Warden's Path

by Heath Pfaff

  I frowned but nodded once at him. It was clear he had no intention of listening to me on this. There was no point in arguing. We would come to his aid if he needed it, and hopefully it wouldn’t come to that. With that he turned and headed for the house.

  “He isn’t listening to us.” Dreea spoke quietly. “Arthos is acting strange.”

  “That thing, the one that took the form of a human, it affected him deeply. I don’t know the history he had there, but he is shaken. I’m not sure how much we can rely on his judgement right now. We’re going to have to keep him safe from himself until we can get out of here.” I wasn’t happy to say the words at all.

  “I’m scared he will try to hurt you if you push him too hard, Lil.” Dreea was looking at me intently, her curious yellow and green eyes bright. I remembered when I’d first seen her after she followed Arthos and I out to the road. Her speech had been much more halting then, and I'd worried that letting her come with us on our journey was a mistake. Now here she was, the more reasoning and steadfast of my two companions. I felt a strong surge of affection for her.

  “I’ll try not to do anything foolish, but feel free to nip at me if I do.” I told her, trying to offer a comforting smile. “We’ll get through this together.”

  Dreea’s ears turned a bit red for a moment and she gave them a flick. “Nipping is for mates and family, Lillin.” She smiled, though.

  We both looked up at the house. It felt like Arthos had been gone a long time. Unease settled upon me, a weight that made my shoulders feel heavy. “If he’s not out soon, we might have to go in after him.” He was the only one that could open the doors, and we couldn’t afford to leave him behind, even if he was acting irrationally.

  Dreea gave a little growl. “Foolish Arthos, causing much trouble.”

  “Agreed, but he is also the only one who can get us out of here, so we’ll have to join him in whatever trouble he gets up to.” My tone betrayed my agitation at that thought.

  We waited. Time was difficult to track in this place, but I guessed we waited for nearly half an hour before the door to the house opened again and Arthos stepped out. I knew immediately that something was wrong. He was leaning heavily on the door jam.

  “Arthos, what’s wrong?” I stepped forward, but only once before I stopped myself. This place had taught me not to trust everything I saw.

  Arthos was looking off into the distance as though staring at something, though his eyes were in my direction, so if he was staring at something, it was something through the center of my body. His gaze was uncomfortably blank and devoid of thought or reason.

  “Arthos!” Dreea called his name in a loud barking-growl, and Arthos blinked, looking up at her, then at me.

  “Yes? What?!” The first word came out confused and the second confused and agitated.

  “Are you alright?” I asked, trying to keep my concern in close check.

  Arthos stared at me for a hard moment, as though he was uncertain how to answer. “ . . . yes. I’m alright.” It sounded like he was lying, or like he was telling himself and not me.

  “What happened in there?” I pressed, trying to get his thoughts to focus again. He seemed like he wasn’t all with us in that moment. His mind was elsewhere.

  He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small black coin purse, or what looked like one. The drawstrings were closed, but as soon as I saw it I took a step back. It was a strange thing to do at the sight of a bag, but I noticed Dreea also moved back.

  “I saw it. I looked inside.” He said, holding it up in front of him.

  “Yes, that was why you went into the house. What is it?” I asked, confused by his odd behaviour, and wanting to understand why it had caused such a strange effect on him.

  “It’s . . . Lillin, it’s . . . “ He closed his fist around the bag as he spoke and then shoved it back into his pocket. “We can’t leave it here.”

  “Arthos!” My voice cracked with anger. “We can’t take that thing with us. You know it’s dangerous! You told me we’d leave it. It wants us to take it from this place!”

  Arthos looked at me in shock. “Yes! It is dangerous, Lillin. It’s incredibly dangerous, and terrible. It’s not meant for us, any of us. We can’t let it stay here. It needs to be taken back to the Wardens, and they need to lock it away forever. Forever!” His words rolled off his tongue in a strangely unhinged way.

  “Everything has been trying to get us to take that bag from here, Arthos. It is the wrong thing to do.” I was trying to keep calm, but Arthos was scaring me now. What had he seen in the bag?

  “You don’t understand, Lillin. You haven’t seen what I have. It has to go back to the Wardens, and we have to understand what it is. If we don’t, then I think we will all be lost.” His eyes were wide, and I could see true terror in them. He was afraid, as afraid as I’d ever seen anyone.

  “What’s in the bag, Arthos?” I asked again, more firmly this time.

  “Something . . . I don’t even know what to call it. You can’t look at it without . . . “ His eyes were on the bag again and his hand was shaking. “I don’t know what it is, but I do know that it can’t be left here.”

  “You do understand how crazy you’re sounding?” I decided it wasn’t the time to dance around the issue.

  Dreea stepped closer to me as I spoke, and I remembered her warning to be careful around Arthos. This was exactly the kind of thing she’d warned me against, but I was concerned for all of us now. It couldn’t be a good idea to return with that bag and whatever it was that it held.

