RE: Monarch
Chapter 7: Everwood II

In the distance the sounds of battle grew fainter until they were almost inaudible. I ran, tripping over roots and ducking under low branches. At first there was a sense of confidence. I’d played in these woods much of my early life. Not this particular section, sure, but many days of my childhood had been spent marching bravely out into the great green unknown, pretending to be a knight on a quest for the kingdom, looking for the seer stone or other such nonsense.

Child or not, I wasn’t an idiot about it. I’d always brought supplies and chalk to mark the trees, thus, always been able to replace my way out. I’d never been lost in the Everwood, not even once. The most threatening creature I’d found had been a small boar.

Of course, this logic was flawed. The sections of forest that encroached upon the capital city were heavily patrolled. The forest seemed safe to me only because there was a group of rangers—all veterans and battle-hardened—who spent their lives and sometimes lost them pushing the monsters of the wood away from the capital and into the deep recesses of the wood. The deep recesses where I now wandered.

The immediate issue, however, was unlike my childhood adventures, I didn’t have any chalk to mark my path. My initial plan was to move in a large half-circle. Venturing far out into the forest, looping around, eventually coming back a mile or so further down the road. Once I found the road again, I’d follow it from the cover of the Everwood back to civilization.

It was a plan born out of panic and adrenaline, and as with any such plans, there were a few problems. Firstly, I had no idea how far from the capital city I was. Secondly, the road to the capital... was gone. I was certain I’d circled around correctly and had walked in a straight line for miles. No road.

The biggest problem by far was that something was following me. Some part of me would almost chalk it up to paranoia. I was walking for miles in a forest, after all. There was a constant chatter of strange and unknowable sounds. Insects chirped and called. The occasional wolf would howl. There was, infrequently, a crash of something much larger, usually accompanied by a yowl of bestial pain. All told, it was enough noise to reasonably assume my mind was playing tricks on me and I was looking for patterns where there were none.

It was always when I was on the verge of accepting this notion when a twig snapped behind me. A bush rustled. Worst of all was the low, sharp, intake of breath that sounded mere meters away.

I unsheathed my sword. It was barely more than a toothpick, gifted to me on my tenth birthday. If what was out there was anything bigger than a small dog, I was doomed.

With all the turning around to search for my unseen stalker, it became harder to be sure I was heading in the right direction. I didn’t dare double back. Thing in the shadows aside, the possibility that Thoth and her allies had already dispatched my group and were currently combing the forest looking for me was simply too high.

But for all I knew, I was heading backwards. It was impossible to tell what time it was or how long I’d been walking. Thick trees above cloaked the sun entirely, a perfect canopy that let in only the smallest fragment of light.

I trudged on. My arm began to grow tired from holding the sword. Slowly, my mind began to wander back to the greater situation at hand. I’d watched my father die. Watched Annette die. I’d yet to truly lay eyes on either of them, but unless my uncle was somehow in on it I had to believe they were alive now. They were dead and now they weren’t. If nothing else had changed, time had simply shifted backwards…

My mother is alive.

My real mother. I stopped walking, completely gobsmacked. My mother died of a wasting illness a month after my eighteenth birthday. The physicians hadn’t been able to do anything because they hadn’t caught it early enough. But I could.

And Lillian. Lillian would be working at Gray’s apothecary. Even in a situation this dire, the thought brought a smile to my face. Which was then immediately dashed as the memory of Thoth’s savage visage came back to mind. It didn’t matter if I saved anyone temporarily, if Thoth slaughtered them all in the end. Worse, judging from the last few hours she was completely unpredictable. I couldn’t expect for things to unfold the same way. It begged the question. Why had she come looking for me so early this time? Was she-

A black blur of growling mass leapt at my face, obscuring my entire vision in an instant. I didn’t dodge so much as fall on my ass, scrambling backwards, trying to create distance. The thing stalked around me, lithe and dangerous. Its fur was dark as night, and its eyes glowed golden in the gloom. Shadow Panther. A small one, but deadly nonetheless.

I puffed myself up and stretched my arms out in an attempt to look bigger than I was. The panther just purred, continuing to move closer, entirely unimpressed. I swore.

