The Sovereign

There is a throne kept empty for you, an act of accession laid ready on the white cloth, and your name already cut into the great seal against tonight’s first command. The Sovereign opens in the cold at the gatehouse of a great palace-house in a dead precinct on the last night, when the sovereign is made and the crown is set and the name is raised to the roll of rulers and the first command is given and obeyed, a warm glow far up the stair where the custody waits by the candles, where every soul who could not bear to be the one no one would ever obey, the one whose word never moved a hand, the name no knee was ever bent to take an order, is made a sovereign at last, brought up into the warm presence-chamber, and obeyed over everything. You came back through that door because something in here, finally, will make a sovereign of your name. All you have to do is be set on the throne, take the obedience, and let the presence take the weight of being un-obeyed off your own going-out.

The Sovereign is Book Twenty of ENCORE, a choose-your-path horror. The same Curator keeps the house; the same company of the dead is recast into a new production, this one gold thrones and sealing-wax and gilding-size and quietly glad of you. Bring the character you built in The Haunt, The Vigil, The Understudy, The Crossing, The Gallery, The Betrothed, The Confessor, The Mourners, The Assize, The Terminus, The Exchange, The Ward, The Line, The Light, The Colours, The Séance, The Surety, The Reliquary, and The Godhead, and the house remembers what you carried, who you are, and what you have already proven you will and will not do.

You read by deciding. Be set on the throne and take the obedience, or keep to the cold floor of the outer ward, a subject passing through and not a sovereign. Let one hand move at your word and one order be obeyed, or keep yourself mortal and obeyed by none. Your choices decide which of the book’s endings the house gives you, and the way out, the true one, asks whether you can let your name be struck from the roll of rulers, let your crown be broken and scattered, walk out into the cold ward obeyed by no one, an ending that is wholly your own, the genuine un-obeyed one, mortal and your own.

If you like Fighting Fantasy or Choose Your Own Adventure, if you like interactive horror, if you like the cold anthology dread of American Horror Story, this is built for you.

▶ Play it free in your browser, then keep the ebook or paperback. 133 numbered sections, 39 endings. The interactive audiobook follows.