Ruthless V5Ch43-The Plan Marches On

A week passed, then two.

The sense of shock that had taken hold of the members of the Council at the idea of the invasion had mostly calmed now, as time passed and nothing actually happened. Until the Panther Army actually came into view somewhere near the outskirts of the Kingdom, it was easy for them to put it from their minds.

As for James, the Panther Queen was never far from his thoughts.

Several hours each day were spent in trying to get his body back up to its normal power. He had finally regained his ability to maneuver his body—albeit weakly—the day after he acquired True Regeneration. Two weeks later, he was able to walk again, using crutches to assist his weak limbs in bearing his weight. Although it was annoying to have to use any assistive devices, and the necessity precluded being out in public, this was the most meaningful improvement he had seen since his body regained consciousness. The True Regeneration Skill had leveled up three times over the ensuing period, suggesting it was genuinely the source of his improved recovery speed.

The other training-adjacent activity that occupied his time was honing his magic. James spent an hour or two each day on training water or earth elemental magic, and he had begun, slowly but surely, to gain levels in those Skills for the first time he could remember since Orientation.

When James was not moving around or training his magic, he was governing—it turned out, when the members of the Council had the King as a sort of captive audience, unable to disappear from the Kingdom on a raid or go Dungeon delving, they had all number of questions and requests for their Ruler.

“Please bless this soil,” or “could you reroute this river?” or “can I name my baby after you?”

James suspected he would have to get used to that last one, unless he completely crashed and burned as a monarch. It wasn’t so bad.

And in the evenings, James was parenting.

Mina had taken up a lot of the slack of doing things when James could not—anything that required royal face time—so James naturally took on more of the parenting work than he had been able to perform when he was spending most of every day fighting.

There was a part of him that found it very pleasant. He loved holding his son in his arms—now that he could move. He enjoyed spending time with all the little ones. He liked being there for Yulia to discuss her day when she came home from teaching. Sometimes she had some question about dealing with boy children that James could actually provide insight about. More often, she just wanted an attentive ear—and listening to her talk about her day was often interesting.

James got to know his little sister-in-law better than he had before the System, and he tried not to be too surprised by how much she had grown up without him doing much of anything.

The monsters were moving and performing their work without needing James’s direct intervention, and the same was true of the members of the Council. The wall around the central part of the Kingdom grew day by day, until it was finally completed at the end of the two weeks. This was the earliest possible time James had reckoned the Panther Army could have arrived, if they were traveling straight to the Fisher Kingdom.

Yes, there was another part of James that wanted to be out fighting, hunting, killing, and raising his level. But this life was a good one.

And it wasn’t as if the challenge of preparing for a battle had completely receded.

James and Hester had continued their work of infiltration, invading dreams and minds to better understand—and even influence—the Panther Army according to James’s designs. He had already learned that the Panther Army was further away than the worst case scenarios James had imagined, though not as distant as he might have liked.

But James was no longer so worried about the timeline. He thought he and Hester had a good handle on things.

The plan naturally progressed mostly by night, although some of those who took on sentry duty in the Pantherfolk camp at night slept during the day. James and Hester had therefore used some of their free time over the last couple of weeks for infiltration missions during the day as well. The only limiters James had set on his and Hester’s activities were that they must not make it obvious that they were foreign to the dreamers’ minds and that they would not infiltrate the dreams of Dean and his people—who were still with the Panther Army, apparently serving the Queen. Though it might be possible, or even easy, to turn them against the Panther Queen and use them as a fifth column during any battle, it was equally possible that many or all of them were under the Queen’s mental influence.

If any of them reported that the Fisher King had infiltrated their dreams, that would be more damaging than anyone else reporting the same information, because Dean and many of his people knew who James actually was. James and Hester had to be careful, so they didn’t hasten the battle and cause it to begin before James was as prepared as possible.

With those minor caveats, the infiltration had been an incredible success.

By now, ten percent of the army, including all of the high leadership, was unknowingly under the influence of the Fisher King and his companion.

This was much less than mind control, of course. Dream Mastery, though much more powerful than standard Dreamwalk, did not somehow turn the dreamer into a permanent puppet of the user. James was still learning how to use the Skill to its fullest potential. But he was confident that his influence was having significant effects.

With that, and the fact that the Doppelganger and its fellow monsters were continuously picking off stragglers and vulnerable Pantherfolk at the edges of the army, the entire force was on edge and growing more paranoid by the day. Without any apparent enemy to blame for what was happening, Pantherfolk blamed each other or the non-Pantherfolk members of the Panther Army for the slow increase in unexplained disappearances and ill omens—even if the supposed ill omens were just things that they had been primed to think were bad luck in heavily manipulated dreams.

