Ruthless: Path of Conquest

Mina ran a gentle hand over his hair as she waited for him to tell her more.

“I need more information,” he said, his body shaking slightly as he spoke. “I don’t know how much I can say reliably. I—”

“That’s all right,” she said soothingly. “You don’t have to talk about it now if you’re not ready.”

What could do this to him? Mina wondered. It was scary to see James rattled. She could count the number of times he had seemed out of control of his emotions on one hand and still have fingers unused.

“I think I’ll need your help,” he said, seemingly half to himself. Then he looked back at her, his eyes filled with intensity. As if he’s seeing ghosts, she thought.

“I’ll do whatever I can,” she assured him.

He nodded. Then James closed his eyes and took on a focused expression.

[All representatives of Fisher Kingdom committees, please prepare to meet in the Community Center this morning, in one hour. Though I previously informed you that the meeting would take place tomorrow, urgent circumstances require that the meeting be moved up. I believe it’s best that we do it immediately. Any members of the community who have petitions, questions, or comments to share, we will open for a public question and answer session in approximately two hours.]

He managed to sound like everything was normal.

“You mentioned that Carol requires investment in her Dungeon before we can get some spellbooks that might be useful against our neighbor, right?” James asked.

“That’s right,” Mina said.

He nodded. “I’ll go there before the Community Center this morning, then. Hopefully you can train this afternoon.”

“Yes,” Mina replied. “We’ll destroy that forest soon.”

James’s head moved up and down, but she could see his mind was elsewhere.

Mina rose and placed a hand on his shoulder. “I’ll make breakfast today,” she said.

“You don’t have to,” James replied instantly.

“You have a lot on your mind,” she said.

“I’ll dash on over to Carol for a minute, then. And I’ll also drop by Alan and Mitzi to ask them to come to the meeting too.”

The way he looked at her before he exited through the window was strange. As though he was memorizing every detail of her face. Like he thought he might never see her again.

—

James moved through the first hour after waking up from his encounter with Sister Strange in a haze.

You have to decide for yourself if she’s some kind of prophet or not.

He definitely didn’t want to believe there was anything to Sister Strange’s power, other than the same function that guided his own Illusion Magic. His magic could create an optical illusion that fooled the victim based on what they expected to see. False Reality made the illusions even more convincing by manipulating the victim’s sense of reality in general to align with whatever deception James was attempting. The way it seemed to complement his illusions, he had noticed, was by causing the person’s other senses to fool them.

Maybe her power could create a vision based on what would cause the person watching to experience the most psychological discomfort. It wouldn’t even have to be as effective as James’s power, since Sister Strange didn’t need to convince James, for instance, that he wasn’t dreaming. She only needed an immersive experience. Psychological warfare would do the rest.

James was halfway to convincing himself that Sister Strange’s tricks were just that—but he couldn’t get past the fact that when he left Mina alone in the apartment, he felt as if she might vanish like a puff of smoke at any moment.

So it’s real enough for me. For now.

He kept that in mind while he handled the morning’s business.

James went to the Dungeon.

[Dungeon entered! You have arrived in Dungeon: Carol’s Storage!]

Charming. I like the name change.

“Hi there!” Carol exclaimed from above.

“Hi Carol!”

“Oh, it’s you, James…”

After he had transferred her the ten-thousand credits, James returned home. Even in the light of day, there was a little trepidation in his step as he walked up the stairs—as if he might not find his family when he reached the top.

But, of course, they were all there, gathered around the table, waiting for him to eat.

James didn’t taste any of the food that passed between his lips. He was thinking about his next moves.

—

“Is James okay?” Yulia asked when James had left the table to use the toilet.

Goodness, Yulia’s noticing it too, Mina thought.

But James seemed to have pulled himself back together by the time they sat in the Community Center with Magnar and Duncan.

He had moved the podium from where it sat on the stage, and he and the committee heads had taken a long dinner table from Carol’s Storage and placed it in the podium’s place, along with twenty-three accompanying seats for every one of the Fisher King’s councilors, except Luna and Samuel, who James said would be sitting at ground level. Luna was tall enough to be seen clearly even when seated on the stage beside the chairs, and Samuel was bigger than her from what James had said.

The former Ruler was running late, because he had to make his way from the swamp region of the territory. James said that he had encouraged Samuel to take his time, considering that he was still recovering from their battle.

“It’s a miracle he survived,” Alan commented drily.

Several people laughed at that, while a few clapped their hands and gave James approving looks.

“I wish I could have seen your victory over the beasts,” Jeremiah Rotter said.

Alan, Mitzi, and Rotter occupied seats at the table along with the twenty committee heads, though they didn’t head any committees that Mina was aware of. But James had clearly expected them, so no one asked why they were there.

