Chapter 43: Musings of a Fool.

The room was empty when I finally returned. I set the satchel on the bed and checked the egg. It was warm. It was always warm. I adjusted the cloth around it, felt the pulse against my fingers, and let myself hold it for a moment longer than was necessary. Then I set it down on the pillow where it belonged.

“It took longer than it should have,” I told it, or her, or him. “I apologize.” The egg pulsed once.

The book sat in the crook of my arm. It had been surprisingly easy to stow it away. I placed it on the table between the one bed and the remains of the other and stepped back. The cover caught the lantern’s light. The warhammer and the horn. Zarvok’s sigil. Two simple shapes. Even the horns barely looked like horns. He had always preferred to chisel them himself.

Ash was not here. The room smelled of nothing but stone and the faint oil of the lantern. There was no second heartbeat, no sound of breathing. That was no matter. A Queen did not require company. Especially not the company of a Hero who could not so much as find her way back to her own room after a simple measurement ceremony. Where was the fool?

I sat on the bed. I looked at the far wall. I looked at the book on the table. I looked at the far wall again.

These were the collected writings of a general I had trusted with nothing that required subtlety or deeper thinking. A man who could turn words into useless sentences, and useless sentences into needless paragraphs. A man whose tactical assessments I had overruled nine times out of ten, who had once gotten his own warhammer stuck in a crevasse while attempting to tame a Hellstag. These would be the musings of a fool. There was no reason to read them, and every reason to sleep instead.

The aching came. For the first time today, it came from somewhere past the core twisting inside me. The egg pulsed against the bed beside me. I reached over, adjusted it again. Checked that the cloth was secure. It was. I had already checked.

“This is…merely to confirm its worthlessness. That’s all,” I said to the empty room, and opened the book. The first entries were exactly what I had expected.

Zarvok’s handwriting was enormous. Each letter took up space enough for three, with curving letters that served no purpose at all save for making his writing difficult to read. I tried anyway. I did not know why I was wasting my time, only that I was. I read the first entry.

The border skirmish at Zel’shar was a feat they will sing songs about. The enemy -a pitifull and meager host of perhaps three hundred- broke upon our lines as waves upon the Endless clifs. I, Zarvok, The Red Giant of the Kraghul, led the charge myself. The sound my hammer made was, I venture to say, the final cord of a great symfony, if that symfony were composed intirely of screaming. Her Royal Darkness would be proud.

This was almost enough for me to close the book. Zel’shar had been a small border skirmish against the elves, one of the first missions I had assigned solely to Zarvok. He had distinguished himself there. He had been tame in his boasting to me. He had not been tame on the page.

He misspelled “reconnaissance” on the next page. Then again two pages later, differently. Then a third time, more differently still. It was almost an achievement.

If this was the shape of all of these entries, then I regretted wasting the tiny specks of Essence it took to recover them. I read on. I did not know why I did. At some point, the bluster faded. Zarvok spoke of his achievements more seldomly, and when he did, they were described almost clinically.

In its place, he began to name the dead. The soldiers who fell in every skirmish, great or small. He wrote small details about them. One had carved his lover’s name into his shield. Another had hummed a tune before every battle -Zarvok described this tune poorly, and so I could only guess.

Twelve fell today. I will list them here, for they fought well, and it costs me nothing but ink to honnor their memmory, and what is ink to a man who has so much of it?

It was a record of the dead that nobody had asked for. One that I had never asked him to make. One that….I had not thought he could make. I turned the page. The nature of the entries changed again. He spoke of the other generals. He wrote about them with a warmth I had not permitted myself to feel.

The first was of Malrath. The great boaster, we had often called him. He was the loudest voice in any hall. Zarvok described catching him in an empty chamber, alone:

Malrath spoke to an empty hall today as though a thousand knelt before him. His voice rang from the stone. I watched from the doorway. He did not see me, or if he did, he did not care. He gave that same speech again, later, to a large gathering of watchful imps. He looked relieved when the speech ended, and when they applauded him.

The next was about Orzathiel. I only noticed now, but the letters here were scrawled more carefully, in smaller sizes. Ones that almost fit on the page they were meant for. I did not know the care it would take for a Demon of his size to write so.

Orzathiel tends the garden still. I asked him once who it was for. He did not answer. The flowers are lethal to all who touch them. Even to me. Even to Zera. Even to him. All save one. I do not think she knows. I do not think he would want her to.

I read the passage thrice. The second time was slower than the first. By the third, the page was clenched in my fingers.

He made the garden after the stone halls fell. Before them, he had not been that kind of demon. I do not think anyone told him to start. I do not know why. He does not answer when I ask.

Ozrathiel had started his garden after the Dwarves, then. I knew this, of course. Had always known this. I turned more pages and my hands were steady. They had no reason not to be.

Then, he spoke of Zera, his sister. The letters here were more careful still. They did not even have the curving flourishes they did before.

My sister found another one today and this time it was a creature so wretched and strange that it defies the language I have at my disposal, and I have much of it. I do not know where she finds these beasts. Perhaps even the System does not know. She placed it in front of the Queen’s chambers as she always does now. The Queen pretended not to see it and my sister pretended the Queen had not pretended.

My jaw tightened. Zera’s small rebellions had grown more and more bold, the more years we had spent together. Always I had considered tightening her leash. Always there had been a reason not to. I read the section again, and understood it no more than I had the first time. Or I pretended not to, at least.

There were other entries to Generals I had lost before the others. The ones I should not have lost. I did not read theirs, though I knew not why. The lantern flickered. I had been reading for some time.

The entries changed again. These were shorter. Some were barely a line. They were scattered between campaign notes and complaints about food, or the weather or any other mild inconvenience my General had gone through. They were about me.

The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

The Queen gave the order today. Her voice did not shake. Her hands did afterwards. I do not think she knows they do this.

I stared at the words. I read them again, slowly. I read them a third time. My hands did not shake. They had never shaken. I had never- I was the Demon Queen. My hands did not-

Something sharp pulled inside me, from the core. I pressed a hand to my chest and breathed through it. It passed. I turned the page again.

She stood at the glass again tonight. The battle ended at the fourth bell. She did not move from the window until the ninth.

The next entry was several pages later. Between them, there was a campaign, a siege, more dead who were named.

The Queen has not eaten since the executions. She says the new food displeases her. That we need to find more chefs. The food has not changed.

Then, much later: