Warden's Path

by Heath Pfaff

  That sentiment received no complaints from either of us. The thought of lingering here longer than necessary was one that neither of us cherished, and speaking with more locals or taking momentos sounded equally unpleasant. We began the descent to the shoreline. The road became more evenly paved as we traveled until we reached a point at which it was a very neatly laid out stretch that ran between rows of farms that stood beyond the main walls of the city.

  One could almost mistake it for a pleasant and normal approach to a large commerce center, but the illusion was broken if you spent too much time looking at the farms. The fields were all bare of plant life, long and lumpy stretches of barren dirt. The only thing that stood above ground level were old scarecrows, or what I hoped were scarecrows. The humanoid shapes tied to polls dotting the landscape looked wrong for things stuffed of hay. They had a heaviness to the way they hung, and their shapes were too close to humanoid. I was glad I couldn’t investigate them further as we moved.

  The old farmhouses we went by were all in different states of disrepair. Some merely looked empty, but others were burned out, or otherwise destroyed. One had fallen over partially. I tried to guess what might have done so much damage to the structure, but it was beyond me. Something large and heavy had to have hit the house.

  As we drew closer to the main gates sounds began to float our way, but not the kind one would normally associate with approaching a thriving center of trade. The screams that rolled through the air held desperation and torment, and the other sounds, the ones that didn’t make sense for any animal or monster I’d ever heard before, rolled in the air like the crackle of a fire. This all seemed to grow louder as we approached the gates, supplanting the quiet with something much worse.

  We crossed the drawbridge, pressing on the through the terrible din until we reached the arch that marked the gateway into the city proper. Then, just as we slipped beneath that stone half-circle, the city went quite, like it was a house of playing children and its mother had just told yelled at them and told them to be silent. A cold breeze swept past us, stirring garbage and debris along the streets, but not another sound came from within.

  “Bad place.” Dreea said quietly. “Smells foul, air tastes bad too. Dangerous.” She looked like she was ready to spring into action at any moment. I could see the tension in her body, the way she stood almost crouched with her hands curled to expose the claws at her fingertips.

  “We’ll get through this as quickly as we can.” Arthos answered in a hushed whisper. “Lead us on.” The last part was to me, a reminder that was I was our compass.

  I wasn’t keen on the fact that I was to be the one taking us forward into this place. I had no way of knowing exactly where we were going. I was simply given a direction of pull that I tried to follow, but the streets we were now on had looked like a labyrinth from above, and now that we were down amongst them, it only seemed worse.

  I took another scrying, and then started walking down the street, looking for a place that turned in the right direction. I took the first side street we came across, and we walked a few blocks before the street ended with a large building directly in our path and no streets going around it. It didn’t make sense. The building shouldn’t have been there at all. No city would be built with a main street that terminated in a building with no side streets, and this was a large structure.

  A sign on the front of the building read, “Prosper Loans” in a large, legible print. The building was four stories high, and looked like some kind of bank. The doors going inside hung ajar, as though it wanted us to enter. That was a strange thought to have because buildings had no wants or urges, but that was the impression I had when I looked at the gaping maw that opened into darkness beyond.

  I took another scrying, and the tug was urging us forward through the building. “We could go around it.” I suggested. “The scrying wants us to go straight through.”

  Arthos shook his head. “No, we’re not doing that. We’ll circle around.” He said, and then he started to lead us. We cut between the large building and those that were next to it. There was a narrow path between them, a path that was too narrow to have been properly planned. It looked as though Prosper Loans had been picked up and shoved here at random, almost touching the other buildings it bordered in a haphazard way, nothing a city planner woud allow. We walked for some time, and then reached a dead end. The massive wall before us connected Prosper Loans to the building it was neighboring. The wall leaned in our direction, and rose up nearly twenty feet, easily over the top of the other building, which seemed to be some sort of mass housing.

  “We’re being herded.” Dreea was looking about as though the walls might grow teeth and descend upon us. “When hunters work together, they come at prey from multiple sides, force them into a narrow place. The city is hunting us.”

  “This is a city. How can someone use an entire city to force us anywhere?” I asked, but the possibilities of that answer were frightening.

  “If this is a space inside one of the doors, someone might be able to control everything around us.” He sounded a bit uncertain, like there was something that didn’t quite fit into the theory he’d put forth. I didn’t like it when Arthos was uncertain.

  “Might?” I asked, hoping to get more from him.

  “The doors, the places you open inside of them, they have to already exist in some way. When a door is opened, it’s opened into a pocket of existence that is already formed and whole. We can move the location of the doorway to an extent, and we can open the doors into adjacent pockets, places where there are slight variances of reality, but we can’t actually make any changes in those realities. What is there when you go through the door is there. This place . . . the things we’ve seen, it’s like someone shaped this place out of sheer Will, made it exactly what they wanted it to be, and it feels like it’s changing around us, and for us.” Arthos’ explanation didn’t make me feel any better.

