Chapter 12

He looked over his shoulders with a wide smile. A wide fake smile that he prayed they couldn’t see through. But see through it or not, it was all he could offer. Still, he plastered the smile on his face and exhorted them to stand

His eyes darted through the survivors of the last campaign. Doxer, large, hairy and covered in glowing tattoos. Well, mostly glowing, a large angry wound bisected an 8 inch strip of them across his upper arm and shoulder, those would not light up again without repair. Repairs that they neither had the time for, nor the materials.

Hadriana with her aura a half depleted twisting maelstrom of rock elementals, the sharp blocky constructs were always a shock compared to her petite grace. There was Hudra beside her, taller than Doxer and probably more muscular, the woman lightly tossed a large bone hammer with her good arm.

His eyes skipped over them, comrades, friends, the occasional lover. They were lean, scarred and mean. The sifted remains of true metal from the gross mix of humanity. All the softness was long gone, along with those who couldn’t change fast enough. This was the core. The metal that stiffened armies, now stripped of anything needing stiffening. Only the skeleton was left. And that skeleton was deadly.

The best fighters, men and women, he’d ever heard of. Each holding powers that the old world could only dream of in comic books or fantasies. Leonidas would beg on his knees for troops of their caliber. Forged in the fires of adversity and polished by two decades of war. They could butcher 10 times their number of ordinary warriors. Maybe 20.

And it wouldn’t matter.

So he smiled, he exhorted them. He pranced and he postured.

What else was left when all hope was gone? Life was no longer on the table for any of them. The thought was ashes in his mouth, but bitter or no, he too had been forged in these long years. He did not flinch away from it. If he had been that kind of person they would have all died long years before! War had whittled them down, stripping off anything extraneous. He had little left to strip. Just a core of stubbornness. In a death's land, where the choices were to die standing or die running, he would make the hard choice. Both for himself and for the men and women who looked to him. The men and women he owed something better to. Men and women he loved.

They were all going to die on this field.

But he would be damned if they didn’t die well!

He turned towards the enemy, the twisted wreckage of the capital's outer layers of defenses. 13 layers of walls, traps, sally gates, flood spillways and ritual platforms spanning many miles. 13 incredibly complicated layers of fortification that took years of effort and countless resources to build. Now 12 of them were crumbled scrap heaps littered with bodies.

They had not fallen cheaply. Hundreds of beasts died for every defender. But fall they did. Their destruction was paid for in a flood of blood. No reasoning being should have been able to bear such a cost.

And yet here they were.

The Hungerer was no stupid beast. Such things, even in vast numbers, were but a small threat. It was only when beasts developed the ability to think, to plot, to scheme that they became truly dangerous. And oh the Hungerer was that. Crafty and cruel he was, both to himself, his people and to his enemies. They had both seen that future, but only the Hungerer was willing to pay the unpayable. Even if 9/10ths of his people died, without the humans to contest the territory, many more would be born. The valley was a perfect cradle. A cornucopia designed to raise a race from . That race did not have to be human. He decided that the sacrifice, no matter how vast, was worth it.

Donald cursed himself once again. He too could judge costs and benefits. All those years ago, before the Hungerer grew beyond the 3rd tier, there were chances available. To kill him. But the cost! It was always too high! A possible threat was not worth better than half his men. They were his men! He had fought with them, bled with them, and grieved far too much with them already. He could not pay the price of the larger half of them.

And now he would pay with all, and the lives of the normals that hid below as well.

He looked out over the fields of carion, so many that even the rapid scavengers of the jungle could make no more than a small dent in their numbers. The bodies called to him again, in familiar voices. But he would have time soon enough to bear up under their empty accusing eyes. His eyes rose from the detritus of battle to the advancing hordes of the living.

Their short reprieve was over. The next assault was coming, and they had little left to stop it with.

His sighs and regrets were internal. He would not strip away what little confidence his men had been able to drum up.

That was the duty of a leader. And in this, at least, he would not fail.

“Be ready!” His voice rose into the practiced tone of a leader. Loud and clear enough to be heard and understood for hundreds of yards without being shrill or affected. “The time is now. The end is certain, but the path to it is not. I choose the only immortality left to me.” He paused to look them in the eye, the best of everything humanity stood for, standing before him with courage even in this darkest hour. “If the Hungerer can think, can learn, then he can also remember! Traumatic memories will linger through the generations. So make these fuckers hurt! Make them scream, give them pain like they have never imagined. And carve for yourselves an immortality of your own!”

