RE: Monarch

Thoth scattered dust from her pouch into the fire. Orange flame died to a pale white that bordered on sickly green, the lighting wan and bloodless. She stalked to the other side of the fire with seemingly mindless pacing, one that brought her to a patch of ground well illuminated by the flames. I realized immediately what she was doing.
It was disheartening. Like watching the seemingly drunk fool who challenged you to a bar game sink his first tossed coin into a mug at twenty paces.
This would be difficult.
Having found her place, Thoth crouched beside the fire and poked at it once with a stick. Her voice was taut—bound too tightly to the point it almost wrapped around to become vulnerable again.
"I was born in a city with no name. A place lost to me by both intent and the endless annals of time. An urchin with no relevant talents, a blight upon the roads that I darkened and the boxes I hid in. Cast off from both the parents who abandoned me and the people who passed me by. I remember little about those times. But food was scarce. I had to fight for every morsel. Lie, cheat, and steal for everything I had. I treated those around me harshly and received the same treatment in return. Like any child, I wanted to be loved." Her voice grew quiet, and tears brimmed in her eyes, receding just before they spilled over. "There is no love for a half-breed urchin. We are pariahs, even to our own kind."
My charcoal tapped against the page. "What city?"
Thoth scowled at the interrogative. "I just said I don't remember the name."
"Alright. But you must remember something about it, something more than 'nameless, featureless city.'"
I shrugged and fell quiet.
"There were mainly elves, though infernals, dwarves, practically anyone you could think of traded there. And as I slunk through alleys, pilfering whatever I could, sleeping the days away, I noticed something interesting. There were others the city hated more. Thieves like me. Brigands with rounded ears and cruel eyes, pink skins that wrapped their fragile frames in grand armor and marched beneath a lion's banner. Thieves, not so unlike me. Only they wore their thievery like cloaks around their shoulders, arriving with open palms and brandished blades, demanding payment and goods for the high price of nothing—"
"—And the evil humans set fire to your town, taking what little you had, and setting you on a long, rage-filled path of revenge. Tell me one I haven't heard before." I interrupted.
It was a risk, goading her this way. But a calculated one. Whatever tale she intended was likely more complicated than that, but there was a chance my terseness might inspire error from ire.
Because if she balked, or overreacted, or under-reacted, any of it could immediately out the story as a falsehood. Anyone could recite a monologue and, given enough practice, do so while hitting the correct emotional notes to mark it as true. If the person was talented enough, it could be very difficult to divine truth from fiction. Interruption shook up liars, forced them to respond and compose new material under pressure. If the signals I'd been reading were correct, Thoth could probably do that. But not as well.
A quiet rage radiated from within her, quickly suppressed. Hatred in her eyes mingled with disgust, that I did not have the decency to hold my silence during what was—supposedly—a difficult retelling. "If you'd prefer silence, I can take the arm now."
It was pitch perfect. Minus the situational threat, almost exactly how I'd respond if I'd shared some deeply held secret with another person, only to have them mock me to my face and doubt my integrity.
"Continue."
"I'll continue when I choose to." Thoth growled. I felt her leer, even as I diverted my focus to the bundle of parchment. Poking the same bear that had mauled me more than once was a fool's endeavor, yet I couldn't stop myself from doing it. Because the knife should have been at my throat by now, and it wasn't.
When she finally spoke again, her voice was brittle, lined with a false layer of passivity that all but invited interruption. "The humans
eventually destroy that city. Clichés are clichés for a reason. You couldn't shake a stick without hitting every demi-human village, city, or settlement the Valen ilk have set to the torch. But it was never my city. I loathed it from the day I was born. What I learned from that day when they arrived, with their stern brows and grasping hands, was that not all hate is created equal. Some resides on the surface. Others run deeper than blood, older than centuries. And the hatred held for a single urchin was
compared to the hatred for those who'd outstayed their welcome for far longer. I shed the name I held for the moniker of Thoth." A small smile graced her lips, and she stared into the fire. "And the rest, as they say, is history."
There was a momentary pause that grew torturously long. A dozen questions nested behind my tightened lips, though I refused to give them voice.
"You're not going to ask anything?"
"Last time I did, I was threatened." I tossed the charcoal up and down, watching it rise straight upward before smacking back down into my palm, dusting it black. "It's impossible to ascertain whether I'm allowed to speak."
"Don't be a child."
