Ruthless: Path of Conquest

What greeted James’s eyes was worse than he had expected.

Hundreds of still bodies. Many displayed an unhealthy pallor. Only the slow, shallow rise and fall of their chests showed that they were still alive.

Jesus.

Most of those he and the Healers had carried from the woods were not only still here, recovering, but they remained unconscious and in poor condition.

The number of people who have gotten up and left like Dave has to be in the double digits, at most.

He looked around to verify what he was seeing. It was just as bad as his initial impression had suggested.

Hundreds of people lay in beds spread throughout the room, unconscious and unmoving. None so much as twitched at the sound of someone entering the building. Further evidence they were in their own world, where no one could help them.

Except perhaps the Healers.

James released a slow breath through tightly clenched teeth. He shifted his focus to the Healers.

A dozen of them stood or sat in various positions around the room. Some of them noticed that James had come in and waved to him. He waved back. Others had not noticed him and simply continued doing their jobs.

But none of them were rushing into any kind of action. It seemed they already knew there was nothing more that could be done for the moment. They had made the patients stable, and perhaps that was all that was possible.

There were a small number of people—a dozen, at most—sitting by bedsides, waiting for friends or loved ones to wake up. None of them waved or appeared to notice James. Their expressions were preoccupied, as if their eyes were watching scenes a thousand miles away.

Or visualizing their loved ones’ funerals.

James had envisioned scenes like that with his family members before. Recently he had spent all too much time dwelling on the possibility of Mina’s death.

He felt a powerful burst of empathy for those who were waiting here, until he controlled it.

He tried to likewise forcefully bury the idea that the situation here was his fault.

At least his mind blanked it out for the moment.

Off to the side, James saw the Healers and Dave talking, in hushed tones.

James tried not to listen in—if he needed more information about what was going on, he would simply ask them later—and as his eyes continued scanning the room, they settled on a familiar figure.

Alice.

He looked around once more, and seeing that there was nothing apparent that he could do, he began walking toward his sister.

As he drew closer, the picture that Alice presented became clearer. Her eyes were puffy and red, fixed on the ground. She was holding her boyfriend Ben’s hand in one of hers. He was one of the unlucky ones who remained unconscious—or one of the lucky ones, if James considered the fact that around two dozen people had died.

James stepped to within ten feet of Alice, and his sister finally glanced up.

Her eyes widened slightly at the sight of her brother. James hoped that meant she was relieved to see him, although he did not think there was anything he could do to help Ben.

“Hey sis,” he said, offering a small smile. “Has he woken up yet?”

Hope I didn’t say exactly the wrong thing. He was instinctively less calculated with family than he otherwise would have been.

She deflated slightly and shook her head.

“Any movement?” he asked.

Another head shake.

“Nothing at all?”

Alice shook her head even harder.

“Are other people waking up?”

Maybe Ben’s just healing slowly!

She finally spoke up. Her voice came out like she had eaten a frog, and it might come back up at any moment. “Not many of them. A couple hours ago, a lot did. I mean, a relatively big group. Woke up like they were just napping. But…”

“None since then,” James finished.

She nodded.

I should have asked the Healers these questions after all, not her. Alice looked as if she might start crying again. I hope she at least feels like she’s helping solve the problem by getting me up to date, though.

He thought about thanking her for her help last night. But the moment was wrong for that. She was in the middle of worrying about Ben right now. Thanking her would just remind her of whose orders Ben had been following that night—technically Dave’s, but indirectly James’s.

No, thinking about all the good she did would be a nice distraction for her. Damn it, stop thinking like a politician. This is your sister!

“I’m sorry this happened,” he said. “I don’t know if there’s anything I’m going to be able to do. Thank you for your help last night.”

He felt the words were lame, insufficient, but he was glad he had said them.

Alice nodded. “What’s family for?” she said.

James smiled the same small, sad smile he had given her earlier and then pulled a chair up and sat next to her. He took her other hand, and they sat in silence for a while, each nursing their private thoughts.

When Alice broke the silence, there were tears in the corners of her eyes.

“You know, he really wanted to prove himself—to prove something, anyway—to you and Mom.”

