RE: Monarch
Chapter 109: Sanctum XXXIV

Startled and shaking from the close call, it took a long time for my mind to correctly interpret what my eyes were seeing. The infernal before me wasn’t a younger version of Ralakos. He’d looked identical at first glance, but as I took him in more and more, the differences became more stark. His mouth was sterner, and his eyebrows more defined. Still, the resemblance was significant to the point where I couldn’t help but stare.

“You’re looking at me like you know me, but I’m rather certain I’d remember meeting a human who did not try to kill me on sight.” Gods, they even spoke the same.

At first, I thought it might be another illusion, then several things occurred to me at once. If this was meant to be some sort of trial, I doubted it would have pulled the same trick twice. Secondly, if it was an illusion, it was a poor one. The infernal hadn’t even pretended to know me, and seemed to have no knowledge of the individual he was impersonating.

No, this was something else.

I gathered my thoughts, turning to take in our surroundings. The room was circular and bare, with only a small circular basin in the middle. It was perfectly round, the water pristine and still. Finally, my breathing returned to normal.

I turned back to the infernal, who still watched me warily, my mother’s words in the back of my mind.

If you don’t know how to move forward, decency and diplomacy costs you nothing.

“Let me start over. Thank you for the warning. I’m Cairn.”

The infernal looked amused. He muttered to himself in demonic. “You don’t fear for your soul?”

That caught me off-guard, until I realized he was referring to the human folk tales surrounding infernals. I laughed and replied in demonic. “I fear for my soul plenty, but not from you, friend.” He called me friend before he’d met me, it only seemed polite to respond in kind.

The infernal’s eyebrow rose. “Sure. A polite, non-murderous human in the sanctum who speaks demonic. If this is an illusion, it’s a bad one.” The infernal said, unknowingly echoing my earlier thought. He reached out to clasp my arm, returning the gesture. “I am known as Xarmos.”

A memory stirred from long ago, when Ralakos had told me a cautionary tale besides an infernal monument from the war. The story of his son.

The hair on the back of my neck stood up. Still, I gripped his arm for the requisite moment and released it.

Xarmos inclined his head toward the room. “A nasty trial, that one.”

“It was.” I agreed.

“My wife called to me. Her voice, the feel of her hand, everything was exactly the same. If I hadn’t known beyond all certainty that she was not in the sanctum, it would have been the end of me.” He shook his head, then glanced at me. “Who did you see?

“My demon.” I held up the amulet for Xarmos. He chuckled.

“Something funny?”

“Nothing. You get harder to believe with every word you speak. Which, for some reason, is more convincing than anything else that you are real,” Xarmos said. He rubbed at his eyes, then straightened, smiling apologetically.

No. It wasn’t a trick of the mind or an illusion. The wise features, the way he held himself, the horns. Horns I’d seen Ralakos gesture to on the monument wall. This was that Xarmos. Someone I knew to be dead.

What the hells was happening?

“What’s your father’s name, Xarmos?” I asked him carefully. There were multiple possibilities and ways this could play out, but for the moment it was best not to overplay my hand.

He jerked back and stared at me. “Damn this place.” His hand moved towards his sword. Another second and he would have pulled it.

I didn’t give it to him. I threw myself forward, drawing the shattered dagger on my back and pressing it lightly against his neck. He raised his hands slowly, his throat bobbing, eyes wide. “Quick.”

“Have to be,” I said through gritted teeth. “Now stay still. I’m done with this game, and to be honest with you, I don’t remember the last time I put poison on this thing. What is your father’s name?”

“My father is Ralakos.”

Hearing confirmation didn’t make me feel any better. What exactly was I supposed to do with that information? “Why did you suddenly change your mind?”

“Because… I just had a vision… about my father. Then, you, somehow who has no business being here, comes in asking about my father. What was I supposed to think?” His eyes glanced down at the blade nervously. “Is that sad thing actually poisoned?”

“It often is. I really don’t remember.”

“Somehow that’s more terrifying.”

“I know your father. That’s the only reason I asked. How long have you been down here?”

Xarmos looked confused by the question. “A few years.” He looked at the blade again. “Mind if we continue this without threat of a slow and painful death?”

I breathed out, then relented. “Fine.”

Only after I lowered my blade did I see the point of a small, angled knife pressed against the weak spot in my chitin breastplate.

Fuck.

Xarmos smirked at me. “Mine was dipped in laudenshade. Definitively.”

“Didn’t know you were an alchemist,” I murmured.

“I dabble,” he replied. Then, with a smooth motion, he stepped away, flipping the knife in his hand and sliding it into a hidden sheathe beneath his wrist. I felt consummate relief. Strangely, I also found I immediately wanted a sheath and knife of similar make.