It was a sad excuse for life or children. But it was what he could offer. He turned back to the front and prepared, little needed to be said, they knew what was coming, and what could be done about it. Still, tradition demanded orders and commands. Who was he to refuse? “Prepare to volley!” the pause to allow all to act together, seconds oftentimes for green troops, it was more felt than counted here. “Volley!”

The skies shook and cried lighting, fire and acid while the ground cracked open to devour the living. Elemetals lunged from the cracked earth, pools of water and from the open sky as lighting bolts. The natural world given form and rage then released upon the living. Like a scythe through ripe wheat bodies were rent and blood began to flow. It ran like rivulets, gathering in thin streams and dribbles into an ocean that would soon drown them all.

Tribes of howler monkeys leaped forward to blast the defenders with ghostly sonic shrill screams that tormented more than just the ears. Rock toads spat poison into large mists that traveled towards the last fortification layer on hurricane like winds drummed up by a herd of evolved greater rhea. Hogs formed their spinning circles. Large natural runes where the strength of the passel could be harnessed together to fling massive objects, or even a select few of their own.

Old enemies, old tactics. Standard counters went out for each. Powdered lime flung out on their own breezes neutralized the acid fog. The howler's screeches were captured with nautilus shells etched with silver. Hog missiles were redirected, light parry’s at range caused their own attacks to crash into other groups of attackers. The counters worked beautifully. They should, with as long as this war has been fought. They were the best things the human race had been able to come up with, and humans were very good at coming up with things... But they were too few, and the resources needed were mostly depleted long since.

The lime gave out and acid began to burn at the defenders' aura's even as the shells, cycling between filling and dumping the screams back out to kill the physically immune hogs, were insufficient. Aura’s protected the ears, for now, but the aura itself was a manifestation of the soul, and only willpower could stand against that portion of the howls.

Their willpower was mighty. But they were exhausted, and without hope it was hard to stand fast. Here and there a defender began to drop. Foaming at the mouth or bleeding at the ears. Bodies piled up outside the ramparts, creating ramps for the maddened attackers to run up, getting ever closer to the final melee. That was where the real deaths would happen for the defenders. Humans were small, physically weak compared to the beasts. As long as the range stayed open, the deaths were massively one sided, even in their depleted states.

But once the distance closed? Then the end would come.

Still Donald waited, no spells had he cast, but neither did he get any static for this behavior. They were all long past that. He trusted them to butcher a host of the enemies.

It was time!

He began his own cast, tapping into the massive outpouring of blood below that even now filled innocuous looking ravines and gullies. Flowing into a massive sigil of blood. The life force of so many beings pooled up, both in the outer broken layers where even now bodies rotted in the blood soaked earth, and in the fresh outpouring within, provided a blood mage with a massive source of power.

He trusted them to pour him an ocean, and they? They trusted him to use that ocean. Foolish beasts! Feelers of blood lashed out in 10,000 small spiked arms. Blood from each species providing a symbolic link to its brethren, sliding through weaknesses of familiarity in their aura’s rather than wasting mana and will to break through them. The spikes plunged into their bodies and drained them in moments. Each additional death further fueled the Great Spell. They had missed the opportunity to stop it at birth. Each additional death made it that much harder to stop. Even now a mere handful of seconds after its inception it was far beyond what Donald could control. But he didn’t need to control it. Merely direct it.

Blood called to blood, and there was far more beast blood spilled on these fields than human. Like a lamprey the blood jumped in a mass of twisted black blood spikes from creature to creature, spreading several hundred yards in the first dozen seconds, then miles out in the succeeding minute. Soon it passed beyond Donalds sight. He smiled, no longer fake, for a moment. The die had been cast. All that could be done was.

What more did he have to fear? What more did he have to stress about. He looked at his men one more time, meeting the eyes of the few dozen still living from the 200 hundred that had started this day with him. Even as the first blood spike jumped up to impale the first one they remained standing tall and defiant.

Mostly beast blood was not all.

There had been plenty of human blood spilled on these plains as well. This spell had never been intended to win. The Hungerer had other armies, and the blood spikes might not fully destroy this one. No. It was a final fuck you to a universe that had decided it could do without them.

And so he smiled one last time, even as the shock and pain struck his own lower back, decades of skill and knowledge delaying the blood siphoning effect for a few last moments.

