Ruthless: Path of Conquest

The day after the last of the coma patients woke up, they held the funeral.

There were a couple of hours of preparation beforehand, most of which James was not directly involved in, but he showed up early nonetheless.

He spent much of his time on-stage, mainly visualizing how his speech would go and preparing mentally for the unpleasant experience. He was set to speak to the sacrifices of the dead.

Then he and Mina stepped backstage; that was where they would wait prior to the start of the speech.

He was still unsatisfied with what he had prepared.

“I wish I’d had a Jefferson, Hamilton, or an Adams to write a proper eulogy for the dead,” James said. “I think whatever I say, as the person who sent them to their deaths, is bound to be inadequate and self-serving.”

He said this, and believed it, despite the fact that he had more than his share of public speaking-related Skills—and every reason to believe that the public still approved of his handling of the Haunted Forest invasion.

“I loved your speech when you rehearsed it for me earlier, skapi,” Mina said. “But I think they’ll be able to tell that you’re speaking from the heart no matter what you say. People don’t go to funerals to hear eloquent words, outside of Shakespeare. They go to feel that someone else shares their pain. And you convey that perfectly. You could probably just go out on stage and speak off the cuff, if you wanted to. Not that I’m advising that, when you spent so much time on the speech… Is this really about the eulogy?”

“Something Dave said before the battle has gotten to me a little,” he admitted. He walked over and closed the door to the backstage area before he continued. “He sort of suggested I was using him and his forces as a distraction. He said he would understand if I was, but I denied it. Now I’m feeling a little bit guilty. Because maybe it was true.”

And they’re my tools both before and after death, now, too.

James would be announcing that in the speech—not in those words, of course, but he had decided there was no reason to try and keep what had happened to the fallen a secret. People should know that there were Vampires around now—and therefore that not all death was permanent.

The Vampires themselves stood in silence in the darkness at the back of this backstage room, as James and Mina spoke. They would wait here to receive their cue before they came out on stage. Something about the undead that James had observed in the brief time he had been acquainted with them was that they could be extraordinarily patient. They stayed so still and silent that it almost did not feel as if they were in the room with him and Mina.

“Don’t forget why you opened up that front in the fight,” Mina said emphatically. “It was so that your mother, your sister, and I could go and invade the Wraiths’ territory somewhat safely and put an end to the enemy once and for all. The plan we worked out together was the best one we could possibly have formulated, given the circumstances. And I still think it was a good plan. Yes, you put your soldiers’ lives at risk. That’s their job. To risk their lives. They knew what they were getting into, and you did everything you could to protect them. You distracted the Ruler and let her—let her torture you, with those visions you still don’t want to talk about, so that your people would have more of a fighting chance.

“After you defeated her, you went in and saved them. When the battle was lost, you rushed in and changed the outcome. I’ve heard how they talk about it—and about how you revived all the people possessed by the Wraiths when the Healers couldn’t do anything. The survivors of the battle are calling you everything from a miracle worker to a god on Earth. No one blames you. And every single one of the people who was lying in a hospital bed after the battle owes you their lives. They probably wouldn’t have recovered without you. So don’t you start to doubt yourself now. Right now is when they need your leadership the most. They need to know how to respond to loss in this new world we’re all getting used to—where we have every reason to believe it will be much more frequent than it was before. Everyone will look to your example.” She finished with a slow, deep breath, and James looked up to see that her face was bright red. She was barely holding it together. Just like him right now.

Mina is also looking to me for strength, he thought. Stability. I have to be strong for her, more than anyone else. More importantly, she’s right. I can’t give up. This is no time to doubt myself. Wartime leaders don’t resign just because some people died under their command. That’s the nature of my role. People are going to die fighting for me. As long as I don’t throw them away like pawns in a game of chess, I have nothing to be ashamed of. If I decide that I’ve done something wrong, it diminishes the value of their deaths anyway. By suggesting that they died for a mistake, instead of acknowledging the truth. They died to protect their friends and family, their loved ones, who were safe behind the lines of the territory.

“I love you, too,” he said.

“We also appreciate being saved,” interjected Amalia Rosario from the back of the room. Her voice had a different quality to it than it had possessed back when she was alive. It was hard to put a finger on how it had changed, but part of it was definitely that it was richer. “I would not prefer to be buried underground. That was why I returned.”

James nodded and smiled. “I like to hear that,” he said. “It makes me feel like I did something right.”

“Thank you, Your Majesty,” said another Vampire, a young man.

Then the other dozen Vampires all approached and thanked James in their own words. It was reassuring that they did not all speak in unison or something similarly creepy. James almost felt like he was speaking to human beings.

