Chapter Text
In the practical art of war, the best thing of all is to take the enemy's country whole and intact; to shatter and destroy it is not so good. So, too, it is better to recapture an army entire than to destroy it, to capture a regiment, a detachment or a company entire than to destroy them.
- Sun Tsu’s The Art of War
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The video played on:
{
The audio crackled with an alarming burst of static then sharpened.
“… must be inside,” said Monarch, her voice bright, sounding eager.
“Shouldn’t we wait,” Alan asked, sounding for all the world like someone who did not want to be there.
“No, they know we’re here. It’s too late now.” Monarchs view moved forward, towards the door. “Are you streaming this?”
“Yes ma’am,” Alan replied. “The whole world is watching.”
“Perfect,” Monarch purred. A pale hand waved in front of her face, “Hello, world. Hello, Sarah.”
Monarch reached the doors, pulling one side of the large metal doors to the side with a sharp tug. The inside of the warehouse was dark, unnaturally so. A solid wall of darkness that seemed to end just beyond the open doorway.
The echoing sound of a high pitched chime from inside the shadows, high pitched and whining. Then a masculine, singsong voice slithered through the door, somehow weaving in and out of the echoing sounds of the fading chime. “Come in, come in, said the spider to the fly. You cannot win, it’s time to die.”
Miss Monarch snorted, “Really, Goblin King?” She glanced behind to find that Alan’s face had gone pale, his hand frozen in mid air as if caught mid movement and unable to complete the gesture.
His wide, terrified eyes begged her to let him leave.
Monarch nodded to him. Her voice was surprisingly gentle, “It will be okay. I’ll promise, I won’t let him hurt you.”
He didn’t seem all that comforted.
Monarch confidently stepped into the darkness.
After a second or two of absolute darkness, Monarch reappeared, flickering around an empty warehouse. Gray concrete floors scattered with broken boxes and discarded pieces of wood. A walkway of rusted metal crossed overhead, empty and looming.
She glanced behind her as Alan appeared from the empty void where the doorway was but she didn’t give him more than a seconds notice. “Come out and face us Goblin King,” she said to the room. “No more hiding behind your little minions. Hiding behind others is for cowards and children.”
“Faces,” the singsong voice called as the chime sounded again. “What would you know about faces? You hide behind a plastic shroud.”
“It’s stylistic,” Monarch called, beginning to truly sound annoyed. “Stop wasting my time and act like the royalty we are.”
As if summoned into existence, a tall man with long, blond hair in a pristine suite of white and gray, appeared on the cat walk just above Monarch. He stood on the top of the railing seemingly without effort, somehow balanced on the thin metal tube without needing to hold onto something or shift his balance. Hands held high over his head, he clutched a thick stone tablet.
“I’m here to stop you Goblin King,” Monarch called, voice ringing loud in the empty room. “Once and for all.”
“Just you,” the man, the Goblin King, asked, “to face me?”
“Just me,” Monarch confirmed.
“Did Sarah finally abandon you,” the Goblin King spat. “Did she finally learn just how many people you’ve hurt just to be here. But then you don’t even feel guilty, do you? You don’t even care.”
Monarch remained silent, she shifting her weight from foot to foot.
“Say something,” the Goblin King snarled, enraged. “Say something to try and defend what you’ve done!”
“You deserved it,” Monarch said, almost too softly for her M-Eyes to pick up.
“Did I now? Did I really?” The Goblin King’s voice had gone dark, burbling with some deep emotion that sent chills through the recording. “Did they?”
Again, Monarch held her tongue. She glanced down, her hands sparking with faint lines of golden magic.
This seemed to push the Goblin King over the edge. With a snarl of rage, he swayed forward, “It’s time to end this charade. You don’t deserve that power, Monarch. Can you feel its slow death every time you summon it forth?” He held up the Tablet, his arms steady and strong despite the weight of the heavy stone, “I’m going to kill you today, exactly as you once tried to kill me. And after you’re gone, I’ll punish Sarah Williams for being the banner under which the Labyrinth burned. As the Keeper of the Lost Souls of the Labyrinth, I will have our revenge. Vengeance helps soothe the soul, so they say.”
“You really are mad if you think you can beat me,” Monarch said but for the first time, there was tension in her voice.
“But you’re so weak now,” the Goblin King hissed, leaning forward to hang almost perfectly parallel to the warehouse floor, voice cracking with the spite. “Without the Labyrinth to power you, you’re running almost on empty, aren’t you?”
“Try it,” growled Monarch. “I may not have much magic left anymore, not as much as Sarah does these days,” she held up her hands, the golden bolts sparking between her hands, “but I’m not going to just roll over and die!”
Screaming with a long held fury, the Goblin King froze in place, arms beginning to stretch in a terrifying, unnatural way. “Just! Die!” The air around him warped as the Goblin King absorbed the Kish Tablet’s power.
