RE: Monarch-Chapter 265: Kholis X

I sat cross-legged on a patch of verdant grass between the burbling spring and the garden behind the house, beneath the shade of a tree. It had taken some doing to extract myself from the warmth of the blanket and chaise and with my still-sleeping companion.

Now that I was alone, I did my best to relax my mind and let my thoughts wander. I'd been slack in my meditation lately, and as a result, more and more cracks in my discipline had started to show.

The voice I'd heard just before falling asleep, however, wasn't one of them.

Its cruel harshness and snakelike quality left little question regarding who I was hearing. The more pertinent question was when. In all my interactions with Thoth, she'd never sounded so wounded—potentially bordering on distraught. A part of me was still cautious when it came to meddling with matters of my soul, but that part was easily overshadowed by what I stood to gain if I accessed the memory and established what had gotten under her skin so badly.

If the siege weapons failed, anything I could glean from the time before we were mortal enemies had the potential to be used as a weapon.

It wasn't going well. Turning my focus inward and allowing my mind to drift downward—further still until I could easily visualize the spiral of my soul—was the method I'd used with success in the past. But now there was a sense of turbulence, as if my soul itself was resisting the attempt, shunting the magic intended to alter and examine it in every direction except the one I wanted it to go.

The external distractions were more difficult to filter as well. Birdcalls and the wind rustling through the trees pulled my mind in the wrong direction—outside instead of in—and even the early morning sun felt overly harsh.

A shadow appeared, shielding me from the sun.

"Good morning, Ni'lend."

Maya huffed, the grass whispering as she sat across from me. I cracked an eye open. Her fingers played at the hem of her skirts, and her hair was askew, as if she'd just rolled off the chaise and come looking for me. The morning sun dappled her face through the canopy of leaves.

"Not such a good morning?"

"I'll never understand how you manage to be this chipper so early." Maya groused.

Nevertheless, she shifted, drawing her knees beneath her and folding her arms in her lap, then closed her eyes. Her expression took on the same timeless quality it always did when she meditated—muscles in her body and face relaxing as the tension flowed out of them with deep breathing. "I thought something might happen last night."

"Something did. We fell asleep."

"Not right away. There was a time when I was awake, and it seemed like you might have been as well, and we were very close… yet nothing happened."

"I know."

"So you were awake."

"And you were exhausted."

There was a pause. "Not that exhausted."

I cracked open a derisive eye. "The line between the two is more difficult to establish than the tales might lead one to believe. Furthermore, if one guesses wrong, there are few things more likely to inspire resentment than badgering toward salacious ends when the person pestered holds only sleep in their heart."

Maya opened her mouth, then closed it again, giving the matter further thought. "I suppose that's… wise. If over-cautious."

"Those who die often find themselves increasingly risk-averse."

"Now you're just talking about yourself."

/////

The gentle serenity of the glade thoroughly lent itself to meditation. There was no further progress in uncovering the memory, but the difficulty navigating my soul faded as I quieted my mind. Once that was managed, it at least felt like I was drawing closer.

With that out of the way, it was past time to focus on something I'd neglected for far too long. As much as it vexed me—and often felt woefully less useful than its fiery destructive counterpart—there were plenty of wind element mages who used it to devastating success, the elves chief among them. It didn't have the offensive power of the dantalion fire, but little magic did.

More importantly, not long ago, Eckor, the Crimson Brand mage I’d pulled into the fold after he’d been excommunicated for aiding me, revealed the secret to simultaneous casting was to keep both elements at similar levels of mastery. Doing so opened up countless use cases and a world of combat utility at the cost of roughly triple the mana drain. With that explanation in mind, it naturally followed that dual-casting was rare. The average mage wouldn't typically experience a second awakening until far later in life—if they did so at all—making it substantively more difficult to get the second element on parity with the first. There was also a question of sunk cost. If you started with an affinity for water magic, spent half your life learning to weave aqueous mana into pressurized, devastating liquid blades strong and fast enough to carve through stone, then suddenly awakened to earth mana? ṛＡ₦𝘖ᛒÊ𝐬

It wouldn't take the remaining half of your life to master it. With practice, you would have grown far more adroit at weaving mana in general, but it would likely take at least half the time.

Also, it would feel completely counterintuitive to prioritize earth over water in any situation other than the most glaringly obvious applications. You'd default to your original element in most situations, meaning the disparity between the two would only grow.

