Ruthless: Path of Conquest

James looked around and found himself in what appeared to be an isolated desert town.

Some of the houses were ruined, much like the buildings he had seen when he first returned to Earth. But these buildings were completely different than the ones James was used to in Central Florida. As if they were built without access to modern technology. Adobe houses. Dirt paths and roads.

I better not be in another vision of the past, he thought irritably. But he hesitated to jump to that conclusion now, considering that he didn’t remember ever seeing buildings like these in real life. Maybe it’s not the past… Something tells me I’m not in Florida anymore.

He couldn’t have explained how he knew, but he felt a sense of despair hanging over the tiny town. As if the whole village was waiting for an axe to fall on them.

He saw an old Hispanic man emerge from one of the houses. His expression was sad but calm. A young woman stepped out after him and kissed him on both cheeks.

“Thank you for your sacrifice, Don Felipe.” She was speaking Spanish, but the words instantly translated themselves for James as usual.

“It’s no sacrifice,” Felipe said contentedly. “I’ve lived a good, long life, and I’m doing it for my friends and my family. I couldn’t ask for a better reason to die. Hopefully it means a longer life for the people here.” His face turned dark. “Hopefully their god will be satisfied with me and whoever else they’re giving it for a long damn time.” His voice rose with those last words. Then James saw another couple of people, a man and woman who looked like Felipe, come out and embrace him.

And then he watched as Felipe walked to meet a young man who smiled sadly at him and led him to a motorcycle.

The two were riding out of the village, and James found himself floating along with them, shifting through the air as if he was weightless and tethered to the old man—until a fast-moving projectile made of light struck the pair, and they suddenly careened off the road!

The projectile disappeared a second later, and James watched the two men bleed into the sand.

This set of visions must be showing me suffering in the present, he thought. She wanted to show me this to force me to experience other people’s pain, then. Everything feels so pointless. The old man was going to die in some sort of sacrifice to appease the people terrorizing this village. Now both of these people are dying, and what’s going to happen to the village?

The sheer futility of it all was what galled him more than anything. As he saw a woman approaching from a hill overlooking the dirt road, the vision faded.

James suddenly found himself in a stone building. It was dark and torchlit.

A group of people stepped into view. They were following a young woman who was talking about a Vampire Count.

The vision pulled him around after the group of people as they made their way deeper into the stone space James had found himself conjured into. He watched as the group engaged in argument, in-fighting, and general stupidity, and he found himself thoroughly unimpressed.

So, when is something going to come and eat these fools? he thought.

When the Vampire Count appeared and violently attacked them, James felt embarrassingly inclined to cheer him on.

These people are practically slasher movie victims, he thought. I guess I don’t have enough empathy to worry about a bunch of random strangers whose only salient quality is that they seem to be painfully stupid. Oh, Sister Strange. If you really want me to suffer, you need to show me people I care about…

The scene dissolved suddenly, and almost as if the vision was responding to his thoughts, James saw his soldiers in Sister Strange’s forest. Hundreds of ethereal humanoid creatures crowded in around them, a wave of unstoppable shadowy figures crushing in on the Fisher Kingdom’s forces from all sides.

Their only defense, James observed, was a faint and weakening curtain of light from various spells and Healing Auras.

James saw people’s faces. They were exhausted, their expressions twisted in looks of despair. The lights they had conjured all around themselves were dwindling. Mages were dropping to the ground from complete expenditure of their Mana. And he saw a general loss of hope in the soldiers’ eyes.

James looked around. He saw the numbers of the spectral figures steadily and substantially diminishing over time, but he didn’t think any of the people who were actually on the scene could see it. Their eyes were clouded by despair. And the number of humans being possessed by the specters, though small, was slowly but steadily rising, only occasionally interrupted by rescue or use of the Purification Skill.

He felt his own heart waver as he wondered if his friends and supporters would survive their encounter with Sister Strange’s army.

And he also felt something else. There was something going out of the soldiers who collapsed to the ground, and those who faltered in the attack. Something metaphysical. He couldn’t see it, but he could feel the shift in the air. Some element of spirit, perhaps.

Whatever it was, those specters that remained were taking pleasure in consuming it. James couldn’t tell if it was making them any stronger or helping them endure enemy attacks—and in terms of numerical losses, Sister Strange’s army was clearly doing worse, since few of James’s troops were actually dying.

But they were also enjoying themselves, while those who fought for the Fisher Kingdom were steadily losing power and heart the longer the fight went on. The ranks of the possessed also bulked them up, and occasionally more spirits arrived to fill the dark army’s ranks.

It felt calculated to create hopelessness. The same despair that he saw on so many faces.

The scene was massively more distressing to James than the rest of what he had seen set in the present day. He could imagine losing so many people whose names and faces he knew. Dave, Mitzi, Alan, Sam Masterson, Amalia…

He shocked himself when he searched for them and realized that Alan and Mitzi were both possessed, while Amalia lay on the ground, unmoving. From the bird’s eye view he had, he wasn’t certain if she was dead or alive.

Everyone who had fought beside him in the bats’ forest was here now. Many of those he had led through Orientation were there.

And this time, you’re not there to save them, he said to himself.

If they can’t survive this, they weren’t made for this world, replied his dark inner voice. Those who come through on the other side will be stronger for it.

James was immediately ashamed and angry at himself for even entertaining that thought about people who were putting their lives on the line for him and his cause.