His devotion to you and by extension to us, James thought.

“I know, or I figured,” he said. “He proved it to me, anyway.”

Alice looked up and scanned the room for a few seconds. “Where’s Mom, anyway?” she asked. Then her expression changed, and she shook her head. “Oh. Right. You gave her a, um, mission.” She looked around uneasily, and James saw a queasiness settling over her.

“Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, I did.”

The silence fell between them again, though it did not last as long this time.

“So, once he wakes up, what’s the future hold for you two?” James asked, nodding at Ben.

“You don’t have to worry about that, bro,” Alice said. Her tone was slightly exasperated, but a crooked smile was twisting her lips in spite of herself. “Mom has already given me plenty of advice.”

“I’ll bet.”

They both chuckled.

“How about you?” she asked after a minute.

“Um, me?”

I know you didn’t forget that I’m married…

“Plans for the future of this place?” she asked. Alice made a broad gesture that James understood as referring to the whole Kingdom, rather than simply the community center.

Mom’s probably going to have a lot of advice for me, too, he thought.

“Huh. Plans for the future. Mostly hoping it gets one right now.”

“Oh, really.” Her tone flattened, and James realized he had actually annoyed her for the first time since they started talking. “Come on, you can give me more than that!” She nodded at Ben. “What’s the grand plan? The vision? What was he fighting for? Just to live to tomorrow and keep people safe from bad dreams?”

“No, Alice.” He lowered his voice so that only she would be able to hear it. “Truth be told, I want to take over all of Florida, then the continent, and maybe followed by the whole world. But that seemed a little ambitious to say out loud. Plus, we’re still kind of recovering from the last battle.”

She looked taken aback, then chuckled and wiped a tear away.

“That’s more like it!” Alice said. “Your family’s here for you, so you can do anything and everything you want. Once you conquer the world, Ben and I get to run Florida, right?” She gave him mock puppy dog eyes, and after a moment, they both laughed.

“I don’t see why not,” he said quietly.

“The first thing I’ll do as Royal Governor of Florida is—”

But James sensed two figures approaching from off to his left side, just outside of his peripheral vision.

“Shh,” he said quietly, putting a finger to his mouth.

Alice immediately zipped her lips.

Then the two men came into peripheral view. Without even seeing them completely, James recognized them by their walks. Gupta and Zirndorf.

He let go of Alice’s hand. He had a feeling that they would have words for him alone. Even if the two Healers were willing to talk about the coma situation in front of his sister, James was not certain he would want her to hear what they had to say.

As the two men drew closer, James got up.

“Did you guys want to speak with me about something?” he asked in a voice just loud enough for them to hear him.

They looked a little surprised that he had spoken up, and he realized the two were still only barely in his peripheral vision. If his senses were what they had once been, he would not have noticed them coming at all.

“That’s correct, sir,” said Zirndorf, recovering first.

“Then let’s go,” James replied instantly. He turned to his sister and added, “I’ll be right back, Alice.”

“Yeah, okay,” she said, furrowing her brow slightly.

James walked off with the Healers before he could see whether her expression would ripen into suspicion of why he was going off with them alone, or go back to a more neutral state.

Once they were on the other side of the room, in an area safely away from any patients’ family members, he spoke.

“What do you have for me?”

“Sir, the patients are stable,” began Gupta.

“But they’re not waking up,” added Zirndorf.

Gupta gave him a sharp look, and Zirndorf added, “At least not yet.”

“Look, you two,” James said. “I want the full and unvarnished truth here. I want to know exactly what’s going on and what to expect. No sugarcoating anything, no hiding anything.”

He spoke in a deep but quiet voice of command that made both men wince slightly.

“We’re not hiding anything, sir,” Gupta said.

“Why were you looking at him like that, then?” James asked, mimicking the Gupta glare that he had now seen twice.

Zirndorf let out a little, choked off laugh that stopped as both James and Gupta glared at him.

“We’re telling you everything,” Zirndorf said. “We just don’t know what the hell is going on. Gupta and I were both in the medical profession when this System business started—”

“He was an anesthesiologist,” Gupta interrupted.

