V2Ch43-The Return

James frowned. He paused for a moment amid his slaughter of the combined wolf and Ghoul force and looked at Ramon.

I know what he must be seeing, he thought. His family is dying in front of him. So this is what it looks like when I make an illusion that’s supposed to represent the targets’ fears.

It wasn’t what he’d intended when he began charging his Illusion Magic. But it seemed that False Reality juiced up any deception-related ability. Including enhancing his illusions.

So now his allies were almost all stuck in the same sort of fear-inducing illusions as the enemy. It made picking the enemy monsters off incredibly easy, and James vowed to use Illusion Magic more often when hunting. But he didn’t like seeing the effect on the Rodriguezes and his other comrades caught in the spell.

I’ll make those creatures pay for what they forced me to do to you all, he thought as he ripped another wolf in two. Then he walked up to a Ghoul that was engaging an imaginary enemy, and he ripped its head clean off.

“You all right?” growled Damien from the ground nearby, where he was ripping apart another Ghoul. “You slowed down a bit.” Every word he said in his Werewolf form sounded like a growl to James, even more so than Damien’s normal speaking voice.

“Just a little sad,” James admitted. Besides himself, Damien was probably the strongest quasi-humanoid life-form left in the Orientation. He wanted to get to know the Werewolf, and sharing how he himself was feeling should be a part of that. “Let’s mop up the rest of these, so I can undo the illusion on the group.”

“Ah, I see,” Damien said. “Sure

The two of them tore through the rest of the wolves and Ghouls in a few minutes’ time.

“The big one I fought before wasn’t here,” Damien observed, spitting out a hunk of wolf skull.

“Yeah, I sense there are more of them in the area around here. For some reason, they’re not approaching.”

Damien gave James a wry look. “For some reason,” he said.

Finally, the enemy was reduced to just a couple low-level wolves, plus the last Ghoul, which appeared to be Chava Rodriguez. James was able to pull the illusion down. He gestured for Damien to take care of the last few stragglers while James began explaining and apologizing, after his fashion, for the illusions.

“Sorry I had to do that,” he began, speaking loudly enough for everyone to hear him. He didn’t want to repeat himself. “I don’t know what you all saw, but I have a good guess. My illusion was more effective than I intended. Unfortunately, I couldn’t target it to just the monsters. And it doesn’t seem to work as well on the undead.” This last point was untrue, but James didn’t know quite how to explain the way the undead behaved under his illusions to the camp. Their reaction when confronted with their fears seemed to be to fight harder. Not exactly a comforting thought. “So there’s no point in keeping it around and torturing you guys any further.”

“Wow,” Jeremiah Rotter said, half under his breath. “Not a single casualty once we arrived. You know, I think he was telling the truth. I really believe the safest place to be in the whole Orientation is right behind wherever he’s standing.”

James smiled slightly despite the obvious ass-kissing. Rotter was getting better at being slightly more subtle, praising James indirectly and for things he was genuinely proud of.

“We have to chase after the rest,” James said. He realized mid-sentence that everyone was still held in place by his gravity magic, so he released that as he continued speaking. “We can’t afford to lose our advantage. They’re running. They won’t be as organized. We have the numbers, and against a fleeing enemy we could win even with fewer than they have.”

At least that was how a battle with human opponents worked historically. James remembered reading somewhere that most casualties in ancient warfare occurred when the losing side broke ranks and began fleeing. At that point, the victorious army took advantage of their broken morale and cut down the running enemies with much greater ease.

But here, what will that look like? Against a bunch of monsters. My side has me, so it should still be an easy enough victory, regardless of their morale. But somehow, I suspect these enemies will never give up. Never break ranks. Never run. He suppressed a shudder before it registered on a level detectable by anyone but himself. Now wasn’t the time to show any doubt.

“I volunteer to go with you!” Hilda declared in a loud, clear voice.

“I will also go!” Chris Roach agreed in a much less steady tone.

James could tell Roach didn’t really want to participate, but he understood the optics of the situation. The only surviving members of the Rostov cult who were joining his group needed to prove their loyalty every chance they could.

He nodded approvingly.

“Don’t think you’re leaving me behind!” Ramon said, smiling with what James read as false bravado. “Just as long as we can get someone over here to heal Mama Camila?”