If I’d been the size of a full-grown man, scaring it off might have worked. But this was a child’s body. The panther pounced. I jerked to the side, dodging wildly, my reflexes and muscle memory all feeling foreign and off. It circled to the side and I tracked it with the point of my blade. A bead of sweat rolled down my forehead. This was not good. Killing it was likely beyond me. Even if I somehow managed to escape, this beast would continue tracking me through the forest as it had before. Somehow I needed to show it that I was more trouble than I was worth.

Stepping carefully, I bent down to scoop up a fallen branch while maintaining eye contact. It lunged towards me in a false start, baring white fangs speckled with red. This was not its first hunt of the day. Maybe that would work in my favor. I waited. It finally stopped moving, its shoulders hunching together, preparing to pounce.

Then, with all the power I could muster, I flung the branch at its head. The panther flinched back. Its face scrunched up almost comically. Then a deep, angry growl resonated from its throat.

Well. Shit.

It slammed into me, claws digging into my chest and sternum. I made a sound that was entirely un-princely as my back hit the forest dirt. My sword clattered to the side somewhere unseen. It snapped at me viciously, held back only by my small hands around its neck. But this body was weak. The panther leaned forward, snapping, pushing its body face closer.

I’d always been weak. Growing up, I took every chance I’d had to avoid physical training. Violence reminded me of my father. I’d looked down on him, thinking myself more civilized. Instead, I’d prided myself on my mind, but I was nowhere near as clever as Annette. I’d thought myself a good speaker, but what good were words to me now?

Long strings of red drool splattered against my face, the panther’s breath hot and foul. This was so stupid. I was going to die here. I was going to squander this rare chance I’d been given. I was going to die in a forest to a simple beast because I was weak, and everything would happen as it had before. A dark rage went through me then. I thought of Annette, consumed by the flames.

There was a sudden sharp pain that went through both hands.

At first, I thought it had finally broken through my grip. Then the panther threw itself off me, earlier grace entirely absent as it rolled in the dirt, panicking. A small wreath of familiar purple flame grew larger around its neck. I watched, stunned. My first response was to look around for the mage. There was no one nearby that could have interfered. Dumbly, I looked at my stinging hands. A small burn marked the center of my palms on each.

The panther managed to extinguish the flames—though not without significant damage to its previously pristine coat—and gave me a strange look before disappearing into the forest.

It almost looked... frightened.

Afternoon waned into evening and the Panther did not come back. My mood plummeted with the dying light. The soles of my luxurious and colorful shoes were perilously thin, thus I felt every errant pebble, puddle, and fallen branch. Hope of replaceing the road was mostly abandoned. Instead, I found myself fantasizing about replaceing a cave: a nice, well-lit, thoroughly unoccupied cave. Perhaps with a cot and fresh linens.

No such luck.

There was a cave, but it wasn’t exactly ideal. I took one step inside when a pair of floating red dots appeared, hovering in the darkness. I froze. Then another pair opened. Then another. I slowly backed away, breath held and sword outstretched. Thankfully, whatever it was didn’t follow. Just peered after me until the cave and its untold inhabitants were out of sight.

Still, I was running out of time. Darkness was coming quickly now, and despite how active and dangerous the Everwood seemed before, it felt borderline malevolent now. Those large, infrequent noises I’d only heard distantly became commonplace and seemingly closer. Unseen dangers growled at me from bushes and more than once I heard the telltale chik-chik-chik of a cobalt rattler. My throat was savagely dry and I had hoped to replace a river or stream before stopping for the night, but any chance of that died with the sun.

I started the long process of building a fire.

"Getting it started is the hardest part. You want this sort of bark." Lillian dragged me forward and pointed to a thin white tree with dark splotches. Her cheerful demeanor was infectious.

"What’s it called?"

Her cheeks pinked. "Don't know the proper name. That's your job. All I know is it catches no matter how damp things are."

The memory needled at the all-too-familiar ache in my chest and I hacked into the tree with more force than necessary, using my fingers to pry the bark off. Lillian was like that. Brilliant with the knowledge of a thousand books, but terrible with names. The impromptu survivalism lessons always came while we foraged for ingredients for Gray’s Apothecary. She was equally terrible with plant and ingredient names.

