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Monarch - Pyrrhic X
🕑 Added 2022-08-31 00:29:46 +0000 UTCMy heart thundered like a war-drum in my ears from across the clearing to the portal, down to the Enclave’s central reaches until I reached the Council’s compound.
The implication was that Maya would be safe so long as I stayed within the time limit. While it wasn’t directly said, it was implied. Problem was, while my father was capable of perceiving and employing subtext, he seemed to relish pretending they didn’t exist.
I’d watched him go back on countless verbal agreements and assumed alliances whenever it suited him.
Maya wasn’t safe. If she said the wrong thing? If my father tired of the shade of her skin or the horns on her head?
The drumbeat in my ears deepened as I tossed my helmet aside and ran down the Council’s long corridor, descending the stairs three at a time. Someone clipped my elbow. From the blur in my vision, I saw them stumble. I called out an apology, but did not stop until I reached the massive double doors that let to the dimension gate’s sitting room.
There were a dozen people milling around the dimension gate. Several were working on the gate itself—two fire mages wearing goggles stood atop a platform, bright red lines of concentrated late emitting from their fingers as they fused something together.
Ralakos was already there, having read between the lines when he saw us returning one rider short. “Can we do this in a day?” I tossed my helmet to the side, unable to banish the nauseating parallels that plagued my mind.
Maya surrendering herself into my father’s army.
Lillian carried away by his honor guard.
“It is theoretically possible, yes.” Ralakos confirmed, though he looked anything but certain. “That is the time we have?”
I shook my head. “Deduct an hour to be safe. If I’m only a minute late—even if he sees me coming, it won’t matter.”
I stood before the massive gate. Surrounded by dark stone, it was a mix of dwarven technology and infernal craftsmanship. Large metal tines extended up from the base, forming a large oval severed on the top left diagonal corner. I saw a flash of complicated components before the two fire mages secured a panel.
A dwarf waddled in, with dark hair that looked more dyed than legitimate. “Ye bastards better have a reason for waking me at this ungodly hour.”
Ralakos intercepted him smoothly, guiding him to the gate. “It is well past noon, Stonekin. The sun has been up for some time.”
“Sun don’t matter when ye live underground.” The dwarf groused, wresting his arm from Ralakos’s grip. “What’s this about, then?”
“We need to get the dimension gate working. Now.”
The dwarf gave me a demeaning glance. “And I need a missus who isn’t twice my height and doesn’t appear to be in varying stages of asphyxiation, but ye don’t see me makin’ that your problem, do ye?”
“What?”
“Unfortunately, Prince Cairn is correct, Titus. Our window of opportunity has narrowed significantly.” Ralakos said.
“Well, shit.” The dwarf clapped his face with both hands, blinking the sleep away. “Best get started, then.”
/////
We worked tirelessly, well into the night. There were more complex tasks for me to do later, but for now, my role was to use the third stage of the flame to recharge the inert batteries that drew from the dantalion.
When there was nothing left for me to do until the main event, I left Vogrin to assist the dwarf and went out the side entrance for air and a nip of vurseng.
The sound of dozens of overlapping conversations reached me. I found the source easily. A large assembly of people milling around the front. It made sense that rumors had leaked. There were too many people involved with fixing the gate. And now that the threat of a impending attack had stalled, the riled up populace gathered here.
As I’d lived here since long after the infernals had accepted the division as a way of life, it was easy to lose track of the reality that over half their population was sealed behind the gate. The cautious hope in the faces of the growing crowd was proof that, while they may have taken the tragedy in stride, they had never forgotten.
I didn’t want to disappoint them. But a nagging in the back of my mind filled my thoughts with doubt. We were trying to do that normally required a wealth of experts and at least five demon-flame mages with only one. And while I’d achieved the peak of what Veldani could teach me, there was a level of mastery that only came with time.
A heavy weight bore down on me, as I wondered if it might have been better to just to go with my father, instead of bringing all this attention to a potentially hopeless endeavor. I couldn’t be as cavalier with my resets as I’d been before. The black beast—the mystical being who divined where in the timeline I would reset—had emphasized that the power that allowed me to travel through time was not infinite, and I would need as many recursions as possible for a chance of success, at the coronation confrontation and beyond.
It was a frustrating irony. I somehow had all the time in the world, yet none to speak of when I required it most.
The vurseng burned in my lungs, and I breathed it out in a slow plume, feeling the telltale tingle as my heart rate picked up and the heaviness of my eyelids lessened.
There was a sudden commotion among the crowd. At first, I thought they’d spotted me. But no one was looking in my direction. Rather, they were turning towards someone.
My stomach dropped as I spotted a familiar woman hobbling through the parted crowd.
Gods dammit.
My pipe clattered to the ground behind me as I jogged towards her, the feeling of dread growing as I approached my teacher. The infernal’s violet skin was far more wrinkled than the last time I saw her, and she somehow looked smaller than before. She was wearing a ceremonial robe in lieu of her usual smock, her white hair thin and dull.