I was pretty sure that was why, despite keeping company with many extremely adept mages from all walks of life, I'd only seen it managed recently. It was too difficult to keep the elements in balance, and someone with an already powerful element would likely be better served continuing to hone it alongside their recent additions, instead of focusing on the weaker element exclusively.

I'd fallen into the same trap. My wind element had some combat utility, but I almost always defaulted to the dantalion flame. And the gap between dantalion and water was even greater. Widening things further, I had a habit of summoning and manipulating the flame when anxious or in deep thought—idle practice and a way to put my mind at ease.

Which meant that it would take a great deal of concerted effort to get any of my elements to parity, let alone my third.

Even if wind and fire complemented each other better than wine and cheese, it still might not have been worth it.

Yet there was a creeping suspicion that'd been weighing on me for a while now.

Thoth frequently summoned all manner of bullshit out of her ass. To some degree that was expected. She'd lived countless lifetimes, and at the very least appeared to carry her skills and competence across them. Magic was no exception—spells that simply didn't exist, or at the very least hadn't been documented anywhere. Elements that were just as esoteric. Rather than accepting the existence of a whole slew of magic that had somehow escaped the infernals—many of whom spent their lives researching and studying all manner of archaic magic—it seemed more likely that Thoth had mastered every element equally. The more exotic shows of mastery she put on were instead well-disguised blends of various elements.

If I was right, it meant dual-casting was more than just an inefficient novelty. Rather, it was a crucial step on the path to becoming an arch-mage.

And with awakenings so close together, I was uniquely positioned to take advantage of it.

Dropping dantalion flame entirely was out of the question. It simply wasn't practical, and in a bad situation, placing undue restrictions on my magic usage could create hesitation at a critical moment. What I could do was a concept known as flooding—similar to what I'd already been doing with the dantalion flame, only more intentionally—cycling the element's mana whenever possible, generally using it first in all but the most critical situations.

My abilities regarding the second element were limited. Projectiles formed with air were vastly inferior to demon fire, and the fire magic's second tier of mastery—allowing tight control in all areas—meant it was more than sufficient.

Wind projectiles were excellent delivery vectors for various apothecary concoctions, though they generally needed to be dry, which was limiting. An air aegis was both solid and maneuverable enough to throw a potion, but that was the equivalent of using a platinum serving tray to deliver a single dinner roll. Worth it, maybe, if the dinner roll was sufficiently devastating. Certain potent poisons or concoctions likely to kill in the right circumstance could be worth it.

Otherwise, not very realistic.

I continued to ponder the possibilities, calling to a gust of wind that circulated through the treetops above and enhancing its force, plucking dying leaves from long limbs and attempting to assemble them in a procession.

It was devilishly tricky, because I was also trying to retain them all, using the wind as a precision tool instead of a blunt instrument.

More than once, a single leaf would leave the pack, and I'd have to divert the gust entirely to recollect it, often losing more in the process. Still, I'd been using the blunt instrument version of this ability for years, and fine-tuning something you've already mastered is far easier than learning from scratch.

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Within a half hour, I had enough precision to carry a small fleet of leaves either in a line, a roughly diamond-shaped cluster, or several clusters, though splitting my attention made it far more difficult to maintain shape.

Once I had a degree of confidence, I got a little more creative, carrying my growing assortment of shed flora in a gentle circle around my infernal companion without stirring a single hair on her head. For a moment, I believed she was so deep in her trance that the activity had escaped her perception entirely.

Until an oily black circle suddenly appeared, directly in the path of my gust. The greenery I'd been so carefully retaining crashed into the unyielding surface, the breeze scattering with it.

Her eyes opened in quiet annoyance. "Are we enjoying ourselves?"

"I think we are," I half-shrugged, letting the mana go as I laid back beneath the now-late morning sun and propped myself up on an elbow. "Beautiful place, beautiful company, nothing to do but languish in the blessed absence of responsibility with the day before us and the wind in our hair."

"Considerably more wind than usual, and a frankly sweltering degree of hot air."

I mimed taking an arrow to the shoulder, breaking it in half for the sake of maneuverability, and field dressing the wound until the shaft could be more safely removed later. The small oily disk remained there, seeming to be continually moving though obviously stationary, small ripples radiating from its center. Something about what just happened had stuck in my mind like an itch.