How practical.

“See?” Xarmos said casually. “You did not stab me when you thought you had the upper hand, and I did not stab you when I did. We have established rapport.”

“Hell of way to build trust.” I grumbled, feeling at the spot beneath my breastplate, checking for any section the poison could have gotten through.

“You do not know what this place is.”

I shook my head. “No, only that it obstructed my way, and the only way forward was through.”

Xarmos scoffed. “The sanctum dealt you a cruel hand, my friend. You replace yourself in the midst of a trial. And not just any trial. The Trial of Infaris.”

My mouth dropped open. “The first infernal?”

“Yes. You know our history as well. Curiouser and curiouser.”

Again, I wasn’t sure how much information to reveal. There was an awkward moment where just sort of stared at each other. “So… this trial. How does it work?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. I came here chasing ghosts. The gate is rumored to randomly show up at various locations, though no one has reported taking a trial in more than fifty years. The reward is rumored to be significant. I needed something substantial than some lukewarm artifact from the upper strata to bring back, and the gate appeared. So…” he shrugged. “I jumped in.”

I snorted.

“Perhaps, not the wisest choice, given the circumstances.”

“Are they all meant to be like that?” I inclined my head towards the door.

Xarmos shook his head. We compared notes then. He had gone through a trial before the last room, which was interesting—we apparently had a different starting point. There was a room with swinging blades and a series of moving platforms that sounded straight out of a pulpy adventure story. Our experience in the false-companion room was more or less the same. Then, the current room.

Xarmos’s brow furrowed. “Do you have any water?”

“Yes.”

“Check.”

Momentarily confused by the abrupt turn in the conversation, I pulled my water-skin from my satchel. And stared. I was sure it was full. I’d filled it at a mountain stream and asked Jorra to purify it. But it was completely deflated, slack, and empty. Not trusting my eyes, I undid the tight knot around the mouth, feeling inside for moisture. Nothing. Bone dry.

“It was the same for me,” Xarmos said grimly. “I have a feeling we will be seeing this trial again. The only source of water is from that fountain. You drink it, and a vision takes you. Even if you have a water magician with you, that door,” he pointed to the heavy wooden door across from the one we had entered, “Only opened once I drank from the fountain. Once you entered, it closed again.”

“What sort of vision was it?”

His mouth turned downward. “A deeply unpleasant one.”

I couldn’t suppress the groan. I had enough unpleasantness lurking in the depths of my mind without external sources meddling further. But the more I thought about it, the more I felt at peace. Taking recent history into account, what could the vision possibly show me that would be worse than all of that?

“How do you know of Ralakos?” Xarmos asked, his expression serious.

There was no way I was telling him the truth. Whatever he was, an apparition, a construct, or otherwise. An idea struck. “You know what? I’ll tell you when I’m back.” I pushed myself up and strode towards the fountain.

“Hey!” He called after me, affronted. “I just gave you all sorts of information.”

“Yes.” I shrugged. “Consider this a trust-building exercise.”

“What if you fail? If your mind breaks?”

“Not likely.”

I dipped my cup into the fountain and drew it to my lips. Xarmos scowled from across the room and flipped me the raven, but there was no malice in the gesture, I tipped the cup over my chapped lips and swallowed.

/////

“My love.”

I blinked.

Where was I? The sun was setting, framed by a resplendent window. The scent of cotton and chemicals lurked beneath a flowery fragrance of lavender and jasmine.

“I look… ridiculous.” Lillian said, giving me a dubious look. A feeling of warmth and pride enveloped me, the same feeling that always followed in her presence. Her honeyed her cascaded around her shoulders. She looked beautiful, and only slightly ridiculous. She was standing upon a stool, a corset tight around her waist, highlighting her full figure. The tailor was in the process of sizing her and had left before the process had finished.

“The very picture of elegance.” I closed the distance between us, rising to catch her lips with mine.

“Liar,” She scoffed.

“How you wound me, my love.” I smiled. Her green eyes sparkled in the sunlight, mouth downturned ever so slightly. “We have come a long way from hauling ingredients in the forest.”

“I liked the forest!”

“As did I. The view was delightful, what with me, always following behind you.”

Lillian rolled her eyes and pushed me. I scooped her up from her perch, and her giggles rose in pitch as I spun her around. “Put me back! Put me back!”

Gently, I returned her to her perch, trying not to linger on the warmth of her, the way she’d felt pressed against me. There was a polite cough from the side of the room. I immediately stepped away, and pretended not to notice as Lillian flushed.