Veldani looked around at the surroundings as if she couldn’t quite work out what she was doing, or where she was.
I slid my arm into hers, ignoring the crowd as I guided her towards the building. “Hello, master.”
She looked at me blankly, and for a moment, I thought she’d forgotten who I was. Then recognition lit in her eyes. “Have you been practicing, Bacchus?”
I winced. “It’s Cairn, Veldani.”
“Well, have you been practicing, then?”
“Yes, Elder. Every day.”
“Good.” Veldani’s voice warbled as she spoke. “And don’t half-ass it. You’ll need to be ready when you leave the Sanctum. You and Bacchus both.”
I tightened my lips, not wanting to be the one to remind Veldani that her student was gone. That after Persephone had mourned him, his body was returned to the Sanctum buried in the graveyard next to her hospice, a lost child amongst ancients.
“Have I ever told you about my granddaughter?” Veldani asked.
I grabbed a wide-eyed boy from the crowd and pulled him close enough to whisper instructions in his ear. “Send for Casikas, the apothecary. Tell him an elder strayed from the sanctum and to bring everything he has.” When the boy didn’t react, I gave him a desperate shove. “Go! Now!”
The boy took off.
“Who was that?” Veldani asked, sounding uncharacteristically frightened.
“A messenger. Nothing to be worried about. You were telling me about your granddaughter?” I prompted her, though I’d heard the story on multiple occasions.
Anglisse’s proper title would have been “great-granddaughter,” with enough “greats” preceding it to fill a page. Veldani’s kin was a light mage, who spent most of her time practicing in Veldani’s hospice until she aged out of the Sanctum and followed the path most infernals did back then after they “graduated,” the Sanctum: entering the demonic plains through the dimension gate.
Less than a half-year before my father destroyed it.
“Such a good head on those tiny shoulders.” Veldani said. When she sagged a little, I bent down and scooped her up. “She was small, like me. And so kind to the Elders. Even the addled, ornery folk that had lost themselves. I miss her dearly.”
“You’ll see her again soon. Just hold on.” Even if we were able to repair the gate in time, I wasn’t confident that was true. Morthus had been relatively young by Elder standards when he left the Sanctum and reentered it. When I saw him again after a few years had passed, it was as if he’d aged a century. And he was a fraction of Veldani’s age.
That was the reason Elder Veldani, perhaps the sole master of the dantalion-flame that remained on this plane, had never attempted to repair the gate. Because there was a high likelihood she’d die as soon as she left the Sanctum. That she still drew breath even now was a miracle in and of itself.
“Why did you leave?” I asked, not quite managing to mask the pain in my voice. “The Elders at the hospice needed you. That was the whole point of training me, wasn’t it? To carry on your legacy?“
Veldani’s blurred expression had sharpened at the mention of the hospice. She looked away, embarrassed. “It wasn’t the same… with Morthus gone. I found someone to take my place. A talented violet who retired from the council, though I tried not to hold that against him. He’ll take things from here. And when I heard you were leaving, I wanted to see my teaching bear fruit for once. To see my little Anglisse again. It was about time to hang it up, anyway.” Veldani laughed, her mirth dissolving in a fitful cough. “I’ve worked longer in the Sanctum than most infernals have in their lifetime.” She clung to me through another coughing fit, one louder and more painful than before.
“There’s an apothecary on the way. Just hang on.” I pushed the door open with my back.
“I’m an apothecary. You’re an apothecary. Why do we need another… why…” Veldani’s eyes went dull. “Why are you carrying me?”
“Training, master.” I struggled to keep my fingers from tightening. “Strong magic requires a strong vessel, does it not?”
“I suppose it does.” Veldani said, as if the idea was new to her. As if she hadn’t repeated it to me like a mantra, countless times before.
/////
“Oi! If you’ve finished faffing about—“ The dwarf had moved to confront me and trailed off when he saw Veldani in my arms. Ralakos slid between us to take Veldani from me, his face mournful. I watched as he took her to the corner of the room, catching a few words between them.
“What have you done, you old fool—”
“—Old! Have you seen your reflection recently, Rala?”
There was a small burst of pained laughter.
“Someone ye knew before?” Titus said, his ire entirely forgotten.
I rolled up my sleeves and sized up the dimension gate. “A teacher… and a friend. Where do you need me?”
Titus’s mouth turned downward in distaste. “Some salvageable components turned out to be not so salvageable.”
I clenched a fist. “How did we not know about this earlier?”
He grunted. “No way to know until the juice was flowing. And with the ancient design philosophy, they’re not exactly the sort of thing we can just pop out, so those two are burning them down.” The dwarf pointed to the fire mages, both sweating heavily as molten components dripped into a waiting. “Puttin’ ye in the mix will speed things up a bit, but not that much. And yer friend don’t look so good. If ye need to attend to her, that’s understandable.”
I stared at Veldani, struggling to accept the truth.
The only thing I could do for her now was focus on making sure her efforts weren’t wasted.
“Show me where you need me.”