It had easy to see the pulses of time as they rolled across the great expanse of the world. To see the skylines of cities change or the expanses of green grow ancient rivers and lakes. This close, as it unfurled out from the Kish Tablet, Time was an endless window into eternity. Flashes of seconds arched wide behind Jana’s back, tiny and jagged, hisses and heartbeats, blinks and breaths. Filling in between the seconds was a slower haze of minutes, snippets of songs, barks of laughter, the bubbling of water along a well worn creek. Wrapping the minutes, braced by the framework of seconds, a malaze of hours pulled around the outline, structured by leaps of light between the stars and the rising of tides under a turbulent moon. Colored by centuries of sunsets and the promise of a hopeful future, the enormous pair of wings flung wide, scraping across the floor, passing through the catwalk behind Jana, leaving them pitted, rusted and aged. The catwalk he had been standing on collapsed in a clanging pile of debris that bounced around Monarch in a deadly wave.
As the wings of destruction swung back in her direction, Monarchs view shifted, glancing behind her where Alan stood. His eyes were wide and terrified, staring up at oncoming death with open horror. Monarch shifted to the side, making sure that Alan was directly behind her then looked back. With a sharp movement, she raised one hand, fingers splayed, hands shimmering with raw magical power.
The wings collapsed down, without a doubt dooming both Monarch and Alan to an eternity of suffering but as they met the air in front of Monarchs hand, the air itself seemed to shatter. Shards of crystal glass burst into existence, surrounding Monarch and Alan in a translucent dome of silver and gold, radiating a brilliant multicolored light.
“I’m not here to play games anymore,” Monarch called, her hand shaking from the effort of holding back the fury of the Goblin King and Time itself. “I’m here to win!” Her elbow bent and she shoved.
The wings were forced back, seconds and minutes flung to the side, bracing hours cracking in strain.
“What are you waiting for,” the Goblin King screamed, now floating in open air, eyes wild and crazed as Monarch once again proved stronger than him despite his newfound power. “Do it! Now!”
“I told you,” Monarch said, panting, weakened and hardly able to focus her eyes. “I sacrificed for this.” She flexed her hand in front of her face, arcs of light tracing tiny golden circles across the back of her pristine skin. “And I will continue to pay whatever price to keep you and your vindictive games away from this world. I...” Metal scraped across concrete and a sudden, unexpected agony, cut off her words. Monarch staggered, eyes glancing down briefly to see the sharp end of sheared off metal pipe piercing through her abdomen, bright red blood staining her once spotless shirt, before looking up again and trembling. “Alan? Oh, Alan, what have you done?”
“I’m sorry,” Alan said softly, repeating the words he had whispered on the airplane. He was sweating and one eye was closed as if seeing two points of view at once. “But this is for my family.” He withdrew the pipe and with a loud shout of effort, stabbed it in again, right where Monarchs heart was.
A pulsing wave of crackling static rolled across the recording. Sparking, spitting lines of white and black, obscured the view for a long, pain-filled, minute.
Inside that minute, the world shook, the ground shifting from side to side, the air thickening and thinning with a rumbling, thunderous scream of torment.
And, as quickly as it had started, the shaking stopped, the torment ended.
Alan had been knocked to the floor, a dome of gray dust was slowly falling all around him. He coughed, blinking rapidly. He squinted, peering into the dust.
A large lump was just visible in the cloud, bulbous and long.
“What,” Alan coughed. He wiped his hand across his eyes, blinking again. “What was that? What happened?”
The large lump shifted, a shadowed figure rising from a kneeling position, leaving the shape of one figure prone and unmoving.
“Goblin King,” Alan asked, leaning away and sounding terrified. “Goblin King, is that you?”
The shadow turned towards him, stumbling a few steps before pushing through the dust.
The Goblin King stood above him, suit torn and dirty, holding a broken mask in one hand, his glowing face reveling in an open display of endless pride. “It’s over,” he breathed, grinning with unrestrained triumph. “It’s over and she’s dead. I’ve won.”
As the dust settled more, Alan could see Monarch eyes were closed, bright red blood pooling around her corpse. A thick tube of rusted metal sticking out of her back. Her chest did not move and her eyes did not reopen.
}
With a gesture, Alan paused the recording, staring at Monarchs still, unmoving face. He couldn’t believe that he had done that, that he had killed a person. Sure, Monarch hadn’t been a great person but she’d still been a person.
Sort of.
But how did he feel about his betrayal? He considered, turning is gaze inwards.
He didn’t feel much anymore. Numbness. Cold.
For all that the world was celebrating the ‘Goblin Kings’ death, he didn’t feel… anything.
“You should delete that recording, you know,” the Goblin King, stepping up behind him. For reasons that Alan had never been able to figure out, the Goblin King always knew what people were looking at on their M-Eyes. When asked, he cryptically responded that ‘seeing things that aren’t really there is a specialty of mine’.