  “If something can do all of this, can shape reality like this, then why doesn’t it just make something do what it wants? Why play games with us at all?” I asked, trying to puzzle it out for myself but coming up with no good answers. Was this a god of some type? A creature of incredible Will like one of the Blackened?

  “Maybe it can’t affect everything. Maybe this box it wants, the tesseract thing, is beyond its ability to manipulate so it needs outside agents to act upon it.” Arthos gave a shrug. “Why it wants what it wants doesn’t matter as much as the fact that I believe it’s very dangerous to do the things it wants us to do. We need to break out of the bounds it has placed on us.”

  “Then let’s do that.” I said, and I pulled off my pack and began to rifle through my supplies. After a moment I pulled out a length of rope attached to a wooden handle that had a metal rod coming out of one end. I flipped a latch on the side of the handle and pulled a release causing hooks to spring up on the side of the rod. It was a grappling hook, a tool I’d always found useful on missions while still in training at the school. “We can climb over this wall. It’s a difficult climb, but we’re more than capable. Clearly that’s not what is expected from us right now.”

  Arthos considered, looking at the hook. “Can you climb, Dreea?” He asked our willifen friend.

  Dreea nodded. “Yes, can climb rope.”

  “Alright, but we’ll do this cautiously. I don’t want anyone getting hurt scaling walls. I’ll go up first.” He held a hand out for the hook, and I turned it over to him. A part of me wanted to tell him that I should go first since it was my hook, and my idea, but Arthos was in charge. If he wanted to go first, I should allow him to do so. I was worried about what might come for him once he was up there, but he was a Warden, he could defend himself. He could likely defend himself better than I could myself truthfully.

  The upper edge of the wall was covered in rusty barbs that would make getting over them difficult, but far from impossible. Arthos launched the hook with expert precision and within seconds it was well nested. He te
sted the line, and then he was scrambling up the rope faster than some went up a set of stairs. He was about halfway up the length when a strange sound came echoing down the alleyway between the buildings. It sounded like a mix of a dog’s growl and and the screech of an animal being murdered. It hurt my ears, and made Dreea whimper. A shape blocked the light at the other end of the tunnel.

  “Dreea, start up the rope.” I told her, securing my pack in place and readying my weapon.

  “Won’t leave you!” Dreea replied.

  “We can only go one at a time, and I have weapons. Please, just go.” I told her, not looking back in her direction as something began to move down the alleyway towards us. I could make out a general shape, but it was hard to see details in the low light of the alley. It made that terrible noise again and began to move more quickly.

  Dreea looked at me once more, then gave a growl and took the rope before she began to scale up after Arthos. She wasn’t quite as fast as he was, but she wasn’t slow either.

  “There is nothing to see up here.” Arthos called down. “More city, but nothing threatening, hurry.” His voice had a tone of urgency, but the thing in the alley was coming fast now.

  I began to see the details of it, but it didn't make any sense. It had the head of a dog, or something like a dog, but it had too many legs, and those legs had too many joints on them, at least four per limb, and its locomotion was uncanny. I wasn’t entirely certain how it propelled itself. It was like a spider with all of its limbs, but the extra joints made it move smoothly, almost like it was swimming through the air. It’s body was scrawny, emaciated looking, but I could see hard muscle beneath its papery looking flesh. Two red eyes hung bulbous from their sockets, looking like they might rupture with each motion the thing made.

  “Come, Lillin! Quickly!” I heard Dreea call out from above and I leapt to the rope and began to ascend, the climb made harder by the weapons in my hands. I took a moment to tuck one into my pack, pulling myself up with one hand, and then I tucked the other in, but that was the exact moment the thing hit the bottom of the rope, just beneath my feet. Something sharp stung my leg, and I looked down to see those terrible red eyes looking up at me, and one of the creatures awful legs, the end pointed like a knife, jammed into my thigh. It began to climb up after me, using the corner of the alley and the rope to drag itself upwards. Its legs weren’t built for climbing, and that was the only thing that kept it from overtaking me immediately. It was faster than I could have guessed.

  I couldn’t go up anymore. It was hooked into my flesh, and was using that hold, plus a hook around my foot to hold me in place. It’s many legs were anchored on the walls around it. Sharp teeth snapped up at my foot, and I just pulled it up and away enough to avoid the bite, which was fortunate because those jaws were powerful, and those teeth very sharp. I was caught. I couldn’t escape. There was nowhere left to go.

  In a panic I tried to bring my Will up to fight, but I didn’t focus the attack well at all, and all it did was push uselessly at the creature, which made the grip in my leg rip further into the flesh. I cried out in pain and gave a sharp curse. My hands were getting tired.

  “No!” Dreea growled, and suddenly her dark form rushed past me, falling down the length of the rope. She hit the creature hard, claws shredding it’s leg, the one stuck in my thigh, and causing it to let go reflexively. The rope jerked as she caught it and swung us all against the wall, slamming herself and the creature hard against the unforgiving surface. She ripped the beast from its tenuous hold on the rope and then they were tumbling to the ground. The creature shrieked in pain, and Dreea roared as she bit and tore into it with her claws.