  Arthos looked back and forth between Dreea and I, and then his eyes narrowed in suspicion. “You two have been talking behind my back. What did you talk about while I was in there?” His tone was crisp with paranoia. These were signs we’d been trained to watch for in a person, things that could indicate that they would act dangerously and unpredictable. I’d never expected to see these things in Arthos.

  “You spent a long time in there. We talked about whether or not we should go in after you.” I said, trying to keep my voice calm and relaxed. I didn’t want this coming to a fight. We would have to let him bring the bag with us, but I needed to think of some way to make sure he didn’t bring it back through the door.

  “I was only gone a minute. Maybe two. I went in, looked in the bag, and then took it and came back out. Why are you lying?” He shoved the bag into a pouch at his hip and snapped it closed. “What do you have to gain by lying to me? Are you like that thing pretending to be Cathra was? Did they get you while you were out here?”

  “Arthos, that’s foolish.” I couldn’t hide my anger at the accusation. “I’m saying the same things that I was before you went in there. My motives haven’t changed at all. You’re the one acting irrationally. Think about this for a moment. Something wants us to take that pouch from here back to our world, and it has made a point of leading us here. Now you’re going to do exactly that.”

  “You know nothing! How could you!? You haven’t seen it, Lillin!” He growled, pulling his weapon from his back. “You haven’t seen it! It is the kind of thing . . . it would destroy us if they had gotten to it first! The Wardens will know what to do with it. They will know how to keep us safe, to keep it locked away. You can’t stop me from taking it to them. If you try . . .” He shook his head. “I’ll have to assume they’ve gotten to you.”

  Dreea stepped closer to me again, this time putting a hand on my arm. This was my nip. She was telling me I'd pushed things as far as I should, maybe further. I nodded and shrugged. “You’re in charge, Arthos. If this is what you want, then I can’t stop you.” My mind was still spinning through possibilities, looking for some way to do exactly that. He had to be stopped. I’d never been so certain in my life. That bag couldn’t go back through the door. “The Wardens will best know how to handle these things anyway.” I added, forcing myself to look relaxed. I didn’t reach for my weapon.

  “Yes, Wardens are clever. They will know.” Dreea added smoothly.
<
br />   Arthos seemed to relax a little, though he didn’t put his weapon’s away. “Good. Alright, then we know what we have to do. You’ll lead, Lillin. Keep us moving towards the door now. It’s time we left this place.”

  “Are you going to follow me with your weapon drawn the entire time, Arthos? I thought we were friends?” I was less than happy about this situation, and even more so if he was going to walk behind me armed.

  “I’m sorry, but you can’t be trusted now. The two of you will go in front, and I’ll follow. When I feel you can be trusted again, I’ll put my weapon away.” He spoke firmly, the words still clearly tinged with paranoia.

  I made a point of reminding myself that I wouldn’t stand a chance in a fight if I tried to disarm Arthos manually. His command of Will was far stronger than mine, and he was better with his staff as well. He’d just had far more time than I had to learn. There was no hope for me to resist him. I turned my back on him and drew out the scrying stone.

  “If you attack me, we’re done.” I told him as I began to lead us back. I wasn’t sure what I would do if he attacked me, but I wanted him to know that it was unforgivable, that we would not be salvaging our friendship, or our partnership if he made that move. I would probably die, actually, but perhaps there was some connection between us that could be used to keep him in check.

  “Don’t give me a reason to need to, Lillin.” His voice left no doubt in my mind that he would be searching for a reason. In his mind I was some nebulous enemy force waiting to spring on him.

  The trip back to the door was a quiet one. Nothing interfered with our progress, and the roads somehow seemed less windy and bending than they had before. It was as though the path forward had been opened for us, and I thought it was likely that was exactly what was happening. Arthos was doing exactly what this place wanted him to do. He was taking the tesseract back to our world. For his part, Arthos didn’t lower his weapon, and I had no idea how to prevent what was about to happen.

  I couldn’t fight him and survive, even with Dreea helping. I couldn’t even jump through the door and close it behind me because he could just open it again. I felt locked into our course of action. If I knew how to use the doors on my own I could find a way around this, but I hadn’t the faintest idea how to make them work. I’d felt others use them on many occasions, but the method was precise to a degree that I couldn’t hope to achieve.

  I came up with nothing, and we reached the door. It was a simple wooden door set in its frame in what looked like a burnt out mansion. It took me a moment, a far longer moment than it probably should have, to realize that this mansion was the same one that we’d first arrived in, but now it was in the city, and now it was a burned out husk. The floor plan was exactly the same, though. Everything was as it was before, though it was a skeleton now, the cremated remains of the nightmare it had been when we first arrived.

  “This is it.” I told Arthos, gesturing at the door, the same one we’d first come through.

  He was nodding to himself. “Good, good. This is very good.” He put away his weapon finally. “I’m sorry I was so distrustful. The things you’ve been saying haven’t made any sense. I wish you could hear yourself the way I do, both of you. It’ll be better when we return home.” He gestured for us to move aside. “Step back a little.”

