To Become a Monster - ONC 2024

Chapter Two

"This assembly has been called to discuss the monstrous and vile attack on our city. Last night, ten were slaughtered by magical forces, their bodies mutilated and left to rot. How do we overcome such a threat? How do we react?" 

The king settled his crown on the table, the slab of stone meeting that hideous metal with an echoing thud, ending his grand contribution to the meeting as soon as it had started. His steely glare focussed on each of his advisors in turn, daring them to make a move, to bring themselves to the slaughter. The sound of his heavy breathing thumped with a heavy rhythm, each inhale and exhale like a war-drum before fading, waiting for the battle to begin. For what was definitely not the first time, Wilder thanked whatever fortune had meant he was not one of them. He had been on the receiving end of that sharp gaze before, and it was enough to make him work hard for the first time. Shivering at the recollection, he tried to fade back into the damp wall with the rest of the servants before one of the nobles reprimanded him, or worse, the king. Theon's eyes fell on him for a moment, before turning back to the centre of that table. 

"I would like to begin," one of the less useful council members cleared his throat, spearing through the dead silence. That was not a good idea- Wilder had watched hundreds of unimportant and significant members try to appease the king with some ingenious solution just to realise how replaceable they were. Judging by the racking cough that wheezed through this one's speech, he probably wouldn't have to worry about finding another job if he was removed. The king might even take pity on this one, like some of the previous ones, and send him off to some castle in the countryside where he could die in more comfort. Theon's father was so kind in that way. "We can easily face this problem we have faced for centuries. All we need to do is..." 

If Wilder could have moved, he would have shaken that bumbling idiot. He was so convinced that his incredible solution was groundbreaking when, in reality, they had all heard this same speech about a thousand times before. It wasn't innovative, it wasn't helpful- it was just a waste of time. Even the king had stopped listening, his eyes glassy and unfocused, not bothering to look at the other man any longer. Why would he? Why would he bother to pay attention to an argument that he could only pass to his son, as his father had done to him? The deaths were unimportant, mere collateral damage that every now and again asked him to find a solution he would easily avoid. Wilder hoped all their spirits haunted the king, that they did not let him have a moment's rest with the feel of their ice-cold blood on his skin. But he knew better. Theon had complained endlessly about how his father slept so heavily that not even the castle crumbling around him would wake him. And, clearly, the screams of his collapsing city were not enough to wake him even now. 

Wilder loosed a deep breath, careful not to draw the room's attention. He was in no place to have such thoughts, not when one wrong move could risk intense scrutiny. But that circular stone table held only lies upon lies, the entire web built around an unspoken promise never to hold the population's lives above the fears and hatred of the king. Dark grey table, pale grey walls, shadowed grey cathedral under the bright grey clouds of the black-lined window. It was all dead. All of it. Each goddamn carved brick and rock in that room stuck in time, devoid of growth and progress. Everything had long turned to bone and dust, and none of them could see it with their eyes too blinded by the sun's reflected light on the crown, still in the centre of that foolish table. 

The man finished his incoherent rant with one last cough before the room fell to that awful emptiness again. Nothing was going to change. It never did. Wilder had convinced himself that he was fine with that, that he could live in a world where every bleak moment just passed by without a care because it wasn't as if someone would try to stop it and take advantage of it. These men- the advisors, the king- they were comfortable. He could be comfortable too- settling into a life of monotonous mundanity and relentless repetition, never moving forward, but never backwards, either. He could even give up his magic; it wasn't as if he had chosen to be born with it or anything. But, gods, Wilder was ungrateful because if he wasn't, surely he would have been able to achieve those aims.