Ruthless: Path of Conquest

As the memory went on, James saw that Moishe infiltrated the camp at night and managed to talk one person who was skeptical of the group’s leader—a man named Harris—into joining them.

Others preferred not to listen to the man who looked and sounded a bit like a sort of desperate desert bandit, spreading paranoia about their leader and their religion.

But Moishe came back the next night and the one after that.

He eventually peeled another member off of the group.

After a few nights of this, the group’s leader started posting guards who would chase Moishe or Ahmed away if they drew near.

That was fine. They had little ability to feed the mouths they had, and the new additions to Moishe and Ahmed’s party still had to be fully won over.

They hunted with Moishe and Ahmed, then eventually watched as the previous events repeated themselves—the group passed through the veil of fire. Again, most passed the angel’s test. Some died horribly, screaming and clawing at the earth as they burned to death.

The pattern repeated itself with other groups, including many people who Moishe told James he did not remember being present at the gathering of religious people he had seen when he met Cyrus.

This underscored the purpose of the strange test.

Cyrus and his followers, along with the other groups of religious people and their respective leaders, had continued to camp out on the other side of the flame curtain. They ate their fill of fruit each day and swelled the ranks of their groups with those who had passed the test.

Eventually, after what James estimated at around a month, Cyrus and Christopher Smith left with around a hundred people—almost the full roster they had arrived at the Fisher Kingdom with. The other religious leaders who had been leading groups through the valley stayed and continued the process of recruitment.

“Now I think I understand why you wanted me to see,” James murmured.

Moishe nodded. “You said you got Cyrus, but there are other people following the same playbook as him. Even if I’m, um, stuck in a dream or something—it doesn’t matter what happens to me, I’m just one guy—you have to do something about this. These guys are recruiting like this for a reason. It’s just like Rostov, but I don’t know what they’re planning to do—”

“It’s okay, man,” James said. Moishe was getting worked up, and that was of no help to either of them. “I’m working on it. You trust me, right?”

There was silence for a moment. Then Moishe said, “Yes. I was trying to nod, but I didn’t give myself a physical body in the flashback, besides the one down there trying his best to survive.”

“I get what you’ve been trying to show me now,” James said. “Unless there’s something more, besides the character of the enemy we’re facing, I’m ready to see what you did to get out. I want to figure out if I can help you, and that’s the big clue I’m missing.”

“You didn’t guess already?” Moishe asked. “How would you have escaped?”

“I’m pretty sure I could handle being lit on fire for a few minutes,” James replied. “No offense. I’m just built differently from other humans at this point.”

“Right,” Moishe said. “I forget how different you are sometimes.”

“But really, I wouldn’t want to try that as my first option,” James said. “My power set is totally different from yours, so I would have used my long range attacks and tried to kill the angel. If I can’t kill it, I could at least distract it, assuming it’s vulnerable to some form of physical harm. In that time, my allies would escape the Dungeon, and if I couldn’t hurt the angel, I would try to get away to follow them. Just like you have an invisibility item that you were using back when I met you, I have something like that too. I would use that when I wanted to sneak away from the angel and try to get through the exit myself.”

“So, you think it’s really an angel, then?” Moishe asked.

“What else would it be?” James replied.

“I just didn’t assume that Cyrus was right about it being something that’s supposed to be good. I don’t know. Could be anything. I just thought of it as the main monster of this place that I needed to escape.”

“That’s probably a better way of thinking about it,” James said. He wondered if Moishe had some religious leanings. “I would add that the devil was supposedly an angel, so just because something is supposed to be one, wouldn’t mean that it’s good, even if the, um, holy books are turning out to be true.”

“Yeah, that’s fair,” Moishe said. “Anyway, you’re probably wondering if your proposed ideas for escape occurred to us, and if they worked.”

James nodded.

The vision stopped fast-forwarding, and James saw Moishe and a group of five others gathered around a small campfire. It was sunset in the Dungeon. The party was in a heated discussion about what to do next.

“We can’t just stay here!” exclaimed Ahmed. “There are people waiting for us outside.”

“I don’t want to burn to death,” said another man.

“We might have to take our lives in our hands,” said a woman.

“I did have a thought about how we might get out,” said Moishe.

Everyone got quiet and looked at him.

“I have two of these,” he said. “They came from killing those invisible iguanas. I found one when I first got here and another during one of the days I’ve been trapped. It’s really the only lucky thing that’s happened to me besides running into you guys since I got here.” He pulled out the camouflage item that James had seen him use before, and he demonstrated how it worked.