“I’ve got it,” Sierra said. She stepped forward from among the huddled masses and began applying Laying On Hands to Camila’s injuries. “Now you can go,” she added without looking up from her work. “Kill a bunch of those undead freaks for us!”

James smiled. Good to know nothing has changed.

“I’ll naturally be joining you, sir,” Cliff said. “Thanks for saving our asses earlier, by the way! And I never doubted you’d come back for us. Not for a moment!”

James resisted the impulse to roll his eyes. There would be time enough to deal with Cliff’s bullshit later.

“You know you can count on me,” Damien said from between bites of wolf flesh. He was eating the last of his opponents from earlier.

“I can provide some modest magical backup,” Rotter added.

“Same here!” Mitzi said, rising from where she sat on the ground. Alan rose with her, still healing her arm as she spoke.

“I guess I’d better stay and finish healing the other people who are injured,” he said. James saw him swallow a lump in his throat. “I-I honestly can’t believe you’re back, but I’m glad to see you. I trust you’ll keep my wife safe, James?”

“You know it,” James said. “And we’re in the end game now. I think I’ve almost gotten us through all of the Orientation, in terms of the physical dangers at play.”

“Mm hm.” Alan seemed to want to believe what James was saying, but perhaps he’d seen too much in the last several weeks to have firm hopes.

“We want to join y’all as well!” a man said. He appeared to be speaking for a huddled group of around a dozen people that encircled him. Former Moloch cult prisoners, James recognized. Both the ones who just escaped, and a few people who got away earlier. Are the two groups kind of melding together? Nice to see the ones who got away earlier doing well, in any case.

“Glad to have you,” James said. He didn’t have much else to say to them. He really didn’t know these prisoners at all, even the ones who had traveled through the swamp with him and Damien’s group.

“I think some of us who can fight had better stay and defend the camp,” Moishe said. “Just in case there’s another attack while you’re gone. We don’t know what kinds of numbers they have.” James turned to give Moishe a smile and saw Moishe was looking not at him, but at Ramon.

Hm. I guess people have really been getting to know each other while I’ve been gone, he thought. There’s an understanding between those two that I know absolutely nothing about.

“Yeah, you’re right,” Ramon said sheepishly. He looked up at James. “I hope you can understand—”

“Of course!” James said. “Think nothing of it. I know you’ll both stand by me in battles to come. Protect your family right now. Moishe is right.”

[Sufficient experience accrued. Politician leveled up!]

James dismissed the notification lightly, without emotion.

But it did make him wonder. Almost time for a Job Evolution? What would that be like?

There were multiple additional volunteers.

Ultimately, out of a dozen former Moloch prisoners, nine agreed to go. Both of the surviving former cult members volunteered. Eight out of the twenty surviving Rodriguezes volunteered. All of the others were either injured or apologetically felt that they needed to protect the injured. And then there were the twenty-six members of Damien’s group. Of these, only ten volunteered to accompany James and Damien. Of course, there were also the two members of James’s original small band.

It felt like a strong crew, and the thirty-three members ought to be enough to put the fear of the gods into their opposition, but James looked at the situation with a political eye.

Every group’s loyalty felt very firm, except that of Damien’s group. Fewer than half of them had volunteered, and James thought they were only volunteering because Damien and Rotter were going. James would need to manage them carefully in the future to tighten their ties of loyalty to him specifically.

They weren’t the only people whose loyalty he’d need to carefully manage, of course. He looked over at Cliff, who was introducing himself to Rotter now with his usual glad-handing approach. Then he turned to Sierra, who was healing one of the injured Rodriguezes and perhaps deliberately paying James no mind.

Finally, James and his band set out. Two people with tracking Skills, one from the prisoners group and one from Damien’s group, led the way, though James himself could have followed the signs of the enemies’ retreat. The broken twigs, footprints, and disturbed shrubbery seemed obvious to him.

Not for the first time, he wondered if everyone else was seeing the same things he saw when he looked out at the world. With well over a hundred points in Perception, he probably had a meaningful advantage that had not yet made itself glaringly obvious.

“You’re really accomplishing everything Lord Anansi expected, boss,” Hester said quietly.

James couldn’t say anything back, surrounded as he was by people he didn’t want to overhear him. But he smiled slightly. He knew she must be able to tell that he was smiling, from the way his ears moved when his lips did.

“How recent do you think those tracks are?” James asked one of the trackers, a red-haired former prisoner named Harry Roark.

