Ruthless: Path of Conquest

James wished Dave luck and then walked away from him and back to Mina, Alice, and his mother.

He was quiet and resolved. He believed this was his best plan, and he allowed himself to mentally detach a bit from the people he was sending into harm’s way.

Can’t worry about them right now. If I do, I won’t make proper use of the risk they’re taking.

He looked around as he moved. There were still a few people lurking outside, looking at the forest and the force that was about to invade it. Annoyed, James sent another localized message out.

[All non-deployed personnel, please return to your residences. If the enemy retaliates in response to our advance, indoors is the safest place to be.]

Finally, he reached his family.

“How did that go?” his mother asked.

“I think I instilled Dave with as much confidence as I could,” he said. “And as for the rest of them, I think they’re ready to tear down the forest with their bare hands.”

“Are you going to be all right?” Alice asked.

James smiled. “When did you start worrying about your big brother?” he asked. “I’m the one who’s supposed to worry about you, remember?”

“That’s how I know everything is fine,” Mina said, looking at his mother and sister. “James is still trying to be funny.”

“Trying?” he asked. “What do you mean, ‘trying’?”

“Mister Comedian,” his mother said, rolling his eyes.

Is it possible I’m really not funny?

“You guys don’t have to go, you know,” he said, becoming serious. “I know you came up with this plan, and I think it’s a good one, but it’s also risky. We could just use this as an information-gathering trip. You could stick with the volunteers and fight beside them. I think you’re going to be in worse danger than they are.”

“If we don’t follow the plan, the three of us aren’t going to get anything useful done,” his mother said. “No information, no nothing. Trust me. I’ll keep your wife and your sister safe.”

“And I’ll keep both of them safe,” Mina added.

“While Yulia watches the kids and keeps them safe,” James said.

“Even though she’d rather be on the expedition with us, keeping me safe,” Mina said with a subtle note of sadness in her voice.

“I guess I’ll just let these two keep me safe,” Alice said, shrugging and offering a small smile.

That made James smile.

“All right,” he said, shaking his head. He looked at Mina. “I don’t think today is the day any of us die.” He looked at Alice and his mother and added, “Have fun, then.” The sun was completely out of view now, and the dark was settling in over everything like a thick blanket. “I’ll see you on the other side of this.”

Mina kissed him, and Alice and his mother embraced him.

Then James sat cross legged on the ground, leaning up against the apartment building, as he had the previous night.

Dreamwalk.

And he was in Dreamspace, floating weightlessly until he decided which way to move.

There were dreams all around. Even tonight, when hundreds of the residents of the Fisher Kingdom were volunteering to invade Sister Strange’s forest, there were dozens of people asleep already.

Probably mostly children, he thought. That only made protecting their dreams from interference all the more critical.

James looked around, seeing little, for a moment.

Where is Sister Strange?

His and his family’s plans would be thrown for a complete loop if the Dream Wraith was simply choosing not to come back here tonight. Or perhaps she was trying to hide in one person’s dream instead of lurking as a giant, tentacled creature, interfering in scores of dreams. She could have him chasing her all night if that was her plan.

He looked carefully around the dreamers in his territory, but he couldn’t find a trace of her, besides the gross feeling of the energies that she had left behind in her last visits. There were those who were dreaming, beginning dreams infected with the still raw memories of the bad dreams she had given them last night.

James could feel the seeds of nightmares germinating in a few of the minds around him.

Thanks to that creature contaminating my territory, he thought angrily.

He tried to wipe away the traces with his spectral hands, but there was little he could do from the outside. If he wanted to affect the dreamers, he needed to focus on them more carefully and specifically. It might even be best if he entered their dreams. But that wasn’t what he was here for.

James continued to look for the invader as more minds began dreaming.

But there was no sign of Sister Strange.

He began to grow frustrated.

“Where are you?” James said loudly.

Then he saw the shape of her, the tentacled pale-faced thing coming across the border from the exceptionally dark place that was the representation of her forest within Dreamspace.

So she really wasn’t here yet, he thought.

“You’re here early, human,” she said in a curious tone. “Did you decide to sleep at sunset tonight? Were you truly so eager to see me again?”

James rushed toward her, but Sister Strange danced back, keeping her distance, ready at any moment to pull back across the border and into her land again.

“Why so eager?” she asked. “Did you miss my exquisite visions? Are you fond of suffering?”

James already knew what he wanted to say to her. He had anticipated that Sister Strange might be cleverer than the average monster he fought.

“I need answers,” James said. “What were those places and times you showed me? Was that the future that’s meant to be? The future that might be? Or your own invention?”

“I do not know what you saw,” Sister Strange snarled, “but my visions are no inventions. They are true representations of suffering that will be, suffering that may be, suffering that is, and suffering that has been. Since you’re referring to the future, whatever you saw is either going to happen or is a possible path. If it’s the former, then even if some details change, the vision’s contents are inevitable.”

“Which was it?” James asked. “What did you show me? The future that will be, or the future that might be?”

“That’s for me to know, and you to torture yourself with,” Sister Strange said, laughing cruelly. Her face twisted with an unwholesome enjoyment.