The small detail I was trying to ignore rose to prominence, and my eyes flicked to her. "Right. Because you hate children, don't you? Like the storybook witches of old, you can't fucking stand them."
She raised an eyebrow. "It seems you have something to say."
"I've already said it. Whenever you're ready." I paused to scribble something on the parchment, using the brief silence to suppress the rage I felt.
"Ask the question."
"Is there a second and third story? Or are we just going to sit here, poking at each other the entire night?"
Thoth shrugged, then reached into a pouch at her waist and tossed a pinch of powder into the fire. The pale tongues of flame grew gilded beneath the dust, giving a warmer, grander impression.
"I was a seeker of the path, an elven practitioner of magics so old a mortal three times your age would hold no memory of them. I wielded power you cannot begin to comprehend, centuries before you were born. Ages past, a student of mine discovered an oddity, deep within the ruins of the Risen Kingdoms. A tear in reality that had seemingly aged one half of her body."
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"You. A
" I didn't bother hiding the derision.
Her face grew ruddy, the embarrassment more tinged with nostalgia than rage. She cast her eyes downward toward the fire. "It came naturally. One of the perks of being an excellent observer is that you can easily come to understand how others think. But you are… correct. I was a hex on those who made the pilgrimage desperate for a fraction of my power. I loathed the seekers for their hubris and expectations. So it wasn't a difficult turn to make a habit of exploiting them, draining them dry from the comfort of my lair, lavishing in their gifts while offering little in return." Her golden eye reflected the gilded fire. "Of everything I've done over countless lives, there is not much I regret. But… I do wish I'd treated them better. The students who came to me. Placed more than petty crumbs on offer. They were afraid. Afraid of me. Afraid of the world that was so often cruel and hostile to them. Afraid of death. And I loathed them for it. Because I'd already lived long enough to have forgotten what fear was." Her voice was faraway, laden with a subtle ache.
"What changed?"
"The student—the one who showed me the tear as payment—died long before I unraveled its secrets." Her voice lowered, oddly reverent. "Including its greatest. The secret to immortality. Within that tear was a thousand different worlds, a thousand different versions of myself. I was able to use certain methods to exploit this, easing my then advanced age. Becoming young again."
My breath caught.
"Eras passed. Time grew meaningless as the months stretched on. My belly was full and my coffers were fuller. I surrounded myself with lovers, musicians, entertainers, and poets—molded them to suit my every whim and desire, grew tired and cast them out, only to become lonely after an assortment of years and start the cycle all over again." Her lip curled. "At the end of one such cycle a bald human sought an audience. A sniveling rodent of a man with a habit of scurrying from shadow to shadow, hiding amongst the refuse. It boggled the mind, because of the many flinching mortals to seek me out over the years, this one wasn't afraid. And if he wasn't afraid of me, he wasn't afraid of anything. It was the only reason I took him seriously. And as they so often do, the scuttling invertebrate brought bad tidings. Ragnarok was not only coming, but imminent, within the next twenty years. I didn't believe it at first. It took years to confirm the claims. Yet in the end, his words held true."
"Thaddeus?" I finally asked, unable to wait any longer for the confirmation.
Thoth nodded slowly. "Search any dark corner of the earth, and eventually you'll find him. Like most fools with grand ideas, he had little understanding of how to execute them. He didn't hold much talent himself, but he knew others that did. They became my students, and eventually, we found a method to exploit the temporal fissure. And with a little demonic assistance, eventually formed the greater loop. And I learned what fear was, once again."
I'd gone from thinking the story was clearly untrue, to doubting myself again. In a vacuum there were aspects of this story that felt more manufactured. The teaching motif and forgotten fear wrapping back around to the conclusion. For the most part, it fit a bit too cleanly to be real.
Only there was the part in the middle.
The comments about neglecting her students felt authentic. Vulnerable. If she was lying, she'd also for some reason chosen a lie that depicted her in a light of uncertainty, potential weakness. Which was an odd choice.
Before I could speak, she passed her hand over the fire again. The circle of light shrank to a quarter of its size, dark blue fire simmering as it ate through the remnants of powder. Small tendrils of smoke escaped the binding as the heat grew and the light faded.
Her open hand became a fist.
"Listen closely. Because I will not repeat any of this again."
Subconsciously, I leaned forward.
