RE: Monarch

We barely emerged from the winery unscathed. It wasn't even our intention to get drunk. Only there had been tastings, and recommendations, and something called a Soar that involved trying a multitude of concentrated spirits in quick succession, comparing and contrasting them to each other. Or at least, that was supposed to be the concept, the comparing and contrasting. After the third of fourteen, they tasted like nothing but fire to me.
"Why did we… do that?" Maya put a hand to her mouth as we exited the winery, looking a little green.
"Because it was fun." I answered simply, shifting the newly filled satchel onto my back.
"It was… yet… it is also the middle of the day… and we have business to attend to." Maya stilled. Her eyes darted around us. "Inebriated. Don't have my staff. If something happened, I'm not sure I could defend myself."
"We're not that far gone." I took another few steps forward, squinting under the too-bright sunlight.
"No. We really should be more careful." Maya repeated, still keeping watchful vigil over our surroundings.
"Alright." As there was no bench nearby I guided her toward the stone lip of a nearby garden bed, filled with vibrant flowers, then lifted her up onto it by her waist.
She shifted once, looked behind her, then stared down at me from her perch, embarrassed. "You do not have to ferry me."
"Not at all." I pointed beyond the garden bed to the building beyond. "But now there's nothing behind you but dirt and rock wall. You're elevated, so you have a vantage on everything around us. There's an alley further back to the left, but I'm keeping it in the corner of my eye."
Going on holiday doesn't mean throwing vigilance to the wind. I'd bet half the treasury that this place is as good as it appears to be, but even good places are often beset by spies." I unhooked her canteen from her waist and popped the cork, pressing it against her stomach until she took it from me. "Just play the part of a maiden taking respite after falling too deep into her cups, while you take stock of our surroundings."
Without further comment, she did so, scanning the city between deep pulls from the canteen.
The cool breeze soothed us both, as I rested my elbows on the stone lip she sat upon, drawing in deep breaths. There was something cleansing about the air—crisp and green, carrying the scent of fresh leaves and distant mountain streams. Maybe it was the Elven mage, still swirling bands of leaves and greenery about the sky, or perhaps it had something to do with the Everwood. Still, it was as if the entire time I'd returned to Whitefall, I'd only ever filled my lungs halfway, and here in Kholis that limiter was suddenly gone.
Maya suddenly groaned. "Did we even
something to bring to the estate?"
I nodded, shifting the satchel off my shoulder and unzipping it before her, revealing two bottles filled with sparkling clear liquid. "The Eastwind… uh… Crystal Grape Wine."
"That was not its name." Her mouth quirked.
"There were a lot of names. But from what we were told it's rare and difficult to source." I took one bottle out and lifted it up so it could be seen, enjoying the look of its atypical appearance. Thousands of sparkling gems radiated in the clear liquid, burning most brightly where the reflection of the sun refracted outward. "More importantly, we liked it more than anything else."
"Glad we have something to show for our time, though I'm not even sure when you bought it." Maya asked, momentarily captivated by the bottle.
I smiled a little. "While you were struggling to finish your soar."
She dragged her hands down her face in exasperation. "Why oh why was it so
"
"Because if it was shorter, they'd call it a hop. Drink." I pushed the canteen at her again, and she tipped it back begrudgingly.
As the canteen left her lips, she tilted her head a little, more clear-eyed as she looked past me at something in the distance.
"Spies?" I asked.
"No." She shook her head. "At least, none that are making themselves obvious. But there are many people heading toward the edge of town, toward the river."
I turned and saw that she spoke truth. There was still a great number of people milling about, same as before, but it was as if during our time in the winery the tides had changed, and now people from all walks of life—individuals, couples, and families—were trickling out toward the river, the trails of leaves following overhead as if pulled by an invisible current.
"Could be about to start." I eyed the basket resting on the lip near her knees. "Once you're feeling better, we can head that way. If you still wish to do so, that is."
/////
It was more crowded than I'd expected. Which also did well in summarizing Kholis as a whole. The Elven priest from earlier was standing in the middle of a bridge, at the center of the din, speaking something inaudible as he stirred his staff, gesturing at the air.
Those who weren't gathered directly around him had slowly spread out downstream on either side of the river, many sitting upon blankets, lovers lounging beneath the waning sun, and families breaking bread together.
But there was clear intent beyond simply gathering before nature. I saw several people removing the tops from baskets that looked quite similar to ours, dumping the colorful contents out as they turned those half-baskets upside down, smearing something on the underside with brushes.