“So that allows you to blend in with the environment and turn basically invisible?” the woman asked.

Moishe pulled the cloak away from his face again before he replied.

“That’s about it,” he said. “I figured that if the creature doesn’t detect us, it won’t turn on the wall of fire. The first person can get through, and a second person can go in, get the backup skin from the first guy who made it, and cross back to give it to the next in line. This way, we might be able to all get across.”

“You think you can fool an angel?” asked a man who had not spoken before.

“Who says this damn thing is an angel?” Moishe asked. “Just because this Dungeon is pretending to be modeled after a religious idea, it doesn’t mean the creature that’s guarding the exit is a real angel. Anyway, if this is anything like a video game, Dungeons are made to be beaten. The fact that this monster appeared in this place is not a coincidence. The item it dropped is probably the indispensable thing that we need to escape this place.”

“I agree with Moishe,” said Ahmed. “Of course, I’d be willing to try almost anything to get out of here by this point.”

“So, who goes?” asked the woman.

There was further discussion, which the flashback fast-forwarded through. The group agreed to the drawing of lots.

Moishe prepared strips of paper, and each member of the group took one.

Ahmed drew the short strip.

The group snuck as close to the Dungeon exit as they could without triggering the angel’s attention or being seen by the religious group still camping at the edge of the canyon. By now, they knew the ins and outs of the Valley of the Shadow of Death, which was not particularly complex once one had spent enough time there.

This was not like the Dungeon James had experienced with Anansi, in which the occupants were trying to deceive him even as he tried to deceive them. It was even less like Carol’s Dungeon, which James had speed-run through easily. The Valley of the Shadow of Death simply required unyielding endurance, vigilance, and hardiness and slowly ground down anyone who stayed too long.

At the point where they stopped, Moishe, Ahmed, and the rest could just barely see the shape of the angel in the distance. But it was clear from their internal discussion that they were afraid that if they drew any nearer, they would trigger the angel’s wrath or some retaliation from the religious zealots.

“Now is the time,” Ahmed said restlessly. “Now I’ve got to go.” He sounded nervous as he donned the cloak.

“Wait,” Moishe said, laying a hand on Ahmed’s shoulder. “What’s your last name, man? I realized I never asked you. And is there something you’d like us to tell your family, in case we make it out and you don’t?”

“Qadir,” Ahmed said. “It starts with a ‘Q,’ and there’s no ‘U’ after it. Just ‘Q-A-D-I-R’. Not exactly a common name in Florida, so if you meet anyone with it, they’re probably my family.” Ahmed laughed nervously. Then he fell silent, and his face became grave. “If you meet them, and I didn’t make it, just tell them—tell them that I tried. I wanted to make it back to them. But it was impossible. I was misled by evil men—well, you know the whole story, Moishe. You can give them all the details, if you want. Maybe don’t tell them how I died, if it’s like what happened to the others. Use your best judgment. I just want them to know, I’m not one of those deadbeats who abandons his family. That’s it. I lived and I died the best way I knew how.” He nodded to himself. “I was an honorable man.” Ahmed looked at Moishe and laughed nervously again. “I just rambled there, eh? Will you remember all that?”

“Sure, man,” Moishe said, trying and failing to smile at his ally. He shook his head. “I’ll never forget it as long as I live. Unless you survive—” He finally managed to smile—“in which case I’ll do my best to forget we ever had this conversation.”

“There’s one more thing,” Ahmed said. “In case I don’t survive, you should have this.”

He handed Moishe his bag, with all his items in it.

“I wouldn’t want the angel to destroy it—or for all my stuff to go to waste, if it could help you last a little bit longer,” Ahmed added.

“Thank you,” said Moishe, visibly touched.

“Salam, Moishe.” Ahmed’s face had taken on a fatalistic smile. He was ready to face whatever fate awaited him.

“Salam, Ahmed.”

The two men clasped hands and embraced, and then Ahmed pulled the cloak over his head so that nothing of him was visible.

He stepped away from the group, toward the bounds of the angel’s territory.

Moishe stood, looking like he was holding his breath for a moment. Then the curtain of flame ignited. Moishe saw a burst of flame that appeared to catch a bit of the rocky ground on fire.

Of course, Moishe and everyone with him knew what they were actually watching.

Ahmed was burning. He blended into the ground at that moment, but there was no mistaking what was happening.