Alan shrugged, closing the video but not deleting it. Instead, he dragged it to the folder where he kept the real records of all his great live edits along with other important recordings. The last few showing scenes from inside Notre Dame, a towering cliff near Machu Piccu and a bridge in New York. He scrolled up through dozens of recordings of meetings with the Keepers of the Lost Tomes, giving them the secrets to Monarch’s technology, helping them stay hidden until they were needed for their grand performances. Helping to steal each of the books, showing them how to draw attention and focus to each one to build its power. He paused at one, thinking of how easy it had been to convince them that Monarch was the Goblin King and that Sarah was working for him to turn this world into a new and more terrible Labyrinth. It was, perhaps, the closest thing to the truth that he had told the Keepers, driving them to be the soldiers in a war they did not truly understand. Until they began to get in the way. Until the began to question his orders. Then they needed to disappear, just like Swati. Maybe one day, he’d be able to relieve some of his debt of guilt and let them see the light of day again but maybe not. Alan had no time for self righteous fools too blinded by their pain to do what needed to be done. He glanced at the Goblin King, memories of a twisting stone path and mocking laughter. Of desperate words cried out in despair and a promise stuck a decade later to undo them. “I like to remember what really happened. In case I forget why I did all this.”
The Goblin King shrugged, uncaring, “Fine then. It doesn’t matter any more really. The world will believe whatever I tell them now. Good job with the editing, by the way. Really convincing stuff.”
“It would have been easier,” complained Alan, “if you hadn’t made such a show of it. That wasn’t what we rehearsed. I almost couldn’t keep up with the script editing.”
“Oh, don’t sell yourself short. You did stellar.” He grinned, the expression sharp and malicious, “Did you see the way the news is handling poor Sarah vanishing off somewhere? ‘Cowardly,’ they said. It’s hilarious.”
“She’s shut her self up in that tiny town again and refused all interviews, I believe.”
“I know,” the Goblin King breathed. “She must be so miserable.”
Alan glanced at him, noting the mild twitch at the edges of his eyes, the way his fists were opening and closing with unconscious tension. The Goblin King had always maintained that this was about revenge and while Alan believed him, there always seemed to be some tiny thread of restraint that held him from going as far with it as he could.
Destroy the world? The Goblin King suggested it without blinking an eye.
But cause Sarah Williams real pain? Well, there was always the tiniest hint of hesitation.
He didn’t understand it at all.
But that wasn’t his business.
“I’m spending the rest of the day with my family,” he informed the Goblin King. “You won’t need me for this next bit anyways and I’ve never liked being in front of cameras.”
“Fine fine,” said the Goblin King, dismissively. “I left the pocket dimension entrance tied to the globe I gave you. Tell them I said hi.”
“I will do no such thing and you will never touch them again,” Alan snapped. “That was the deal. You bring them back and leave them alone.”
“I know,” the Goblin King said with a barking laugh. “Don’t worry, I keep my promises. I couldn’t touch them anymore even if I wanted to.”
Alan nodded sharply, spinning on his heel and stomping away.
The Goblin King shook his head, glancing from behind the curtain at the crowded auditorium. He could tell from the phantom sights of a nearby staff member that there were billions more watching from home. And he could sense, just barely, the tiny thread of focus from one specific person thousands of miles away. He caressed that thread, feeling it shiver in response. It had saved his life all those years ago. This iron clad belief in his villainy, in his cruel intentions. Without it, he would be dead and Monarch would have succeeded in remaking herself into the hero she so desperately wanted to be.
Did Sarah know she had saved the very person who would destroy everything she knew? Unlikely. She still didn’t realize what her magic meant or why the Labyrinth spent some of the last dregs of its power to reach out to her. She would, though, in time.
His hand brushed the cover of a small, well worn book in his inner jacket pocket.
The Goblin King was no hero. He knew his place in these worlds, the story he had been created to tell. He fully planned on winning the coming conflict with Sarah Williams, he had long laid these plans and built the vehicle that would carry him to victory.
His finger slid down the spine of the book, a tiny whisp of unseen magic spinning out and into the crowd waiting for him beyond the curtain. Unnoticed by each other, every person in the crowd glanced towards the edge of the stage, suddenly eager to hear what the great Monarch of Monarch technologies had to say.
Yes, he fully planned on winning with had grand plans and spider thread webs. But he wasn’t above cheating.
The staff member walked over, grinning, and nodded to him as the crowd beyond the curtains cheered with rapturous applause.
“They’re ready for you, Miss Monarch.”
Monarch nodded to the man and sauntered through the curtains, waving enthusiastically at the crowd, blowing kisses and throwing around roguish winks. None of the audience noticed or commented on the famously stoic Miss Monarchs sudden change of attitude.
“Please,” Monarch said, shaking hands with the young woman hosting the program. “Call me Regina.”
She settled into a comfortable chair as the woman sat in her own seat, facing Regina with wide, excited eyes. “Well, Ms. Regina, I think the whole world is anxious to learn more about this project of yours.”
A tiny scowling man appeared in the air next to Monarch, colored digital blue with faint, pixilated edges. In a haze of digital disturbances, the scowl was wiped off the mans face, replaced with a helpful, unnervingly wide smile. Monarch gestured to him, “This is Hoggle, the first of my new digital assistants. Let me tell you about my next great project – ‘The Dreams of the World’.
End of Part 1
Story Continues in Part 2 – ‘Dreams of the World’ or alternate title - ‘War of Dreams’