Joshua Volkhov

Joshua Volkhov is a human character native to the Legends-era of Nephele. Volk lives in Augustin, near the Isle of Joy, and belongs for most of the story to the Court of Legends. He is a warlock that experiences highly destructive magical flares in the lead-up to the centennial of the defeat of the King of Eyes.

Joshua Volkhov is 27, and he thinks he's made a deal with the devil.

Rather, he thinks he's found and contracted with the last Angel of Eyes - a cursed, twisted minion of a presumed-extinct legion that served the dark lord King of Eyes when he held godlike rule over the planet. With the contract, he gained the power to infuse his endeavors with an unnatural ability to draw publicity and renown. He's risen through the ranks of the feeder art school for the corporation belonging to the media titan Prince of Legends in a meteoric ascent, and his blooming career in Legends-branded film and television production is set up to be spectacular. Prodigious. He attributes it publically to hard work and perfectionism, and in some ways that's true; Volk cares about nothing in the world more than his art being loved. The power of Eyes is well-suited to someone seeking fame at any cost. The domain of Eyes is to understand and control attention and devotion. Volk puts his work,his art, the things he can make with his own two hands, above everything, even his own soul. Volk does not care if the people he's working for burn him out, or if the contract he’s made kills him, so long as he can achieve a masterpiece.

Volk thinks he’s made a deal with an Angel. Volk thinks he’s a person. Volk thinks he's bitchy, talented, that he’s the smartest person in any room he enters, that he's adopted, that he has a sister, that he'll probably live to be thirty. He has absolutely no idea how much none of that is true.

…

In the days of swords and knights (and then in the days of tear gas and mortar shells) it was fashionable for Princes the world over to clash against each other for the honor of taking the Throne Above Thrones, that spindle upon which the world makes the threads of fate. The religious say that the first to use the Throne to become Monarch Above All created the world; they also say that the last being alive will have a duty to use it to begin anew. They say that the Throne Wars were the last "good" wars; that the expertise that each Prince had coming together to defeat the evil Monarch King of Eyes before he could destroy all life, to defend their world, that they learned their lesson: to live in peace, and to never allow another person to gain the terrible power of the Throne.

The King of Eyes had two important powers. We will discuss them briefly. The first was his Prince-gift - the magic he gained when, as a mortal, his renown allowed him to ascend as a candidate to claim the Throne. He was unable to choose this magic, and by most accounts the new, overwhelming power: the ability to pull and understand all threads of attention on him, broke him. Historical records of his time as a mortal are interrupted by the state of catatonia it left him in; he only emerged when he developed his effort gift, a form of magic only gained by those who have gained true mastery in an area of passionate effort and long study. His effort gift was what he had been putting all of his work into, day and night: survive this.

To each Monarch on the throne is given an era, and their end is as inevitable as the seasons changing. When a successor is able to ascend, the old Monarch dies.

Eyes did not die. The successor was destroyed instead. Survive this.

Every Monarch pays the price of godhood by being consumed by the vastness of the Throne - the mind within becomes too inhuman and vast to hold onto its goals, its identity, or its concerns from its mortal life. Eyes did not die from this, either. He remained awake and aware, and repeated attempts to remove him made him stronger as he consumed his successors’ power.

He was, of course, defeated eventually, by a terrible last resort. Having his soul shattered to pieces by the god-killing guillotine did not kill Eyes. Perhaps he wished it did. Magic, once learned, is not unlearned. Survive this. The shattered, agonized pieces were caught as best as possible by his Angels - but they were quickly hunted down.

In the councils that followed the end of the Throne War, it was debated: what to do with a Dark Lord who cannot die, who will wait infinitely for a chance to regain his power? Who only grows more vengeful if he is imprisoned, and slowly heals himself if left buried alone somewhere in lead and concrete? Who is snake-tongued enough to corrupt his guards, who is cunning and patient enough to find opportunities we won’t foresee?

…

The last, cleverest Angel of Eyes was no Angel at all, as the nascent media titan Prince of Legends found out the hard way.

The Prince of Legends emerged with the medium of film, as it was becoming a force in the world. As a young artist, he’d had an idea similar to Volk’s: summon the power of Eyes, steal it, and use it to gain fame. He found instead an Angel half-mad, with a shard of the Monarch embedded in it, half mad and half very, very lucid.

Legends’ Prince-gift was to draw fantastical illusions from thin air: princesses and bluebirds, singing trees, gods of mythology, all seeming real and solid, if without any real souls or minds of their own. With the Angel and the shards of the King of Eyes he found, he approached the council and made an offer.

I make bodies without minds. I tell them what to do, of course: that they're a girl running from her stepmother, or a clever fox that's friends with a crow. Seems to me we have a mind without a body.

Give him to me and I'll tell him who he is.

...

Fuck, hey, good thing that was like, ages ago, right?

We had cold wars - honestly, that was kind of ages ago, too. We had a moon landing. Even longer ago. We invented the internet, that's the important one. Are you writing this down? You should be.

Only two people have tried to get the Throne, because, like, why. Like, who would even bother? The two who tried got the guillotine used on them in like, a matter of months? It's not decades like it used to be, you'll basically be destroying yourself and fighting through an international military coalition for maybe a hot minute of godhood? Good luck, stupid.

Power isn't about a chair. Power is about publicity. Power is about media, and money. One lets you get the other, if you're any good at it. The Prince of Legends owns a corporation that is one of the most recognizable names on the planet. It's not widely known that he's been single-handedly containing the King of Eyes for almost a hundred years. In fact, it's only known to maybe four or five people at all. Everyone else just knows that after the war, he had a right-hand-man who was a quiet, devoted, hard worker who had the uncanny ability to draw attention to the Prince of Legends and his company, who seemed not to care about anything but growing the Legends brand. Rumor has it that he was seen confronting Legends right before he died in that car wreck. Something like:

"I'm getting these migraines ... I swear sometimes I remember things that didn't happen, and I can't remember stuff that did. Sometimes I look at people, just strangers, and they’re like ants to me, Arsène, I ... Do you know where I lived where I worked for you? 'Cause I sure don't, and that scares me. What's next, am I going to forget the name of my wife? My kids' faces? You always said to come to you if the contract became too hard on me - well, I'm calling in the favor. There've been a lot of favors over the years, I'll call in all of 'em if I have to."

...

The Prince of Legends was always great at pulling in talent, though. Too many to name, hundreds of thousands of em. It's not all cloaks and daggers, anyway - when you're the best in the world, all the best want to work for you. He would've been big with or without magical help, it's just that along with a little help from those shards of Dark Lord soul (and the four men and women who have been their unwitting holders) he's become titanic. Untouchable. A definer of global culture and commerce.

(Big enough that he's got his eye on a certain kingly seat. But, that's not something to worry about for now.)

[Category: Stubs]