Seeing no reason not to, I summoned a gust and sent it directly toward the black dot. Again, once the magic made contact, it immediately dispersed, losing focus and precision control. Maya waited, observing me quietly without a hint of amusement.

"What have you discovered about the Lithid's parting gift?"

"Hm?" She turned to look at it and tilted her head. "Nothing alarming so far, considering the source. No whispers or attempts at sabotage, which I was almost expecting. While it isn't magic in the traditional sense, it mostly feeds on mana, just as magic would, and I can control it similarly. With life magic not working well for certain basic utility the other elements have, it rounds me out a little." There was an unevenness in her voice I keyed in on immediately.

"Mostly?" I asked. When she looked at me blankly, I clarified. "You said it mostly feeds on mana."

"Right." Her eyes slid to the side. "There's something odd about it. Again, nothing to be alarmed about, at least not yet. Earlier, when you were swirling leaves around my head—"

"Apologies," I interjected, feeling a little bad knowing she was aware the entire time.

"It's fine, I'm illustrating a point." Maya half-shrugged and continued. "When it started, it was irritating. Proper meditation cannot always occur in a vacuum. Being able to note distractions, release them, and return focus to the breathing and mana regeneration is vital. I was doing my best to manage it. Only, as it grew more vexing, I got this sense. Sort of like the reflex you'd get to swat away a fly buzzing around your ears, but nothing physical—nothing I could fully explain. A growing impulse to do so, and perhaps more oddly, an increasing awareness that I was fully capable of stopping it."

I sat very still. "That's when you countered?"

"Yes…" Maya said, after considering it for a moment.

"Doesn't that 'reflex' sound a little like a whisper?"

"Not exactly." She seemed to consider leaving it at that, then decided against it. "What do you know about the nature of monsters? Magical ones, like those in the Everwood and Sanctum?"

"Enough to be an ongoing thorn in their side." I said, thinking back to the many, many encounters in the Sanctum. "Unlike their ordinary animal counterparts, they don't really need to eat, and instead subsist primarily on mana—more traditional diet effectively serving as a supplement, though there are a significant number happy to gorge themselves for pleasure."

"Right. What else?"

I thought back. "Species to species, there aren't many hard and fast rules, at least none you'd want to gamble on. Some are dumber than the dirt they tread, while others are frighteningly intelligent. Their diet, behavior, and threat all vary drastically—at least where species is concerned. That's why if you encounter a monster you're unfamiliar with, the best course is to observe from a distance until you get a better sense of the potential danger."

"And if you have encountered the monster before?"

I searched for the trap, finding none. "Setting aside rare instances where sexual dimorphism factors in, assuming the environment and terrain are similar… you would—generally—have a reliable reference for how that monster is going to act. Species of monster vary greatly, while individual behavior within that species is largely predictable. Beneath a certain threshold of intelligence, at least."

"Correct." Maya looked pleased. "The more traditional explanation for this is instinct. Much the same as ordinary animals. Their minds react to various forms of stimulus in predictable ways."

I'd heard as much. "Right."

"Here's the interesting part." Maya smiled. "Many of them don't have minds. At all."

"What?" I sat up a little straighter.

"It's true. Go into any swamp of decent size and find a Mirevale. Cut into its skull. You'll find something that appears to be the brain, but is the wrong shape and isn't connected to the spine. Instead of gray matter, you'll find something closer in composition to clay that has much more in common with inscription magic, though the 'language' is infinitely more complicated."

"An impressive find," I thought on it for a while. "Though I'm not entirely getting the importance of the distinction. A simple mind of flesh isn't so different from what you're describing, right?"

"Ignoring the legion of imaginary academics cringing in the wake of that sentiment, the important part is this: fragments of a monster's 'mind' are spread throughout its entire body."

"Ah…" I said, attempting to look sufficiently impressed.

"I'll break it down." Maya said, growing more determined. "If I were to go into town, find a stray dog, and carve off its foreleg—"

"—Please don't." I cringed a little.

She paused and tried again. "Hypothetically, if I were to amputate a dog's foreleg—"

"—Actually, can we just use something different than a dog for this example?"

Maya cocked her head. "A cat?"

"Preferably not."

"Rabbit?"

"Elphion, why do you keep picking cute things?"

"Is there any animal humans do not project their sentimentality on?" Maya groaned, then eyed me, a little aggrieved. "I've seen you hunt multiple rabbits before."

