gave Sevran a long look. "There's not a lot to know, outside his military accomplishments. He… uh… makes a lot of house calls, checking on the wounded or men out for special circumstances. Despite his respectable appearance, when the men go celebrating—or commiserating—he's always the last to leave the pubs. That makes him sound like a lush, but it's not like that. The spadetail can stretch a beer for hours.”

"That doesn't—" I trailed off, as a certain familiarity struck me. "How long since he's visited family in the Enclave?"

"Not since I've known him. A little strange, but not uncommon. Sends them gold frequently."

Because the most reasonable thing a person who believes themselves to be cursed can do, is avoid any possibility of bringing misfortune to their loved ones.

It was all so familiar.

"Can you find your way back? They need you out there."

Zinn leaned to the side to get a look at Sevran. "What about him?"

"I'll take care of it." When Zinn didn't move, I tried again. "Trust me, lieutenant."

My banner lieutenant hesitated, then sheathed his blade and held a fist to his chest in salute. He faded from existence slowly, small, fingertip sized pieces of him flaking away like ash.

I approached Sevran, circling while he remained static. "Immortality is such a god's damned bother, isn't it?"

His expression didn't go blank, and his eyes still tracked me as I approached the gate, searching its pearlescent depths. Good. Whether it was because we were in a shared dream, or my wording didn't technically refer to my actual resurrections, the typical failsafe didn't trigger. "I… was under the impression that was a rumor. Mythmaking. That you were simply in hiding and the stories of your death were overblown."

A bitter chuckle escaped me. "No. Unfortunately, the blades and magic that disemboweled me were very real. As was the sword that severed my connection to that mortal shell."

"Stop. You shouldn't say anymore." Sevran interjected suddenly, eyes darting back and forth, searching for ears unseen. "Not here."

"It doesn't matter. The lithid already knows everything. Or at least, enjoys pretending it does." I flipped the raven to the sky and lowered my arm, scowling. "I understand how it feels to remain, when everyone around you is slipping away. To survive death and find it wanting. To fail and have others pay the toll. To hate yourself for what you couldn't do, sparing no kindness or consideration for what you've achieved."

"Most would consider such a condition an improvement on the norm." Sevran led, testing me.

"They are fools."

His jaw worked. "So you do understand."

I nodded.

"For as long as I can remember, a dream has plagued me. I find myself alone in a wasteland, in the eye of a blizzard. There's no one living. Only bodies. No matter how far I walk, or how loudly I call, no one responds. No one is left." He recounted with muted dread.

"The end of all things." I replied. The details were different, but similar nightmares came to me often. "There's much at stake. Most of it beyond my control. I will fight like all the hells to protect this regiment, and Uskar beyond it. That doesn't mean we'll win. But if the worst happens, and the future we both fear comes to pass, I'll make you a promise. You will not wander that wasteland alone."

Sevran stared at me, wonder and disbelief warring in equal measure until he suddenly barked a laugh. "I've never met another foolish enough to claim he cannot meet his end."

"Then we are both fools."

"Bound by the stupidity of fate."

A smile played across my face, springing up unbidden. Sevran looked so unburdened, the sense of relief palpable. It didn't matter that the promise was one-sided. That if Ragnarok came to pass, it would likely be me trudging alone through the blizzard, world crashing down around me. In that moment, bringing him peace brought me a fraction of the same. It was enough for now.

There was a pause, and the Sevran looked around. "How did Zinn exit so easily?"

I thought on that. "His trial was over. He was only staying behind for you. If it's anything like mine, the key to breaking out is doing something drastic, carrying out an action or making a decision you wouldn't typically consider."

"Well." Sevran turned back towards the gate. "It's rather obvious when you put it like that." He turned back to me and smiled. "Shall we?"

We walked together through the gate, light burning away our surroundings until there was nothing left.

The blotted meadows faded away to the stench of sewer, quiet solitude crescendoing to the sounds of battle and someone screaming in my ear.