He was trying to think of a way that his army could turn things around before their morale completely disintegrated when the vision faded away. The world turned black for a moment.

No! Damn it, I actually care about those people! Why are you taking this vision away? Am I not suffering enough? I assure you, this is quite unpleasant.

He blinked and found himself in the room with the doors once more. Now three of the four doors were closed.

“What are your family doing in my house?” Sister Strange’s voice came from the walls and the ceiling of the room all at once, wheedling and insistent.

“Probably killing you off, I figure,” James replied, shrugging. If Mina, Alice, and his mother were already there, he knew there was little Sister Strange could do about it. He felt that her ethereal body was still bound to his.

“I deliberately left your family alone, and this is how you repay me?” Sister Strange said, her voice accusing and insinuating.

“We never made any kind of deal,” James said, raising an eyebrow. “I didn’t even know if you knew who my family were. I assumed you avoided touching the dreams of people who were close to me, because you knew I had some connection to Dreamspace, and you figured that would put you on my radar more quickly. Was I wrong about that?”

There was a long silence, then she spoke again, with venom in her voice. “Your loved ones will die screaming, you know. My sisters will tear their souls apart! Look forward to that. I hope your next visions will give you a preview…”

Then the last doorway was sucking James in, and he fell toward it so fast that he had little ability to resist.

James found himself standing in front of himself again.

Present-James looked on as Vision-James stepped into a sixty foot by sixty foot square arena. A crowd looked on, and Present-James saw Mina, Zora, Alice, and Yulia sitting in the front row, watching Vision-James.

Another man entered on the opposite side of the arena. He looked East Asian, with a stoic, composed cast to his expression—and the sorts of chiseled facial features that would be envied by any man who had ever had trouble getting a date.

Go ahead and kick his ass, future me, James thought.

At an unheard command—the whole vision was peculiarly silent—the two combatants sprung into motion. Vision-James threw blades of wind at the other man, and they left cuts on his face and penetrated through gaps in his armor to cut his body as well. But his opponent drew a long straight sword and charged toward Vision-James at full speed.

Vision-James tried to dance back, but it seemed as if the other man was as fast as he was—and perhaps he could even predict his movements before he made them.

As Vision-James dodged the attacks over and over, he didn’t let the blade touch a hair on his head or the armor he was wearing. Vision-James continued to inflict the occasional punishing Meteor Strike, Lightning Strike, or Air Strike, but none of those attacks did enough damage to deter the swordsman. At the same time, the amount of ground Vision-James could freely move through shrank as his opponent skillfully pushed him back and cut off his options.

Finally, Vision-James set a foot wrong, and the swordsman swept in with a swift slash to secure the kill. The blade passed through Vision-James’s neck, and his head toppled to the ground.

Oh, you found a new way to kill me, Sister Strange, James thought. How very creative of you.

Of course, this death was incompatible with his death in the other set of visions meant to depict the future. So which one was supposedly real, and which one was contingent on his choices and those of others? Was either of these futures truly unavoidable, or was Sister Strange simply trying to force him to accept a fate that was not written in stone? Or tormenting him with visions of things that could conceivably happen?

James looked to the crowd and realized that Mina and the others were weeping. Mina’s reaction in particular was violent. Her face had turned dark red, her cheeks were streaked with smeared makeup and tears already, and he could see that there was blood on her hands from clenching her nails tightly. Alice and Yulia were holding her, tears in their eyes. Zora’s eyes had gone hollow. The tears flowed down her face, but she seemed to be frozen in a thousand-yard stare in the direction of James’s body.

That made the sight of his own death far more disturbing than it had been.

I can’t let myself die in front of them.

The vision began to fade, and James saw an image forming of a new setting. He made out a clear blue sky, a swamp, and in the distance, the ruins of a city.

Then a piercing shriek shattered the vision as it was forming. The color and light disappeared, and James found himself surrounded by darkness again.

Jesus, what is it now, Sister?

He reappeared in the room in the run-down mansion, and then that too dissolved. He found himself suddenly blinking himself awake, leaning up against the apartment.

What the fuck just happened? How did she throw off my Soul Bind? Are Mina, Alice, and Mom okay?

Then he saw her. The figure of Sister Strange, much reduced, floated in the air several feet to the side of him.

“What have you done to me?!” she howled. “How did I get here? Where are my sisters? Where is my Reliquary? I cannot feel it!”

James smiled at her genuine distress. Looks like my family got the job done.

“It seems we have an ‘A Nightmare on Elm Street’ situation,” he said, getting up and dusting himself off.

“What is ‘A Nightmare on Elm Street’?” Sister Strange asked in her usual eerie voice. But there was a note of fear in it now, James observed. That made him smile.

“An old movie about a demon who liked to invade people’s dreams,” he said. “When they brought him into the real world, though, he died. He couldn’t handle reality. Only his nightmares.”

“You little bastard! You think you can threaten me?” Her voice was the snarl of the wounded predator.

“No, you silly creature,” James replied. “I’m going to kill you and absorb your power. And I’m going to enjoy doing it. Threatening you is beneath my concerns. You’re just a cobblestone in my path. A little building block in my growth.”

He began charging Soul Magic.

“I will not go quietly,” Sister Strange growled. Her body glowed with an ethereal power. An odd black light surrounded her as she prepared to face off with him.

James found the desperation in her tone intoxicating, and his smile widened.