"It's different. Hunting, not maiming." I looked away innocently.

"Even when you used fire?"

"Badger." I snapped my fingers. "No one likes badgers. They're low-to-the-ground, too-big-for-their-britches dickheads who plague farmers and frequently terrify children. I've never met so much as a single person partial to badgers."

"Okay. And I can maim the badger?"

"The hypothetical badger." I corrected.

Maya made a vaguely strangled sound. "Fine. If I were to trap a badger, carve its leg off, and graft that leg to my ass." She paused there, all but daring me to interrupt. When no interruption came, she breathed a sigh of relief and continued. "The flesh would continue to be extant. But that's all that would be achieved. It would never function at my prompting—not so much as a twitch. Even if the nerves are connected, the anatomy is too different for my mind to interpret what it is and send the necessary signals."

"Then why would a monster be any different—" It hit me, and I sat up straighter. "Because of the internal schema."

Maya nodded. "And the instincts that coincide. Wings desire to fly, to reposition, flee, or seek aerial advantage. Scythes and claws aspire to rend and tear. How beholden the creature is to these impulses is determined by species’ intelligence—yet those impulses provide a convenient blueprint for any outsider creative enough to implement them."

"And what does the lithid's fragment want?" I inclined my head toward the elusive black dot, darting around in the grass, staying within a vaguely circular radius of Maya.

"A great deal." Her brow furrowed. "In some moments it is a flighty claw, eager to disembowel and maim without focus. In others, it is like a shield, stalwart and ever-present, seeking to protect its wielder from harm."

Out of curiosity, I folded my index finger behind my thumb and placed it behind a twig cresting the soft grass. Then flicked outward, sending it catapulting in a gentle arc over Maya's knee. Immediately, the dark spot reacted, leaping up from the grass on an intercept course. With time to spare, it almost seemed to recognize the absence of threat and adjusted its angle, splitting the twig and redirecting it downward where it plopped harmlessly into the ground.

I raised an eyebrow. "Did you do that?"

"No." Maya murmured, holding out a tentative hand. It recalled there and swirled around her central finger like a ring. Her face took on a mask of focus, and the mass reformed into the crude shape of a twilight thrush, bending down to peck at her knuckle before it lost shape. "It's possible I sent the command without realizing—these things can be incredibly subtle—but it happened too quickly."

An old technique occurred to me, one I'd infrequently used to distract certain mana-sensitive monsters in the sanctum. I rooted around in the grass until I found a small pebble, dense despite its size. With slight effort, I began pushing dantalion mana into it, compressing the infusion as much as possible until it was completely overflowing.

The dot's behavior altered as it tentatively roamed to a point directly between the pebble and Maya.

"Do you have any idea what I'm doing right now?"

"No." Her mouth quirked a little. "Though I have a feeling that whatever it is will end up tossed in my direction."

"Right." That should have been obvious in retrospect. I circled around and took a seat behind her, suppressing a smile as she looked over her shoulder at me suspiciously.

"That is not helping the paranoia." Maya complained.

"Part of meditation is accepting that which cannot be changed and moving on."

"Quoting my estranged father at me is really not helping my sense of mindfulness." Maya said. Nevertheless, after a few deep breaths her head tilted slightly downward, and her shoulders relaxed.

The fragment—which had rotated around to stay between us—never wavered. As formless as it was, the sense of trepidation and wariness remained.

Excellent.

Now to really test it. I used my left hand this time, building up as much force as possible before I let the coiled finger fly, impacting the small mana-charged rock with an audible crack. The latter became a blur of motion difficult to see.

My aim was centered just above Maya's left shoulder.

The blot moved so quickly it might as well have teleported, flickering into existence and stopping the pebble flat. A piece of it flew off as the rest slid down the shield and dropped harmlessly to the ground.

Maya cracked an eye open. "I felt it move. What happened?"

"It worked damn well."

Even that felt like an understatement. Excitement pulsed through me as a part of me that'd been tense nearly as long as I'd known Maya finally relaxed. We'd need to test it further, see what the limitations were, but if I was right, what the fragment offered was so much more valuable than a simple aegis. The fact that it had an automated mind of its own instantly made her almost impossible to ambush.

With any luck, the chances of her being felled by a cowardly spell or assassin's blade had plummeted.

"Come on." I offered my hand and she took it, rising to her feet. "Let's see what this thing can really do."

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