The seats were slightly crowded together, because James wanted everyone to sit so that anyone in the gallery could look them in the eye during question time. Taylor Bunting was almost in Dave Matsumoto’s lap. She stuck closer to him out of obvious preference relative to her other neighbor, Lord Magnar.

“We’ll need to have a larger table made for next time,” James observed.

There were a few dry chuckles.

James had taken the largest chair he could find and placed it at the center of the table for himself, instead of sitting at the head of the table. He kept an open seat at his right hand for Mina, who had watched from the gallery as everyone else set up the furniture and took their seats.

The image of him sitting at the center of the table reminded her of something, though it took a minute for her to place it.

“The Last Supper,” she murmured.

James clearly heard her, even though the words were spoken under her breath. The edges of his lips curled up in a little smile, and she wondered if the imagery, placing James in the role of Christ, had been deliberate.

That would put me in the position of John the Apostle, wouldn’t it? The “disciple whom Jesus loved,” wasn’t he? The longest lived of the Twelve Apostles. The youngest. The only one of them to die from natural causes. That summed up everything she knew, and James probably knew even less about him; his household hadn’t been as religious as hers.

It was a good position to be placed in metaphorically. She wondered again exactly what his dreams had been about.

She shook her head and took her seat by his side. Then she conjured a pitcher made of ice and filled it with water. From her Small Bag of Deceptive Dimensions, she drew a package of clear plastic cups the Salvage Commission had liberated from the run-down buildings. She opened the packaging and placed the cups next to the pitcher.

People came around and helped themselves to water and then returned to their seats.

“Let’s call this first meeting of the Fisher Kingdom Governance Council into session,” James said. “I would have included some additional formalities, but I think we have at least one urgent item to deal with before we’ll have the space to think about that sort of thing. Our first order of business is the matter I called you all here to discuss. Who here had unusually bad dreams last night?”

As he spoke, Mina saw that James was silently charging a form of Mana that she didn’t recognize. Blue with sparkles. It reminded her of Yulia’s pixie friends.

But the rest of the room was more focused on the question itself. Low chattering broke out as people asked each other quiet questions under their breath.

A half dozen hands went up.

“Um, why are you asking, sir?” said Angelina Zuccarini of the Sewer Committee.

“I will explain in just a minute,” James said, turning to Angelina and smiling. “I’m trying to get a little more information so my final explanation will be more complete. Now, not counting last night, who had bad dreams over the last few days that felt unusual?” He looked from person to person as he spoke. “They could be night terrors, nightmares, or any kind of bad dream that you don’t typically experience.”

More than half of the hands in the room went up, including Luna the wolf’s right front paw.

“I see,” James said quietly.

So this creature has been targeting us for longer than just last night? Why was last night the first thing James heard anything about it, then?

At that point, there was a loud sound of knocking on the door.

“Enter!” James called down.

The double doors pushed open, and Mina saw a monster that looked like it belonged in a scary movie step through the gap.

Oh my gosh, is that the monster James fought yesterday?

“Hail to the Fisher King,” the monster said in a voice that rumbled. The sound reminded her of an earthquake.

“Welcome, Samuel, former Ruler of the alligators,” James said, beaming down at the monstrous reptile.

Samuel walked through the doors slowly and cautiously. He could barely fit his heavy bulk through the doorway, but he was clearly taking care not to scrape the sides.

“We will have that enlarged,” James added.

“Oh, please, not on my account,” Samuel said. There was an oddly amused expression on his monstrous face as he spoke. The sight made Mina shudder slightly, reminding her of the last time she had been face to face with a predator larger than her. Cara. “I was planning on losing some weight anyway.”

James snorted quietly.

The giant reptile closed the doors behind him with a gentle motion of his tail, still moving with care as if he thought he might accidentally take them off of their hinges with any sudden movements.

“I was just discussing the nightmares that appear to be afflicting residents of this Kingdom,” James said. The Mana around his body had reached a steady, unmoving state, Mina observed. She thought he must be done charging up for whatever he was about to do. “I don’t suppose you have any information to share before I tell everyone what I think is going on?”

“I know nothing about this enemy, unfortunately,” Samuel said. “I understand they are located on a different side of the Kingdom relative to the swamp, which might explain why I don’t know anything about them.”

“All right,” James said.

The Mana around his body vanished, and an image appeared in the center of the room, at the front of the center aisle of the gallery. A towering feminine figure shrouded in darkness. Her body ended in a haze, like that of a cartoon ghost. Her face was a shriveled, sadistic pale mask.

“This is what we’re dealing with,” James said. “I encountered her in the world of dreams last night. Who has seen her or something that resembled her in their dreams?”

Most of the hands that had been raised earlier shot back up again. Even one person who hadn’t raised her hand earlier held it up now.