Goodbye.

He woke confused for several long minutes, two life times of knowledge competing inside one head. Pain raged for several moments, before the memories of that final battle began to fade, as all dreams do. Even nightmares. He snapped upright with a shuddering scream! “Fuck you Timothy!”

The slender, scraggly haired and bearded figure sitting a double arm’s length away from his bed carefully placed an eagle feather fan into a recessed cabinet, closed and secured it’s doors before walking to the rooms entrance.

He paused at that door to look back at the tall muscular blonde man curled into a fetal knot on the bed.

Then whispered softly, “I’m so sorry,” Before he walked out and closed the door behind him.

Leaving a room that shook softly with guttural sobs.

Timothy sat quietly in a large, (and actually comfortable!) chair in a circular chamber in his tower, sipping quietly at some ginger tea. Surrounding the table sat a sprinkling of other pathfinders. Some of his closest friends and, where the term friend was not completely accurate, colleagues.

The three blood brothers one chair removed to his left then Spirit Father Oscar, Evoker Holla, and Kevin the stargazer. They had each contributed to the creation of the Dream Fan, and in return each had wanted to try it. To see the results of all that work and expense.

He was grateful for the willing test cases, but he wasn’t at all sure they were.

“That was bloody rough. I’m not sure I like you very much right now, Runes.” Saying father this and father that got old pretty damn quick. With others it was an issue of respect and needed to be maintained, but all here were of a similar status. A bit of shortening hurt no one. Donald was the last one to try it, and for proper first impressions they had agreed not to discuss it till all had tried.

“I’m sorry to hear that, but I can perhaps take some weight off your mind. Give it a little while longer and it won’t hurt as much.”

“That’s what she said?” Kevin muttered with a tired look in direct contrast to the juvenile shit that came out of his mouth. They were all used to it by now. For a stargazing mystic Kevin was frequently an immature asshole. Still the sheer shock of his comment and the sheer ridiculousness of it sparked a few brief moments of laughter. Perhaps a great more than such a comment deserved. And that laughter helped a great deal.

As the mirth died down Timothy managed to take another drink of the tea, he needed it after running himself, then all 6 of them through multi hour sessions. Too much tragedy took a toll on a person, even when he didn’t fully remember it. “It was a dream, Blood One.” Ridiculous to be Blood One, Two and Three, but they insisted on it. Perhaps growing up named after the ninja turtles did something to their naming sense. Then again Timothy was hardly one to complain. “Like all dreams it will fade with time.”

Donald angrily slashed his hand through the air, “Then what was the point! Why would you make us suffer through that if we aren't even going to learn anything from it?”

“Dreams are fascinating things.” Oscar spoke into the angry silence in his quiet, dignified voice. “They help the conscious mind deal with things it would rather not handle. Through dreams we face our fears in a softer, more forgiving arena. These things would not be true if when ‘forgetting’ the dream all gains were lost.”

Timothy nodded, picking up where Oscar left off despite some skeptical looks from the peanut gallery. “Thank you Spirits. The exact mechanics fade, what new spells you created or what items you figured out how to make, but the inspiration for them will be there in your mind. If the situation is right they will appear again. Likewise the lessons you learned about yourself will remain.”

Holla sighed, indicating with merely a slight change in posture that he would speak. It was a skill Timothy had never managed to acquire, and he was more than a bit jealous. “But why is it like that? It’s useful, no? To come up with new spells in a night's dream that might take years outside?”

“Because it is a dream.” Oscar answered him. Much of the basics for the Fan had come from studying Bensens Bull Shit (he should trademark that), but that was the mechanics of how to get them in and how to direct the start of them. Oscar had been the one to really explain the why. A combination of psychology, mysticism and folksy wisdom that turned a cheap trick (expensive as all hell actually!) into something far more spiritual. And far more useful. “The spells you created there worked because it was, in part, your dream. Anything made there is made to work in the dream and was likely missing more than a few steps. Dreams, like memory, often have a skewed sense of time. We remember events, but rarely the tedium between them. Dreams do the same, moving you from one great event to another with the humdrum of the between graciously withheld.”