"It seems we are missing some pieces." I leaned over and murmured to Maya.
She squinted at a small family not far from us who'd overturned their basket, and were now coating its underside with something clear. "Are they making them waterproof?"
"That makes sense." I cocked my head. "But what are they using, and to what purpose?"
A portly, gap-toothed woman on her way to a spot further down the river carrying a large bucket stopped beside us, having clearly overheard. Something about the way she looked sparked a distant memory, but she interrupted that thought before I could place it. "Silver Bloom resin, sir. Silver bloom. There's better options, but the whole point is that it doesn't last long. Holds together long enough for the baskets to travel the river northward until it's deep in the Everwood, then it falls apart. This,"—she toed the basket with her sandal—"and whatever you've gathered will provide a hefty meal to the leaf eaters that stumble across it, be they river dwellers or those that dwell along it, and in turn provide sustenance to those that consume them."
Again, the feeling of wrongness swept over me. Not because anything was amiss, exactly, but because it felt so unreal. It felt like half the town had showed up for a ritual that appeared to be Elven in origin. There were countless individuals of elven, dwarven, and human origins along with glimpses of others I didn't recognize. The last time I'd seen a crowd as varied as this, they'd deposed me.
And yet there was no sign of conflict. No watchful eyes. This gathering of folk had clearly learned to trust each other, a far cry from the divisiveness of Whitefall, but how the hells had Lucius done it?
It felt fragile, somehow.
I eyed the bucket. "And you wouldn't just so happen to be carrying around a reservoir of such resin to hand out to visitors out of the kindness of your heart?"
The woman guffawed, hand to her chest as the laughter dimmed to chortles. "Heavens' no. I'm sellin' passage, as the queen of the underworld intended."
"Lune must smile upon you this day." I opened my purse, fishing out two silver bits.
"Nyx, actually." The woman corrected. "I'm not familiar with… Lune?"
"Ah. Apologies."
I handed her the silver.
As deities went, it was odd to hear a human invoke the infernal goddess of death and passage. Odder still that the same woman would have such limited knowledge of our pantheon. Still, most humans kept their worship purely to Elphion these days. And given the many temples and general open-mindedness of the place, some crossover was to be expected. My mother had told me many stories of Lune, the human equivalent. Mostly they were sad tales, detailing how the goddess had been tricked, manipulated and seduced into watching over the underworld as her divinity and power slowly drifted away. It had a moral, same as the rest of her fables, this one regarding hubris.
In retrospect, as obvious and transparent as the rest.
Stories laced with poison, intent on slowly transforming me through sculpting repetition into the sort of person so diametrically opposed to my father that I would eventually attempt to overthrow him for her.
No wonder I hated him in my previous life.
The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.
Hells, no wonder he hated me.
"Is… something wrong?" The woman looked antsy, ready to turn and run, and I realized some of the darkness must have shown in my expression.
"Not at all." I bathed her in a warm smile as the mask slipped back into place, reaching out and taking the small jar of resin she offered, small painter's brush tied neatly to the top. "So we coat the bottom with this?"
The woman forced a smile. "Yes. See that you keep it away from your clothes, nothing'll get those stains out, trust me. Once you're done and you've let it air out for a tick, place it gently on the grass and arrange the flowers all pretty like, then set sail when you hear the bell. Everyone else'll be doing the same."
"Wait, that's it?" Maya blinked. "No prayers or words of ritual?"
The woman half-shrugged. "It's more about the act of it. Some pray. Others simply express gratitude for whatever bounty the season brought them."
"I see…" Maya's voice trailed off as the woman retreated.
I could feel her eyes on me even as I turned away, busying myself with the resin and painter's brush. It had a potent scent, acrid, similar to a spruce tree.
"Should we give thanks, then?" She asked me, in a voice that seemed to ask something else.
"Can't see why not." I looked up at her, trying for the same charming smile before returning to the basket. "We've both got plenty to be grateful for."
"What happened?"
"Nothing happened." I kept the smile fixed in place.
"Lying again?" Maya crossed her arms, expression immediately turning stern.
"It's not—fuck—it's not a lie." I pressed the brush too hard against the basket's rough exterior, causing it to fray. "Mentally stumbling over something meaningless in the reaches of my accursed mind doesn't equate to something happening. And just because I don't want to talk about it right now, isn't the same as keeping it from you."