"This one makes you sick."

"The green one and the white one work as an antidote against that one’s poison."

"This one just kills you."

I grabbed a couple of stalks of thorn thistle, or "the one that disinfects," and a few cyan petals of "the one that repels bugs," and placed them in my satchel. It was nearly completely dark when I returned to the campsite with my bundle of wood. I piled my wood in the log formation I’d been taught with the kindling in the middle and began rubbing two sticks together. There was full-on movement in the dark now. Constant scampering and yowling and whispering.

Whispering?

Maybe it was just my imagination. Now that I focused on it, it sounded like nothing more than the lonely whistle of wind through trees. I turned back to my work.

Coooooooooward

Chills ran down my spine and I dropped the stick. That had not been my imagination. Something else was in this forest with me and it wasn’t an animal.

Betraaaaaaaaayer

The whisper picked up into a howl. Louder and louder the voices grew, prickling at me. Cold sweat trickled down the back of my neck.

"Come on. Come on." I twisted the sticks until they snapped. The voices in the wind cackled at me in delight.

Only one thing left to try, and I had no idea if it would work. I held both hands to the wood, closed my eyes, and tried to will the purple flame from earlier into the kindling.

Nothing.

I tried again. Visualizing the flame this time.

Nothing.

A small animal nipped at my leg and I kicked it away. What was I missing? Maybe...

As much as I hated myself for it, I held out my hand, first, second, and third fingers forming a triangle. No feeling of power. No light. No fire.

I dug deep into my mind. How exactly did I feel when I’d summoned the fire the first time? How did I feel when the panther was on me? I stared the memory full in the face, letting it wash over me until I finally found it.

Despair.

A single pinprick of violet light floated in the center of my outstretched fingers, so tiny it looked like the smallest breeze could snuff it out. I cupped my other hand around it to shield it from the wind and oh-so-slowly held it to the kindling.

The flame roared to life, almost blinding. I fell backwards, shielding my face with my arm. There was a chorus of agitated sounds as creatures scurried away. Even the whispering wind seemed to scream. It was far too hot around the fire to rest comfortably but in the context of what had just happened, that didn’t seem to matter. I curled with my back to it, adoring and loathing it all the same, and promptly fell asleep.

The second day was easier. I found two oblong rocks of similar size and used them to grind the sanitizing herbs until they resembled a powder, then cleaned and treated my wounds from the panther. I ran across a fast-moving brook that I used to fill my flask and drank from heavily. The water cramped my stomach but at that point it was a small price to pay. I found a cluster of mushrooms with orange stripes that I knew to be edible. They helped fend off the hunger, but not by much.

The second source of water I found was a small pond. I nearly raced towards it, only noticing just in time one of the giant trees wasn't a tree. It looked like a huge elk from far away, but somehow felt wrong. Better not to risk it and stick with the stream.

Twice, I ran into creatures that posed a threat. Another panther and some sort of giant lizard the size of a dog. Both times I managed to summon demon-fire and light the makeshift torch I carried, frightening them off. I tried not to think of the implications.

When Sera’s talent was first discovered, my father had called in a litany of so-called magical experts to test the rest of us, as magic—while rare—has a much higher chance to show up along the same genetic line. Annette and I were tested for every magic sensitivity under the sun, but at the end of the day there was nothing to show for it. From my shallow understanding, elemental magic was something you had to be born with. No amount of tinkering or blessings from the church or potions would give you power. Magic could not be gifted. If it could, everyone would have it.

So, why was this happening now?

Feeling terrible but slightly more confident, I packed up my things, along with my growing collection of herbs, and followed the brook downstream. Dusk fell uneventfully. I went to sleep the second night with a cramping belly full of foul water and mushrooms, endless questions plaguing my mind.

When I awoke, there was a feeling in my stomach that something was wrong. I looked up. A shadowy figure spun my sword in his hand idly. His face was hooded, hiding everything but his tightly skinned mouth. He smiled a charming smile. "Found you."