Moishe covered his face, then shook his head and forced himself to keep his eyes on what was happening to his ally.

James and Hester looked on, and Moishe stared, as the burning went on for several minutes. During that time, Ahmed continued moving forward, forcing himself to advance through the curtain of fire, through the pain. He collapsed only a few feet away from the edge of the religious camp.

The religious folk looked on with mild curiosity, and the leader nearest to Ahmed’s burning body gave a quick lecture on how they could not deceive or hide from the Almighty. It was sort of muted, because Moishe had apparently not been paying attention to what the man said.

He still stared at Ahmed as the slumped figure burned.

Moishe kept staring until Ahmed’s body and all his clothing had burned to ashes. Within a few minutes, there was no sign that he had ever existed.

The Moishe that was remembering this, immaterial in the air alongside James and Hester, let out a choked cry.

“It’s so painful to remember,” he said after a moment. “He was a good man. He was very brave. He endured all that pain without crying out. He knew the religious folks weren’t going to help him, and more than anything else, he didn’t want to give us away. He was incredibly strong inside. It’s rare to meet someone that strong. And seeing how he handled it helped me figure out my method for escape.”

“Jesus Christ,” James said, shaking his head. He knew immediately what Moishe meant.

“What?” asked Hester.

“Show us how you got out of here, Moishe,” James said quietly.

So this is how you got burnt so badly.

Moishe fast-forwarded the flashback several days in the future. There were more scenes of him and his little group Looting the bodies of those who fell in the Valley of the Shadow of Death. It was obvious from the methodical way that the group did everything, taking inventory of supplies and dividing them up among themselves, that they had discussed a plan after Ahmed died.

But the mood was somber.

James could tell that none of these people believed they would make it out of the Dungeon. Except perhaps Moishe.

It was impossible to tell if the look in the young man’s eyes was belief or simply gritty determination. He would get out of here, whether that angel thought he was righteous or not. He would find Ahmed’s family. He would reunite with his friends. He would live.

Another member of the group fell to a Deathly Bark Scorpion attack. The rest of them did not visibly mourn as they had the earlier deaths. They were growing hardened to these events. They simply Looted the body and moved on.

An evening came, after most of the religious people had already moved on and left the Dungeon, when Moishe and the rest were ready.

They approached the angel and the religious camp again, and they stopped where they had before when Ahmed crossed.

“Everyone has their Health Potions?” the Moishe on the ground asked.

“You didn’t…” James said. This was going to be hard to watch.

“You’re goddamn right I did,” said the Moishe who watched along with James and Hester. “No regrets, either.”

“What the…” Hester was confused, until she saw what the people on the ground did.

Moishe had put away almost all his gear. He wore only a thin layer of clothing now, with his System-provided bag hidden in his underwear.

The only other items he and the others kept out were Health Potions.

“You’re insane!” Hester exclaimed as she realized what was going on.

“Let’s go!” cried the Moishe in the Valley of the Shadow of Death. He chugged one of the Health Potions, and he started running at the angel’s territory.

The flames ignited all over his body at once, and he powered through with sheer determination. The rest of the party had chugged a potion each and continued after him. As they walked through the fire, each party member opened and began drinking another potion.

As Moishe staggered forward, the others behind him tried to keep pace—but most of them did not have what Moishe and Ahmed had within them.

Some intangible factor that kept them going despite everything.

Two of the group fell almost immediately. Moishe refused to look back as he heard them fall. He just started sucking on another potion as he continued moving forward with his burning legs.

He ignored the jeering words of the religious folk who were standing at the edges of the Valley of the Shadow of Death. And Moishe managed to continue on beyond the limits of the curtain of flames.

His entire body was on fire by that point. He tried to take another potion, but the bottle cracked in his hand and then exploded from the heat.

He rolled around on the ground and put some of the fire out, but he was still burning, his body smoking and hissing. The only good side was that the religious folks were wary of approaching him while he was on fire.

Only one other man had made it through beside Moishe.

The two tried as best they could to put their flames out by rolling on the ground, then helped each other as they walked toward the exit portal.

James could see the angel was moving, as if it was saying something as they left, but Moishe and the other man were incapable of taking notice. It was as if the sound was muted. Looking carefully, James saw that Moishe’s ears had melted.

But no one got in their way as they made their way out.

Both men managed to step through the exit.

The Dungeon of the Valley of the Shadow of Death had been cleared.