"Fine." She lowered her arms to her sides, still tense. "But it's frustrating."
"Why?" I fought exasperation.
Pain rose up for a fraction of a second before her expression hardened. "I want to be able to help when you're lost, mired in your own thoughts. But it's difficult when I can't simply pluck both the problem and its corresponding solution from the sky as you do."
"What do you mean?" I stared at her.
She turned away, skin flushed beneath the sun and heat. "When we were coming out of the winery, and I realized how the drink had affected me, I became… afraid. And instead of being condescending and dismissing those fears, or even asking if I wanted to cut things short, you picked me up and put me down somewhere else, and suddenly, I didn't feel afraid anymore."
Now that she'd spelled it out, I felt a degree of guilt. Because she was right. Until I had the sort of strength that rendered my ability to relive sections of my life over and over pointless, I would spend time with her that she would lose when I died.
Some were better off that way.
But not all.
The explanation was simple enough. Back at the cabin, when things were at their worst, Maya would often go out onto the roof. As a person who's reasonably afraid of heights, joining her there—venturing out the window and onto the overhang—was always something of an ordeal. At some point I connected that somehow height combined with isolation made her feel safe.
I stared at the ground. Then the words flowed freely.
"I'm not sure how much I remember about my upbringing is real. That's the crux of it. I believed everything she told me. Ate up her carefully curated fables and tales, aligned myself with her staunch, rigidly unrealistic morality. I think she believed the way she raised me would eventually lead me to take issue with his rule and overthrow him. But good stories don't make a good person. Maybe I knew the difference between right and wrong. I should have. After all, she cast herself as a moral paragon, the ultimate voice of reason to a place that couldn't see the wisdom of her words. But the problem with shining a light on yourself in a world of darkness is that when you have the misfortune of prematurely dying, the light fades. And when she passed, that was what happened. I couldn't pick up the mantle she'd left behind. No one could. It was impossible. I spent my last moments telling the kingdom to go fuck itself for taking away the only thing I had left that mattered to me because I'd long since decided everything else but
was too far gone to give a shit about."
I stopped there, and gently, Maya pried the basket from my hand, turning it upside down on the grass and using the brush to apply a coat of her own. "Take your time."
I closed my eyes. "And when I was reborn again with power, the cynicism of my mind washed away by the naivety of youth, all I could think when the dust had cleared and Barion lay defeated, was that this was my chance to become the person she believed I could be. Without even realizing why she wanted me to be that way. I could be the storybook hero, and unite the realm against the usurper, my father be damned."
"There is no noble, peasant, human, demon, elf, or dwarf without their own agenda." Maya said. She'd finished coating the second basket and placed it side by side with the first. She put a clasp of flowers inside, arranging them so the colors graduated from one to another strikingly, before she glanced up at me. "Including you."
I wanted to argue. But she was right. What my mother had done was not so different from what my father had constantly tried to do. Both had attempted to turn me into what they perceived to be an ideal ruler. Because I'd simply believed her, rather than resisting her, they'd seldom argued over my first life. I knew that, because the guards always got edgy when there was tension.
It just felt like more of a betrayal, because she'd vastly succeeded where my father lacked in subtlety.
Maybe all parents were that way.
Maybe I only felt as strongly as I did because the revelation was fresh.
In a way, nothing had changed. Back then I still believed in the possibility of a kinder world. Some part of me still does, even now, though not quite the same way.
"Even if Thoth is taken from us sooner than she'd prefer, I say we… continue on." I breathed out slowly, then busied myself arranging the assortment of blue and golden flowers into the wicker boat.
"Oh?" Maya asked, glancing over her growing, vibrant arrangement with curiosity. "I wasn't entirely sure what would come next, if she met an untimely demise at sea."
"It will take time. And almost assuredly a great deal of effort. But I'd like to at least start to renegotiate Uskar's standing with the elves and dwarves."
"Which elves?" Maya raised an eyebrow.
"All of them."
"That will be quite the undertaking. Dwarves are somewhat fractured on their own, but the elves are as vast as they are varied. And the dark elves won't make any sort of official agreement…"
"Unless word is sent down from their empress." I slid a violet flower into the center of the blue, lacking a better place for it. "Meaning we will eventually have to leave this continent entirely."
"We?" The smile played across her lips.
"I wouldn't dream of doing it without you."