Still, I’m glad I didn’t choose the Vampire-adjacent Race Evolution path, he thought. There’s no way Mina would get used to this.

He could see her reactions as the Vampires approached them. There was a tension in her body, as if she wanted to be striking the undead down with fire and lightning.

Putting them back in the ground where they belonged.

James shook his head. Stop pretending you can read minds, he told himself. Just because she doesn’t want to come back if she dies doesn’t mean she won’t accept these people as citizens.

There was a knock at the door, and James turned his head.

He’s here, then.

The Vampires quickly all stepped toward the back of the room again. They had been instructed not to let anyone see them until James was ready for it, and in the deeper darkness of the back of the room, they could have been anything. Living people. Statues. Mannequins. Coat racks burdened with heavy jackets.

James opened the door, and Dave stepped through.

“You wanted to see me, sir,” Dave said. He saw Mina and nodded to her. “Ma’am.”

“I know that what happened in the forest has hit you harder than most,” James said. “While we’re getting ready for the funeral, I wanted to let you in on a secret about what happened after the forest. Could you please close the door behind you?”

Dave nodded and shut the door. The room became almost completely dark, only lit by a thin shaft of light thrown by the two parallel exterior windows.

“What did you want to tell me?” Dave asked.

“There is no easy way to say this,” James said, “so I’ll just say it. Not everyone who died in the forest is dead. I ordered that some of them be resurrected.”

Dave’s mouth gaped at this news. It was obvious, for a moment, that he did not know what to say. Then he shook his head.

“Resurrecting the dead is possible?” he asked.

“Not perfectly,” James admitted. “They’re Vampires now, not humans anymore. But they are the same people who fought alongside you. I’m going to tell everyone in my speech today, but I wanted you to know first.”

Mainly because I was worried about your reaction, he thought. If this troubles you too much, you have the option to go home.

“Well, where are th—” Dave cut himself off as something moved from the back of the room.

James turned his head and saw that Amalia was waving at Dave and had stepped forward, smiling.

Well, there are worse ways to reveal yourself.

“Is it all right if I go and talk to them?” Dave asked, eyes locked onto the figures in the far end of the room.

James nodded. He and Mina made eye contact, and then they stepped through the door onto the stage and closed it behind them, giving Dave some privacy.

“Is it really you?” was the last thing James heard him asking before he deliberately focused his hearing on the other part of the building, where the preparations were being finalized.

Then James and Mina took a seat in some chairs that had been left at the side of the stage. They made small talk about almost nothing—conversation that James would not be able to remember later—while they waited.

Mostly, James was relieved that Dave hadn’t reacted badly to the news. He was the barometer for how others would see what had happened. No, it might be more accurate to say that James had somehow expected a degree of outrage from Dave that would have been less understandable from other people.

“I served with these people, and you bring them back as these perversions of who they used to be? How dare you?!” James had imagined a reaction like that.

And instead—the door closed shut, firmly but gently. James raised his gaze and saw Dave looking at him. There was a thin smile on Dave’s lips, but it quickly disappeared as he returned to his more stoic demeanor.

He approached James and extended his hand toward the Fisher King.

James rose and joined hands with Dave, who gripped him firmly and shook his hand vigorously.

“Thank you for the weight you’ve taken off my shoulders,” Dave said quietly but clearly. “It was good to see them again—to know that they’re still here.

He turned away, climbed down from the stage, and took a seat among the other funeral attendees. They were slowly filing in now.

“That went better than you expected,” murmured Mina in James’s ear.

“I’m an optimist, and that went better than I had dared to hope,” James replied.

They sat there in silence for another ten minutes while the rest of the funeral attendees filed in. Then he marched up to the center of the community center’s stage, facing the seated mass of people from behind the podium. Mina took her position standing to the side and just behind her husband.

James evaluated the crowd.

There was an excited energy in the packed room, almost as if they were not there to mourn twenty-six dead people—though fourteen were not actually dead, the guests did not know that yet. Most in the crowd had not lost anyone they cared for.

Some of them had not been touched by the battle, except that they had been haunted by Sister Strange. Some of them had not even experienced the hauntings. Among those who had fought, only a few had lost someone they were close to. They had gained levels or experience, and there was an obvious camaraderie about the crowd.

James’s eyes fell on Dave, and the two men locked eyes for a moment. Dave gave him the smallest smile and a nod.

I’ll imagine I’m giving the speech to you in particular, James thought. He remembered the look of relief in Dave’s eyes after he had spoken with the new Vampires. It was the last bit of encouragement that James needed to give this speech.

James straightened his posture, pressed close to the podium, and began to speak.