Mike rubbed at his 5 o’clock shadow, then gestured as Oscar finished. Taking the stage in his turn. “So what about when I-”

“Stop!” Timothy quickly raised a hand, to the surprise of the room. It was a bit rude, and after 5 years of high status rudeness was not something they often had to deal with. Especially between the high status people of different holds, such rudeness could quickly lead to more trouble than it was worth. It was why they had all been so careful about taking turns speaking. “Apologies, but if I let you continue it would be an even bigger disservice. Everything that happened during your dream is private. No one but you, and the young spirit of the fan know, and she has already made some stringent oaths not to reveal what she sees.”

All eyes were on him, and they were not entirely kind. “You proctored that test Timothy. You were there in the enchantment.” Kevin observed, no juvenile jokes present in his current manner. No jokes at all. “I may not have been aware at the time, but the flavor of your magic was omni-present in that place.”

Timothy nodded, taking another sip of team. A sip that rapidly became a gulp as the eyes of the room remained on him, and if anything became even harder. Geeze, tough crowd! “Yes, I was maintaining the spells, and my mind’s subconscious assumptions were available to the spirit for reference. But I assure you I was not inside your little worlds. Once for myself was bad enough. I’m not sure what 7 would do to me!”

That did it. Grudging acceptance seemed to flare around the room, and bodies seemed to relax in their chairs. A hidden tension left the room, noticeable by its absence as it had not been in its presence.

Holla again indicated he would speak, waiting for the sighes and chatter to quiet then spoke. “Good, there would have been, como se dice represalia?”

Oscar chimed in softly, “Reprisal.”

“Reprisal then, trespass on my turf, it’s bad. Trespass in my mind?” he didn’t bother to finish what sounded decidedly like a threat. Not that Timothy could blame him. He could have set up the enchantment that way, after all. But what he said was true, living through tragedies that many times in a row? No thank you! Besides, it would have been a fundamental violation of their minds. These were people he liked and respected, do that and they would no longer return the favor. “I understand, I assure you I would not do that.”

“Why not?” Rafe sniped, “Is there actually something even you won’t spy on?”

Timothy let the laughter go on for a bit before replying, “Of course, there are many things a man’s eyes were not meant to see. You perceive that ‘unseeing’ is not a thing? There are many vast beautiful things out there, but-” He hesitated for a moment, the levity dropping from his voice as he became unusually serious, “There are also a great many ugly things as well. I can’t turn away from them, they are part and parcel of the world we live in, but that doesn’t mean I have to wallow in them either.” Inside too, though he wasn’t about to admit to such. Security sweeps of the hold might be necessary to prevent another incident like Bensens infection, but that didn’t mean he didn’t feel like a voyeur. And voyeur or no, it wasn’t all hot sex and seduction. For every would be porn star there was probably a dozen couples that were some combination of overweight, ugly, awkward or freaky to an extent that made him deeply uncomfortable.

A religious upbringing and a lovingly protective family had left him deeply naive as a young college kid, but he’d thought the following years had made him fairly experienced.

Apparently not!

He shook off the thoughts, and some unpleasant images that came with them, returning to the discussion to discover he’d missed a bit.

“-react to perceived lack of care.” Mike was saying. Blood 2, he reminded himself again.

“Ya, I got that one to. Seems pretty unrealistic now that I’m awake. That an entire town could turn on me so quickly for making a reasonable choice.”

Ah, he quickly caught on. There was a situation early on in the dream, where some people, norms and a few guardians who should have known better, didn’t respond quickly enough to an alarm. Starting late they would not make it to safety before the beasts arrived. There were as many options as a person could think up to deal with this threat. They could close the gates in their faces, they could leave them open in hope and let the beasts slip inside. Timothy had himself sent out a patrol to delay the invading beasts. But fighting them outside the fortifications had cost him priceless warriors and drastically reduced the length of time he had been able to hold out.

“Timothy?”

He sighed, this was going to be annoying. “Yes, you all saw that situation. Some of you probably had similar responses, but the results were probably wildly different even when your responses were similar, yes?”

He waited out the various forms of agreement or indifference. “The start of that scenario is scripted, to an extent. But the results aren’t.The dream leans heavily on your own expectations and reactions. Sure, a few whispered questions to your subconscious will muddy the waters a bit, but the results of your choices are based on your own thoughts. If the town turned on you, it was probably because you felt deeply guilty about it and subconsciously thought they should.”

Kevin leaned forward, “So if I had expected the big tittied blond to give me a BJ for saving me she would have? Maaan, why do I only hear this now! My subconscious and I need to have words!”