Other than that, almost the whole room stood still, waiting for James to explain what was going on. In the silent stillness, Mina noticed the only person still moving was Rotter. He was taking notes silently in the book he always carried with him.

“The fact that almost everyone who had these bad dreams experienced some form of contact with her proves that she really is involved in these dreams,” James said. “There is no easy way to say this. We’re being targeted. Our neighbor has infiltrated the dreams of a number of people in the Kingdom, not just people in this room.”

There was a small outcry at this.

“How can something like this happen?” asked Harry Luntz of the Agricultural Committee.

“Why us?” asked Zuccarini.

“What are we going to do about this?” asked Taylor Bunting.

Samuel thumped his tail on the ground loudly several times, and the room started to quiet down.

“The King is clearly about to answer your questions,” the alligator growled, speaking with an air that said, If I had won the fight, I wouldn’t be putting up with this nonsense.

Mina smiled thinly.

“The situation isn’t very complicated,” James said. “We know that the world is full of expansionist foreign powers now. This is one of those. We must defeat her at all costs, of course. As for why us in particular, all she said when I confronted her was that she enjoys human suffering.” There was more discontented muttering as the committee heads digested this information, but much calmer. “Now for my next question. Of those who had strange dreams last night, how did the dream proceed? Is anyone willing to share a general description?”

There was a sharp intake of air, and Mina saw people at the table looking at each other. Waiting to see who would go first. Then three hands went up, almost in unison.

“Dave?” James gestured for the leader of the Hunters to speak. “I should add, before you start, that I don’t need any specifics. Just the overall course of the dream.”

Dave looked slightly confused, but he began to explain his dream anyway. “In my dream, I returned to a certain, um, traumatic experience from my past. Related to the Sino-American War.”

“Did you see the being I saw at any point in your dream?” James gestured at the creepy illusion that still stood in the aisle.

“I did,” Dave said. “She took a place among the enemy’s ranks, and I believe she also occasionally whispered in my ear…”

“At any point in the dream, did she stop her activities?” James asked.

Dave blinked several times and looked surprised as he thought about it.

“Yes,” he said finally. “There was a point when she wasn’t there anymore. I’ve actually done some experiments with lucid dreaming in the past. At one point, I was able to navigate away from my memories. I traveled to some happier places in my past instead…” His face took on a faraway look, and a slight smile danced across his lips.

“I’m glad to hear it,” James said. He looked extremely pleased with Dave’s response. “Does anyone else have any similar or opposite experiences to report?”

Zuccarini raised her hand first, and James nodded for her to speak.

“I wasn’t asleep at the time all this happened. I was doing some journaling—what I was doing doesn’t matter, but what’s important is that my wife was asleep next to me. She was tossing and turning and crying out in her sleep for a while. I couldn’t wake her up, which was unusual—”

Like James, Mina thought. He had seemed like he was in terrible distress a few times last night.

“—because she’s a light sleeper most of the time. I shook her and I raised my voice and dripped water on her face. Nothing worked! But at a certain point it just stopped. Do you—do you know why?” Zuccarini looked at James.

“I think I do,” he said slowly. “But before I say what I think, I want to know if anyone had the opposite experience. Is there anyone for whom the dream got worse and worse and never changed for the better or stopped until you woke up?”

The room fell completely still and silent for a few seconds.

“Okay,” James said quietly. “I guess it actually worked for everyone. So, last night was the first night that I was aware of this thing attacking people in their dreams. I have a power that allows me to visit people’s dreams as well, so I entered Dreamspace and I started interfering with this thing. I don’t seem to be able to kill her there, but it looks like fighting her there was enough. Maybe I can hold her off again tonight.”

“Shouldn’t—um, and I know these are your decisions and the fighters’ decisions more than anything,” Zuccarini said, “but shouldn’t we go and do something about this evil thing—” she gestured at the illusion of the woman—“before tonight?”

Several people started to talk at once as Zuccarini finished her question.

“Have you looked anywhere near that forest?” asked Steve Luck of the Construction Committee.

“We need to consider further preparations—” Dave began.

“We have to be cautious—” Alan began at the same time.

“This needs to be resolved yesterday,” interrupted Luntz. “The effect it’s having on our workers—”

“Is there any way I can help, Your Maj—” Duncan started.

This time it was Luna who let out a strange, yelp-like bark to quiet the room down. As people turned to look slightly anxiously at the wolf, who was rising to her feet and looked a bit uncomfortable herself, James cleared his throat. Luna immediately resumed her seated posture.

Was that reaction something he ordered her to do, to get them to shut up? Mina wondered. It was marvelously effective to have a wolf at the table, but she thought they should probably just make sure he had a gavel for the next meeting.

“I have the beginnings of a plan,” James said. “I want us to use tonight to test it out.”