  I thought about protesting again, about making one last plea to get him to stop, but I wouldn’t convince him. How bad was this going to be? I was afraid, and that fear only heightened as I felt the surge of his will at the door. As it finished he nodded to me again. “Open it and go through.”

  He still didn’t trust us. I gave him one last look. “This is really what you want to do, Arthos?” I had to ask, once more. Dreea shot me a worried look.

  “Lillin, don’t make me . . . “

  I held up my hands. “Alright, I understand.” I walked to the door and pushed it open. The school lay beyond. I took a breath and stepped through, reaching out to grab Dreea and pull her through with me. I was afraid he’d shut her off on the other side if I didn’t take her. She took my hand and together we entered the halls of the building I’d never thought to return to. We came out at the foot of the door I’d taken to the Rift so many times before. It was the middle of the night.

  We stepped back and out of the way as Arthos approached the door. My trepidation rose. Fear gripped me, and my heart began to beat hard in my chest. What would happen when he came through the gate with that thing? What were we doing? It had to be bad.

  Arthos stepped into our world and nothing happened. There was no symphony of demonic horn music, no darkening of the sky and roaring thunder. There was no cacophony of inhuman music, or rending of our world into ash and dust. There was nothing. I thought I saw Arthos let out a slow, staggered breath.

  “See, we are fine.” He said, and only then did I realize he’d been as afraid as we had. “Come, we need to report what has happened here, and I’ll be giving my review of your performance so far. It will be mostly positive.” The way he said “mostly” made me think there would be notes about how I’d gone nearly insane over the course of the end of our time in that place we’d just come from. I held my anger in check.

  “What of Dreea?” I asked, suddenly keenly aware that she was in the place she’d wanted to go for a while, but that I had no intention of letting her go off on her own here. It was dangerous, and I wasn’t sure what the Wardens would do to her if they decided she knew too much about them.

  He shook his head. “She can stay with you. It really doesn’t matter. What matters is getting this artifact to those who will know what to do with it.”

  That was it. Arthos lead us back through the door to the part of the school where I’d spent my final year training, and then rushed off to make his report, leaving us to our own devices. I was a Warden now, so I had certain rights and privileges, and I executed them. I secured myself a room, getting several uncertain looks with Dreea tagging along behind me, and then we gathered food and water and headed to the small apartment I was allowed when back in Black Mark.

  As the door closed behind us, and we were finally somewhere relatively safe and secure, I couldn’t shake the feeling that we were on the cusp of something terrible.

  “He shouldn’t have brought that here. It’s very bad.” Dreea said.

  I nodded. “I know, but I don’t know what to do.”

  Dreea came forward and leaned into me gently, her head pressing against mine. “We will stay strong. That’s what Warden’s do.” She bent down a bit and gently nipped my shoulder. “That’s what Lillin does.”

  Chapter 13

  Homecoming

  13.1

  “We just returned yesterday.” Linna said, stretching out in the chair she’d taken. Her eyes weren’t as dark as they had been. Her skin, once such a beautiful warm brown color, now had a sickly pale look do it, just a shadow of its former vibrant tone. She almost looked like a different person, but she had the same easy smile. “Gaveech is still out. I heard he was going to the edge of the Expanse. I went far South and helped a small frontier town repair a dam that was breaking. It would have washed them all away, but we came in and fixed it in a little over a day.” She seemed excited, but she was even more excited as she looked at me. “I heard you were up to real trouble though.” Her eyes passed to Dreea as well who was sitting near me, a little shy in the face of the ever outgoing and friendly Linna.

  I smiled back, though mine was a bit forced. Levity felt hard to come by. The last time I’d been with Linna we’d hunted a giant wolf together with Zarkov. That now seemed like it had happened forever ago, and being with Linna again brought all the pain back into sharp focus. A part of me had known, even then, that he wouldn’t make it to the end. He’d been so strong, but he’d lacked conviction. Now he was just this memory that I held, one that would fade the longer I lived, and eventually he would be little more than a name.

  “Trouble found us.” I tried to push down the difficult memories, and with them
the fear that we had brought something terrible back with us from that city by the sea, Prosper. “Our original goal was Evelsmoth. The city usually has a few tasks that are a bit more difficult to take care of, and I don’t think Arthos expected any major complications. That’s where we met Dreea.” I smiled at my companion as I nodded in her direction, and she returned the expression in her own way, a flip of her ears and a mimicked drawing up of her mouth that exposed the willifen’s very sharp teeth. “That went well enough, though we ended up in a situation where we had to do some more fighting, but after that we started chasing the trail of this weird black liquid . . . “

  Linna sat up straighter. “The muck? Yeah, we saw that in a few places as we went out. Korva said it wasn’t important and we shouldn't worry about it.” I’d met Korva a few times. She’d been one of the first Wardens to speak to me after the events of the water test. She’d tried to help me get past what I’d experienced, but I hadn’t been in much of a mood to heed her advice or her attempts at soothing. She’d apparently been Linna’s guide out into the world. “It’s strange stuff though, gives you kind of an uncomfortable feeling when you get close to it.”