“Pardon the interruption,” the tailor said, stepping between us.

“Apologies,” Lillian said quietly. I watched as the tailor busied himself with a gilded string, bustling around her, clucking his tongue from time to time. The hardest part of all of this was helping her break the insidious habit of deferment. She was always so polite, so kind. My mother could manage that sort of thing because she held her power intrinsically. The way she had carried herself, her manner. Only a fool would have taken her power as weakness. Lillian was different, though. She was unsure of herself, and her politeness stemmed from fear of misstep. If she took that attitude to court, the noble ladies would consume her whole and spit her out. No one can sense weakness quite like a noble.

“Not sure if I’ll have anything in her size,” The tailor mumbled.

“Problem?” I asked.

“Hips are a bit too full, bosom a bit sparse.”

Lillian looked down. I bit back a sharp retort before it could rise. This caliber of tailor would never make that sort of comment in the presence of a nobleman and his wife. No. He’d cast judgement on us at the door—a nobleman, entering with a pretty commoner—and drawn his own conclusions.

“Well…” I drew out the word, letting acid into my tone, “it is a good thing we came to a tailor, who—unless I am mistaken—are known to make adjustments for such things.”

He glanced up, looking over his spectacles in surprise. Of course. To his minuscule credit, he seemed to realize he had read the situation very wrong. “I was mistaken, my lord. I did not realize you were in the market for something custom.”

“You did not realize much, Tailor.”

A bead of sweat formed on his forehead. “Let me look again. I can do the custom work, for certain, but I must have something that will serve in the short term.”

“Do as you please.”

He scurried away.

“The nerve,” I said, just loud enough for him to hear me.

“I don’t like it when you do this,” Lillian said.

“What?” I turned to her, confused. She was still studying the floor, hair shielding her face from me. “He was completely unprofessional.”

“I’m not daft. I understand that. But it is not his fault he can see me for what I am.”

“He looks. He does not see.”

“But that is the point, my love.” Lillian finally met my gaze. “I can never be what you want me to be if you are always ready to jump to my defense, always ready to take the brunt out of every conflict.”

“I could ruin him,” I said, darkly.

“You will not.” Lillian commanded. Her eyes burned. I saw it then, just for a moment. The side of her I glimpsed from time to time. The ruler. Unbidden, a smile came to my lips.

“I suppose I won’t, then.”

The tailor came huffing back to us. “I found just the thing. It was made special for a client with a very similar size—nothing wrong with it, but it clashed with her skin tone.”

“And it would suite me?” Lillian asked. Some of the earlier fire remained in her voice.

The tailor stiffened, as if seeing her for the first time, then nodded. “I dare say it might.”

Lillian glanced at me and I nodded. She smiled coyly.

“Turn around.”

I placed my hand against my heart as if she had broken it. “Must I?”

“You must.”

It took longer than I’d expected. I heard Lillian ask several questions in a low voice. A hand tapped my shoulder. When I turned around, words left me.

It was as if she’d been draped in gold. The dress clung in all the right places. Her tanned shoulders and collarbone showed just enough to tease the slightest hint of impropriety. As the sun set it caught my eye, and as I blinked the brightness away, I could almost see the circlet crown upon her head.

“Do I look ridiculous?” Lillian asked.

I shook my head, my mouth dry. “No.”

“No?”

“You look… like a Queen.”

/////

I sat upright, my heart racing. Sweat that crested my brow dripped into my eyes, stinging fiercely.

“Welcome back,” Xarmos said. I waved him off, my mind still sprinting in circles.

Why? What was the point of that? It wasn’t a bad memory. It was almost a pleasant dream. The only ache that came was from the realization that it would likely never happen again. I pressed my hand against my heart, trying to banish the old, familiar ache. Why? I had thought that I’d moved on, that I was over this. Why force me to relive it?

Why?

I must have spoken the question aloud because Xarmos answered.

“Infaris has a rather famous obsession with truth. As far as I can tell, the visions are meant to reveal something.”

Reveal what? That I had loved and lost? That my world and life had shifted in a manner that ensured Lillian would never fit? I heaved for breath, and struck my fist against the wall. “There was no reveal. No hidden truth. It was just a painful memory.”

Xarmos offered me a hand and helped me to my feet. “I’m sure you’ll figure it out. Now, I still want an answer to my question, but first, we have bigger problems.

I looked out through the door where he pointed. There was a series of stairs downward into a dark chasm. Across the chasm was another set of stairs, and another door. The chasm itself was filled with long, burning orange lights that were constantly moving in erratic patterns, almost like they were…

Serpents. Massive, spectral serpents.

“We could always go back to the other room,” Xarmos said.