“Oh, minutes old, sir!” Roark replied a bit nervously.

I could get used to being ‘sir.’

“Excellent,” James said, putting his hand on the man’s shoulders and giving him a gentle squeeze.

“I’ll just pop on ahead and check if they’re within sight range,” said the other tracker, a Cuban-American woman named Amalia Rosario. She’d been helpful as James and Damien were navigating to find the Rodriguezes, and she seemed determined not to let her duties be usurped here.

Harry opened his mouth as if he wanted to object, to volunteer himself, but James gave him a quick, firm shake of the head. Then the woman was gone, cutting through the brush almost at a sprint.

“Just let her go ahead, man,” James said. “You didn’t have the chance to get much fighting experience, trapped by the cult, did you?”

“No,” Harry reluctantly admitted.

“Well, Amalia has. And she was in the military before Orientation. She seems tough enough, and she has the experience edge over you. So let her go ahead and scout in front of us. One of you was going to have to stay behind to make sure the whole group doesn’t wander in the wrong direction. You’ll get the chance to prove your mettle in combat soon, anyway.”

“Right,” Harry said, exhaling sharply. “I’ll just look forward to that, then.”

James almost laughed at the way the other man said that. There was a fatalistic irony to Harry’s tone that made the words feel wittier than they really were.

“Remember, just stick close to me in the fight,” he said. “Except when I engage the boss monster, whatever it is. Then get far away.”

“Sure. Close, then far away.” Harry sighed and shook his head. “I’ll remember.”

“Hey!” James said sharply. Harry looked up at him. “The safest place to be in this whole forest is behind wherever I’m standing. You’ll be safe if you follow the advice I just gave you.”

The look in Harry’s eyes changed slightly. Became less hopeless.

“Right you are, sir,” Harry said. He nodded, and James thought his body language changed as well. Became more resolute.

As the war party continued to advance, James slowly individually engaged others who looked similarly nervous to Harry. Each time, he left them looking slightly more upbeat, until the six least hopeful members of his team became six of the more apparently optimistic fighters marching alongside him.

Perfect Choice of Words is powerful, he thought.

“You’re working hard to inspire the troops,” Mitzi said from behind him.

“I like to think that hasn’t changed,” James replied, smiling.

She punched his arm lightly. “We missed you, you know.”

“I know.” James looked at his feet for a moment, slightly guilty.

“I knew you’d come back,” she added. “Unlike some people. I don’t think Alan, Sierra, or I ever doubted it.”

“I always will,” he replied. “You don’t need to doubt. You and Alan don’t ever need to worry about whether I’ll return alive from a fight. I’ve gotten even stronger. I’m pretty close to invincible.” An exaggeration but, he thought, an innocent one. “And I also won’t rush into too many more fights I can’t win. Defeating the cultists was a massive pain in the ass!”

“You beat them?” Mitzi said. A pause. “I don’t know why I’m surprised. Of course you beat them. That’s why you had so many people with you when you returned. They were all prisoners? Those monsters.”

“The people with me when I came back weren’t all prisoners, but it’s a long story,” James said. He proceeded to tell Mitzi everything that had transpired since they’d been separated, with a few omissions where he felt he would reveal too much about his powers.

Mitzi interjected in only a few places where she couldn’t contain herself.

“There are multiple gods that really exist. My whole worldview is shattered…”

“So you really did visit me in my dreams?”

“Why did you go back and fight the cult alone again?! Well, at least you made some preparations in advance.”

After a long chat with Mitzi, James returned to the front of the party just in time for Amalia to rush back through the bushes and stumble into his arms.

“Whoa!” he said. “Are we about to be attacked?”

“No, I don’t think they saw me!” She looked very flustered as she spoke, though. James let go of her. She backed up a few steps and composed herself.

“Report, then,” he said. “Tell me how many we’re facing, where they are, and what the situation is.”

Her posture straightened at his words, and she assumed a military bearing.

“Around fifty to sixty surviving wolves,” Amalia said. “A couple of Ghouls. About twenty yards that way—” she gestured at the direction she’d run from—“they’re perched on one of the bits of solid, relatively dry land in this place. A patch of high ground. Just waiting for us to catch up to them.” She hesitated a moment.

“Go on,” James said. “Give me all the intel. What are you thinking?”

“Sir, it almost feels like a trap.”