“Monster,” James growled. His emotion was half feigned and half real. He was afraid that what he had seen represented the inevitable future, and he was almost as afraid of it being a genuine possible future. He had hoped that Sister Strange was simply a liar, or that she was simply conjuring up his worst nightmares. But the more he thought about it, the more he doubted that.

As much as it would constitute genuine psychological torture to deceive him in this way, she could have shown him worse visions than what he had seen if she was simply trying to torment him. Junior was still alive when James’s last vision faded out. If she wanted to torture him, why not kill his whole family? Why only show isolated incidents? It felt like there was more to this than the simple desire to inflict suffering.

“I am a monster,” Sister Strange agreed, “and you remain merely human. I commend you for returning here, however. You are very brave, despite—” Her facial expression changed, and she turned her head as if to look back at her territory. “What…”

James lunged at the tentacled figure and grabbed her center of mass with both hands.

Soul Bind!

“What are you doing?” Her voice came sharply in his ear. Her tentacles whipped at him now, and James thought she must have done something new with them since they’d last encountered each other. They packed a lot more of a punch. They couldn’t do any lasting damage to him, but they landed whip-like on his dream body, and each touch felt like a blade’s cut.

She optimized them for trying to torture me instead of infiltrating hundreds of people’s dreams, he thought.

“Oh, I just wanted to give you a hug,” James replied from between clenched teeth. “You seem like you don’t get enough of those.”

“Release me, human, or I will—”

She stopped. They both felt it. Soul Bind had taken effect. She was locked to his location now.

“What’s going on within my territory?” Sister Strange demanded. “Who walks through the Haunted Forest this night? I sense a presence…”

“Oh, that’s for me to know, and you to torture yourself with,” James replied, grinning savagely.

“You will suffer for this impudence!” she shrieked. Then her eyes flashed brightly with supernatural power.

James blinked and found himself in that same room in the ancient-looking mansion he’d visited before.

“Choose your poison.” Sister Strange’s voice came from the ceiling and the walls.

James found that the doors looked different from the four doors he’d seen last time. Their number was still the same, but they looked subtly different. He couldn’t tell if Sister Strange had rearranged them, or if they were simply all completely different doors than the ones he’d chosen from before.

She mixed them up to maximize my confusion.

“I want the future that will be,” James said aloud. The first time he encountered Sister Strange, he had gotten the impression she might be willing to accommodate his choice between the four suffering options. Perhaps she might be too angry for that now, but it was worth a try.

I’m glad to be back here again. I’m restraining her from defending her territory, I hope. And if I see the same things again, then I’ll know that those—His mind rebelled against where he was going, refused to complete the thought.

“Do you hear me, Sister Strange?” James yelled. “I want the future that will be!”

One of the doors began exerting a pull on his body, then, almost like it had become the room’s center of gravity. James let himself go with that force, hoping it would be the vision he’d requested.

The door dissolved into nothingness as soon as he passed through it. The scenery jumped into view—and almost instantly, he knew that he was in the wrong place.

It was the living room of his parents’ home from when he was a kid. Before they had to move into their squalid apartment. Before his father died. He heard his baby sister crying, and the sound pulled him back.

As he watched his mother striding briskly across the room toward Alice’s bedroom, James knew what day it was.

“How dare you,” he murmured.

The rage boiled up within him, thick and hot.

This was the day his father died. Tears came to the corners of his eyes. For a moment, he was a child again.

He feared what was coming. It was worse than it had been when he was a boy, because now he knew what was set to happen in the next hour.

Soon, that doorbell will ring. And then… Mom and I find out that we’ve lost him.

The wrathful part of James surged forward and instantly took control of this regression to childhood.

“How dare you?” he said again, loudly this time. He felt his voice rippling through the room. The fabric of the place shook with the sound.

“How dare you waste my time with this bullshit?!” James shouted. “This suffering is pointless. Worthless. I refuse to do this again. Once was more than enough.”

James blocked out the world all around him. He drowned out all sound and light with his mind, until he was in a silent, still black box. And he willed the door to reappear.

After a few seconds of this focused state, he saw the door in his mind’s eye. He reached out and pulled it open. Then he stepped through, and he felt that he was back in the room. He looked around. The door he had just come through closed, and James felt the distinct sense that Sister Strange would not try to suck him through it again.

It was hard to be certain. Dream logic was no logic at all. Hazy and inconsistent didn’t begin to describe it.

But for now, he had won some small part of the struggle for control.

He took deep breaths, trying to brace himself for whatever was to come next.

Three more doors, he thought. What are the odds that the next one holds something useful? He considered the question carefully and realized that he could consider the odds quite high if the rest of these rooms were as real as Sister Strange’s vision from his past was.

That would mean Mina is either certain to die defending this Kingdom and our child, or that it’s a high likelihood. I still don’t understand why. I only have the symbols those people wore to go off of. Religious symbolism associated with the three Abrahamic religions…

He took one last deep breath and then reached out to his body outside of the room.

He could feel that his astral body continued to keep hold of Sister Strange. Which meant her territory was still a vulnerable target for his soldiers.

It’s just a matter of waiting her out now, he thought. Relax and gather as much information as possible. Time is on my side.

James chose one of the remaining open doors without much concern for which one was which, and he stepped through.