A heaviness came over her, the weight of a thousand worlds settling down on her shoulders. Her white hair fell into her face, shrouding her eye from view, as shadows from the flickering fire danced around her, growing in abundance. "I loved something once. It could have been a person, but that was so, so very long ago that it could have been a possession, vocation, or some belief clung to tightly. What matters is that it was priceless. Irreplaceable. One day, I was given a choice. Surrender the boon I held so dearly, or find my life forever changed. I chose the latter. Everything that followed is muted, difficult to recall. I remember blades. Knives flashing like tiny daggers in the dark, parting flesh and revealing bone. Murmurs and mutterings I couldn't understand. Sometimes the pain was too much. But words never reached them, no matter how I bargained, and whimpered, and eventually begged. I was alone until I wasn't, and the little blades set to task slicing and severing and sculpting beneath hooded, mouthless faces that stared beneath lights bright enough that nothing else could be seen. They cut me, pricked me with needles and implanted objects beneath my skin. Tubes and syringes imparted burning substances beneath my flesh. They left only my belly unscathed."
I recognized it immediately, beyond the words, honing in on the tremor in her voice.
"Were you questioned during the process?"
She shook her head, then after a moment of thought, contradicted herself with a nod. "Not in the traditional sense. They were curious about mundanities. My diet, history, personal attachments, age… how aware I was of the potential scalding through my veins. They were never pleased with my answers, or displeased. They simply absorbed them, silently returning to the knives."
Thoth sat down hard, mouth still moving, silent and wordless.
It felt like a dramatic pause. One that came exactly when you would expect such a thing.
Only it dragged on. Seconds at first. Then minutes.
"… is that the end?"
Thoth jolted, then looked up in irritation as if I'd interrupted. After a moment she continued. "Of course not. I endured their ministrations and was gifted power in return. The sort of ability countless fools have fought and killed over, gifted freely. Or so I thought." Her face grew pale, strained. "When I woke, the thing that I loved was gone, with the promise that it would eventually be returned. I was assigned all manner of tutors and trainers. Magicians who lauded me with praise, rubbing their hands together at the thought of sculpting me into a perfect weapon. Academics who sought to impart their ideas and beliefs onto a burgeoning, curious mind. They'd happily answer any questions I had about the topics at hand, but as soon as the questions turned to what I'd lost—what was promised to be returned to me—they would fall silent." Her golden eye locked on me. "There was a boy. One who pretended to understand. One who had endured the same terrible things I had."
The violence that simmered in the air left little question as to who the boy was. The fact that she was invoking me at all was interesting. Her other stories had passed with no reference to me. Kicked up mud clouding the water.
I let it sit, then pressed for more information. "You weren't the first?"
"There were five of us in total."
"Six, if we're being technical. One didn't last long." The side of her mouth quirked in bitter nostalgia. "We clung to each other like frightened children—because that is what we were—naïve sons and daughters of broken nations, convinced that the bonds we forged with each other would carry us through any trial, our hubris fostered by leaders and elders alike, all desperate to believe we would deliver them to salvation. And we attended them. Bent to their wishes and whims. Because we did not yet understand what we were."
I thought back grimly to some of what Ralakos had said. "Monsters."
"Gods." Thoth countered. "Every single one of us imbued with greater potential than the so-called divine, who watched the world hurtling towards its terminus and did nothing.
." She let the sudden surge of anger fade, jaw tightening as she scanned the darkness of the copse beyond. "The boy told me I was not alone. That he too had lost something he loved. And if we listened, and did as those who dared to give us orders requested, we would get it back someday.”
"Six children against Ragnarok. Whoever dreamed that up must have been out of their minds."
"It was the initial effort. An experiment. After it proved successful, they recruited more that never matched us. Capable fighters that were inferior in mind and spirit. Unwanted additions that cost us far more in the long run than simple hindrance. Eventually, I realized the thing that I loved—what was taken from me—would never be returned. Because the work would never be finished."
I scribbled a final note at the bottom of the page. She stood and crossed beside the fire, her boots perilously close to the muted flames. Her shadow covered me, and her eyes flicked to the parchment on my lap, which I quickly shielded. Slowly, so slow it had to be intentional, she bent down and retrieved the knife at my side, obviously glancing over my left arm. "Your time is over. Now choose."
The tautness in her shoulders and readiness in her posture was unmistakable. Speaking the wrong answer would be the beginning of much torment. I desperately wished for the briefest respite, to glance over my notes and compare and contrast the tales against each other.
But in truth, there was no need.
I chose.