Most of this had not reached the Panther Queen herself. She was an intimidating and powerful Ruler, and she ruled with a combination of charisma, power, and fear. But one consequence of using fear as a cornerstone was that others around her were loath to share bad news—and there was a compounding effect, resounding down the chain of command. Not just the Queen’s direct subordinates, but even their subordinates, were reluctant to share bad news up the hierarchy. As a result, the Queen was only aware of a handful of disappearances—not the dozens of mysterious disappearances and deaths that had occurred, a number that was quickly climbing close to a hundred.

Since there were somewhere between two and three thousand troops in the Panther Army, this was barely a drop in the bucket, and it would probably not influence the outcome of the eventual battle directly. But the psychological effect of the losses was something else.

Tonight, James would descend into the world of dreams once more and deepen the fear and dread in the enemy soldiers—or perhaps return to the Queen’s mind again. She was also vulnerable to his influence, although fear was not the tack he had taken with her—she was too brave for that.

But this afternoon, he was just enjoying a casual bit of storytelling with the kids.

It was King Arthur again, and James had to admit, he was into it almost as much as the children. These stories were rich symbolically and very rewarding to read—although tragic in a sense.

This story felt a little personal to James, because it was about him in a sense. It was the tale of Sir Percival, the grail, and the Fisher King. Abhi had asked for the story several times, and James had the feeling it was because the child was still trying to figure out what exactly it meant that James was also a “Fisher King.” James doubted Abhi would have much luck, though.

James himself had only the thinnest understanding beyond the basic relationship between his own powers and the Fisher King’s symbolic attributes in the story.

“The End,” James said, smiling and closing the book.

“Thanks for the story, Da—” Abhi began, then froze. He sprang up and looked toward the door, as if he was thinking about running from the room.

“Whoa, there,” James said, raising a hand with palm outstretched. “You all right, man?”

“I—I didn’t mean…” The young boy’s voice trailed off, and he looked at James almost hopelessly.

“Hey, it’s okay for you to call me that, if you want to, Abhi. Whatever makes you feel comfortable. And… I’ll call you son.”

Abhi bit his lip and looked conflicted for a moment, then darted in and threw himself bodily into a hug, burying his face in James’s chest.

Moving slowly both due to the unfamiliarity of the situation and primarily because of his physical weakness, James finally put his arms around Abhi in turn and squeezed him back.

Abhi pulled his head back just far enough to look James in the eye.

“Um, Dad?” He pronounced the word very carefully, as if he was afraid he might choke on it if it came out the wrong way.

“Yes, son?” James asked. It felt a little weird for him too, but he was determined not to show it. Perfect Choice of Words came in very handy for masking that strange feeling.

“Do you think that my, um, other parents are still alive out there? Somewhere?” Abhi asked. He looked James in the eye as he spoke. This was not the first time he had tried to broach the subject in some way, but it was certainly the most direct he’d been.

James still felt strange about telling Abhi what he really believed, though.

“Do you really want to know what I think, Abhi?” he asked.

The little boy nodded and clenched his eyes shut as if waiting for a blow to fall.

“I think,” James said slowly, “that you kids are amazing. Any parent would give their left arm to have you guys. So, the fact that they haven’t come back means that they’re probably gone. They might not be. We may never know for sure. Maybe they’re being held prisoner somewhere far away, or they’ve lost their memory or something. But that stuff usually just happens in books and movies. I’m sorry, but they’re probably gone.”

Abhi buried his face in James’s chest again, and—this time with much less hesitation—James just held him in his steady arms as the boy’s hot tears flowed out and soaked the cotton of James’s shirt.

Then they played a game until it was time for dinner, hardly talking, so that James could imagine the boy might have forgotten all that had passed that afternoon.

He could almost imagine that it had been a daydream himself.

Abhi went out of the room for a minute, though, and when he came back, he said, “Mom wanted me to ask if you want vegetables on your plate, Dad.”

He said it as naturally as he could. James smiled.

Yes, that conversation really did just happen.

“Of course I’ll take vegetables, son,” he replied smoothly. “Don’t you know that’s the secret of my strength?”

“The teachers say that it’s levels,” Abhi said. But there was a note of doubt in his voice.

“That’s why I’m stronger than any of your teachers,” James said smugly. Flawless logic.

“I guess I’d better eat some, then.”

Is that sarcasm? Nah, it couldn’t be. This kid’s too young for that. Plus, Abhi spoke with an earnestness that seemed to belie the idea that his remark could be facetious. Though they’re all growing up a lot faster with the System. James thought of Junior and how the baby had been eating solids far too early—and could already sit independently, which Mina assured him was also abnormal.

“I’ll be back with your plate in a minute!” Abhi zipped off before James could be certain of anything.

And James received a telepathic communication. Recognizing who it was, he immediately received the message.

I’ve done it, my King, the voice communicated breathlessly. I have her.

At the same time, a System message appeared.