  “Up, Lillin, now!” Arthos snapped.

  “Dreea!” I called down, blood dripping down my thigh, and my heart thudding hard in my chest. I couldn’t just leave her behind. She’d saved me. She’d risked her life to save mine.

  “Now!” Arthos snapped, and my eyes gave another look down at Dreea. The creature was hurting her now, it’s legs cutting and stabbing into her flesh as she fought with everything she had. I pulled myself up a bit further, and then Dreea let out a shrieking whimper. I dropped. I didn’t even think about what I was dropping into.

  I drew my weapon as I descended from on high, and I landed in the middle of the combat, atop the monster that had attacked us. The metal pole in my hand struck home again and again until finally, with Dreea’s feeble help, the terrible thing in the alley stopped moving.

  “Dreea!” I whispered her name harshly as I went to her. She was wounded, cut in several places, bleeding from others. I grabbed my pack and began to bandage her wounds, covering what I could, packing what I couldn’t wrap. Her eyes were wide and full of fear, but I stroked the top of her head. “It’s alright, Dreea. It’s alright.” I assured her, but I wasn’t certain. The words rang hollow.

  She looked up at me, her eyes meeting mine. “You alright?” She asked, voice soft.

  “Yes, I’m fine. Don’t worry about me. You saved me.” I promised her as I quickly patched my own leg, wrapping it tightly to keep it from bleeding too much before I could do more with it. Luckily no major arteries had been struck. I’d recover quickly enough. I wished I’d mastered healing myself with my Will better. It took a precision I couldn’t muster.

  “Saved, Lillin.” She said, nodding to herself. “Yes. Good.”

  I stroked her face. “Come on, Dreea. I need you to climb onto my back. I’m going to pull us up the rope. We need to leave here.”

  “Hard to move.” She said, trying to sit up. I helped her get up, though. It wasn’t an easy endeavor. She was injured everywhere. Eventually I got her standing and wrapped her arms around my neck. She held weakly, but tight enough that I could climb the rope. All of that training on the Rift came in handy. Still, pulling myself up that rope was one of the hardest things I’d ever had to do. Arthos helped us over the spikes at the top, and then we eased ourselves down the other side.

  Arthos looked angry, and we didn’t talk for several minutes once we were on the other side. Finally he spoke. “I gave you an order.”

  “I know.” I answered, Dreea still on my back. She’d slumped into me, and I wasn’t sure she was still conscious. “It was a bad order, Arthos. Sometimes there are bad orders, and you have to do what is right, even if it’s not what is easy.”

  Arthos looked like he was about to snap at me, but he closed his mouth and let out a sigh of exasperation. “She is alright?”

  I gave him a concerned look and a small shrug. “It hurt her pretty badly. She needs to rest and recover, but we don't have time for that. She saved my life, though, and I’m not going to leave her behind.”

  “You’re stubborn. I see why you made through the training.” Arthos gave me a strained, but wry grin. I could tell he was still annoyed. “Come on. Let’s get moving again and see if we can find a place to rest for a bit. I don’t like spending any extra time here, but I feel better about where we are now. I don’t think we were supposed to come this way at all.”

  “I think that thing, whatever it was, was punishment for trying to get off the path.” I said. “It came just as we began to climb the wall.” This thought had occurred to me in the moments after I first saw it running down the alley, but now that things were settled the idea was taking a firmer hold. This place had been shaped for us, but perhaps there were limits to what could be done now that we were inside this reality. I supposed it was possible that things hadn’t been entirely shaped for us, or maybe there wasn’t any reasoning to it at all. It was a terrible, purposed chaos, but still chaos.

  “If that’s true we might have worse yet to deal with.” Arthos noted, not sounding happy. He’d begun to move, and I fell in with him. “I don’t think we can count on there being any rules to this place. We need to be ready for anything that might come for us.”

  This lead to an uneasy quiet. We traveled for a good ten minutes, heading in the general direction that the scrying stone pointed. The streets were st
ill a knotted mess around us. The city was twisted and dark, and there was a frightening lack of life within the walls. Finally Arthos pulled us into a small house. We searched it room by room, and then laid Dreea down in the sitting room, lighting a fire in the hearth for some added warmth. The air had an uncanny chill to it here, something that was more than a seasonal bite. We shuttered and barricaded the windows, and then dropped the bar on the front door.

  Finally, with a moment to rest and assess the situation, I had Arthos help me carefully undress Dreea so I could get a better idea of how badly she was injured. She was covered in wounds, the worst of which being a deep puncture in her lower abdomen that was still bleeding. That one worried me. I applied everything I knew about battle medicine and went to work with a needle, thread, and a brand that was actually just a knife from the kitchen of the house. Arthos helped as well, his hands even more skilled than my own. I was almost relieved that Dreea was unconscious. It meant she didn’t have to feel the pain of all the work we did on her.