"Such guile." Maya rolled her eyes, squinting at her arrangement of pink and white. "Even with Thoth gone, there's still Ragnarok to worry about. But from what we've learned, there's quite a bit of time between your coronation and that event. It might be easier to accomplish what you intend when the crown rests upon your brow."
"You're saying I should wait?" I plucked the purple flower from the field of blue and frowned. It didn't really feel like it belonged anywhere in the arrangement.
"No. I'm asking why you don't want to."
I looked around. "Even if it was my mother who authored that fantasy, I still love it dearly, and want to see it continue. Because there are still wrongs to be righted. That
want to right."
"Why is that so important?"
"Because one day, I will have children. And when they venture into my study to ask questions about the world they see around them—as I asked of my father—I don't want to explain to them that the luxury of their lives came at the expense of others. I'd like to be proud of what I've built. Not ashamed of how I built it. Not embarrassed, or evasive. Proud." Emotion wore in my voice, the thoughts rawer than I'd realized. "And when I pass on from this life, I'd like them to inherit something they won't have to choose between fixing or abandoning altogether."
An icy fear swept over me. The same fear that always filtered through me when I dared to think about the future.
Maya moved the basket from her lap and gestured to her knees. "Come here."
"Come… where?" I said, probably looking a bit like a man who'd just seen a snake in the grass.
The slightest hint of a disapproving look disappeared as Maya patted her legs again. "Head, here, like that couple across the river. You've done it before. Stop asking so many questions."
There was indeed a dwarven man and woman lounging beside the river across from us, man with his head on the woman's lap, mouth slightly open in relaxed bliss. Public displays of affection weren't really my thing. Actually, I found them rather gauche. But there were a lot of couples assembled at the gathering, many of whom were lounging in each other's company. And I had encouraged her to take the lead.
I stood, repositioning a little closer to the trickling water so I could lay back with my head on her lap. The supple flesh of her legs cushioned me as I awkwardly stared upward, her smiling face blotting out the sun. "See, this is the problem with such things. The premise is promising, even a little exciting. But once you're—oh… that's… something."
Without warning, she'd gripped my shoulders and dug her thumbs into the meat of my back around my shoulder blades, locating the tautest sections of muscle until the knots slowly diminished. "What's… this for…?"
"I made you talk about something difficult. Because I wanted to hear it. You didn't want to say it but you did it anyway, because it was what I wanted. Sorry. For being pushy."
"Sorry for being evasive." I returned, feeling overtaken by the sudden proximity and closeness. Her thumbs continued to work over my shoulders, rising to my neck. After a moment I smiled in realization. "Alright, no one's that good. You're cheating."
"Is it really cheating if I'm just… using my talents." A rush of life magic traveled down my spine to my core, lodging itself next to the knot of grief I still held there. "You hold the entire world on these shoulders. Both the parts of it you can control and the parts you can't. Let some of it go. At least for now, for the next two days. I need you to be around for a long time. Give it to me. We can talk about your plans for the kingdom and how many children we'd like to have when the days are up."
"I'm not sure if I can." Every time I closed my eyes, I saw her face instead. That hideous serpentine eye, hissing voice, and angular features. I couldn't live until she died. Anything else was out of the question.
"Try." Maya urged.
Another surge of life magic distracted me, and for a moment—just a moment—her face disappeared, erased by the sheer relief of tension leaving my body. I found my thoughts drifting in dangerous directions. Fantasizing about what could be, rather than staying radically anchored in the present. The same fear pried at my senses. In my mind's eye, almost so clearly that it felt as if I was seeing it in person, I saw a glittering blade held by a hand wrapped in banded leathers, weaving its way through the crowd.
There were screams. I roused, adrenaline burning away the paralysis of fatigue. I leaped to my feet and spun around, uneven and off-balance, searching for threats through smeared vision.
A small group of children rushed past me, revealing themselves as the source of the din, cackling and laughing madly as they weaved between the colorfully dressed figures of their older counterparts who struggled to their feet, brushing grass and dirt off their clothes, some stretching, before they reached for their baskets.
I found myself confronted by the vaguely crazed thought that it was all too mundane. Nothing was this good and uncorrupted. There had to be something wrong with it. A burned down apothecary tucked away in a forgotten corner, coiled in wait, ready to strike at any given moment.
Instead, fingers interlaced with mine. Maya shifted into my vision, her smile wide. "Looks like we're getting ready for the voyage."
Careful not to disturb the arrangements, we both lifted our baskets turned boats and headed down to the river.