“I don’t care about your professional status,” James hissed. “Get to the point while I’m still in a good mood. What’s wrong with them?”

“We don’t know,” Zirndorf said. “That’s what I was getting at. We’ve been discussing it, and we’ve never seen anything like this before.”

Gupta was nodding as Zirndorf spoke.

“I heard some people woke up earlier,” James said. “What was special about them?”

“Nothing, sir,” Gupta said. “They were just the lucky ones. As far as we know, those people were just suffering from exhaustion. They might have used up all their Mana or Stamina. But just getting them away from the battlefield, getting them some healing and a little food, was enough to bring them out of it. They recovered as if it was just a minor fainting episode, low blood sugar or something.”

“It seems as if the others are the ones who were, um, possessed during the battle, sir,” said Zirndorf, accurately anticipating James’s next question. “If that’s the right word. And frankly, we don’t know what to do about them at all.”

“They didn’t cover possession in medical school,” said Gupta bitterly.

James could easily imagine the discomfort with which Gupta had experienced Orientation and the System generally. The doctor had grown up in a world where things made sense. It had been a grand adventure for James when he was sucked into Orientation, defeating monsters and exploring another planet. He imagined Gupta had not experienced things the same way.

“I see,” James said simply.

“We were hoping that Your Majesty could ask that materials be brought to us here so that we can prepare some makeshift feeding tubes,” Gupta said. “We don’t have medical supplies to feed people intravenously. They’re all stable for now, but the patients are still human. If we don’t find a solution to the feeding issue, we’ll see people start to decline in the next few days. We’ll prioritize feeding the elderly and those who don’t—wait, do you care about these details?”

James shook his head. “I only care about the prognosis, which you’re telling me you don’t know anything about, and what I can do to help, which you already told me.”

He began preparing a message to send out to the whole population outside of the community center. Surely some people would know how to manufacture feeding tubes from the raw materials they had lying around. Maybe.

“We’re sorry we don’t have better news for you, sir,” said Zirndorf.

Gupta nodded gravely. “I understand you have family here.” He pointed in the direction of Ben and Alice with his elbow.

“Yes,” James replied. “I do. I’ll give my sister the bad news myself. That we just don’t know what’s going to happen with her boyfriend.” He swallowed. “Thank you gentlemen. I appreciate your efforts here, even if the results so far aren’t what we want. I know you can’t control that.”

“Thank you, sir,” said Zirndorf.

“Yes, thank you, sir,” said Gupta.

They both seemed to bow their heads slightly as they spoke. It was slightly surreal, even in this moment, to realize that they were showing his position some deference.

Can’t inject ‘royal’ blood to fix this coma, though, he thought. Sister Strange got me after all, in a way. She made this into a bloodbath for us, if they don’t manage to wake up somehow.

James felt powerless—and even slightly guilty, despite knowing that he had done the right thing by taking the fight to the Wraiths. There could be no coexistence with them.

There had to have been something he could have done differently, but he could not think of it.

He walked slowly back to Alice and tried to keep his expression neutral-to-positive.

“Anything interesting?” she asked as he took his seat beside her.

“No new developments,” James replied.

“No news is good news, I hope,” Alice said. “And this guy might wake up anytime now.” She squeezed Ben’s hand, and a hopeful smile tugged at the corners of her lips.

James rose. This is the only thing I can think of.

Alice looked up at him, surprised. “Are you leaving, or—”

It’s the least I can do, after he risked his life. Hopefully it helps.

“As the vitality of the Fisher Kingdom grows each day, so must your vitality swell, Benjamin Crane,” he said. Blessing of the Fisher King imbued his words with a power and authority that even James did not yet fully understand. “As your bond with my family holds strong, so will you hold strong against any force that threatens your health.”

As the words left him, James felt a surge of weakness. He managed to sit in the chair before his knees buckled. The day and the preceding night had already taken a lot out of him.

I don’t think I can use that on any more people today. Not if I want to walk out of here upright.

“James, what are you—” Alice stopped mid-sentence and turned to look directly at Ben.

His eyelids were fluttering.