Timothy hid a sigh, reacting to Kevin when he was like this just made it worse. For a man in his 50’s the behavior never failed to shock. He could only respond lightly and hope they could move on. “There is a vast difference between your ‘wishes’ and your ‘expectations’.”

Kevin opened his mouth to continue, then thought better of it as he caught Oscars seemingly soft smile.

“Dreams aren’t always linear, I considered adding a looping mechanism to that part. Letting people retry it again and again. It shouldn’t destabilize the dream too much. Whichever version you stop on, the other options would seem like predictions rather than experienced events.”

“That’s trippy, dog.” Holla muttered, scratching at the back of his head. “Do it. Thinking through these things, a leader has to do it. Spend a few guard lives to save some fools, then less guards are alive later to defend the full town. Don’t save them and people will look at you and wonder why you didn’t try. You can’t win, but you can lose easy enough. If you gonna lead a crew, then you need to think about this shit.”

Donald rapped his knuckles on the table while nodding in agreement. He wasn’t the only one, though each showed their approval in a different way. Timothy made a small note of the decision. He would work out the change with the Fan spirit later.

The room broke into a couple different conversations, going over general trends or particular events and their consequences.

“Hey Timothy,” Rafe slipped in, “if you set the entire thing like a loop, can people try until they win?”

“And you call me masochistic?” Timothy asked, eyes bulging out a bit in disbelief. “You want to do that over and over again?”

Somewhat sheepishly Rafe quickly shook his head, “No, but I would like to win!”

“It's a Kobayashi Maru.” He stared at Rafe, not seeing any understanding in his eyes he tried to elucidate. “It’s an unwinnable scenario. You can’t win.” He quickly waved down Kevins “but Kirk-” just his luck that the man was a trekkie. “Not unless you cheat,” he raised an eyebrow at Kevin, “and do you think you can slip something like that by me? Good luck with that. “ He grinned as Kevin looked away muttering. He would have to keep an eye on him, Kevin might just keep trying just to prove Kirk’s method could work. “The dream will just keep throwing bigger and nastier things at you until you eventually fail to deal with them. It’s in desperation and under fire that we can really learn about who we are. The dream is meant to gradually push you there.”

Donald slid in the next question. “The dream lasted a very long time for me-” He ignored his younger brother’s muttered “braggart!” and continued speaking, “but I never did rise beyond early tier 3. My spells got more and more complex, more and more powerful. But I don’t think I ever really progressed.”

The table descended into silence even as Timothy hid a grimace. He was hoping not to have to get into this. “Well, you don’t know what that tier will look like.”

Donald was having none of it. “And I know what spells that cover multiple square miles look like? Bullshit.”

Glancing around the table he received more than a few gimlet eyes. He wasn’t getting away from it. “Not entirely BS, Blood One. The spells you imagined were probably extensions of things you do already know. Making something you know more large scale is a lot easier than coming up with something wholesale.”

“But I did come up with some entirely new things.” Donald insisted. “Even if I can’t fully remember what they were, I remember that much!”

Timothy sighed in defeat, “The dream is mostly a creation of your mind. Mostly. It’s also the result of the Fan Spirits memories and my own. Yours have the greatest impact on the resultant gestalt, but my own expectations are also included.”

He paused, taking a deep breath. “And I don’t expect, as you are, that you can progress much farther.”

The words dropped bacon into a warming pan. No ripples, no reaction, not yet. But give it a few moments, and grease would start hissing and spitting in all directions.

“The fuck did you say? “ “Runes?” What do you mean?” A scrambled mess of calls exploded into the still room. He could only let the questions and invectives pass over his head, waiting for them to calm down enough to actually hear his response. He wasn’t about to yell like a howler monkey.

Finally it became quiet enough for him to speak. “Come on, it’s not like you haven't noticed. The beast meat isn’t improving you very much any more, is it? Your own control over your magics may still be improving, but the total amount of mana in your aura has started to plateau.” It was a statement, not a question. He had eyes (very good ones in fact!) and he interacted with these men semi-regularly. He was very clear on how much the exterior features were improving. Size, magic density and aura size were easy to spot. Control and refinement of spells was much less obvious.

“I haven't spoken about it because I don’t know anything. I only suspect.”

“Youngster,” Oscar drawled out, “no one here would bet against what you suspect. We might frequently have issues with what you do with it, but that’s a separate story. Quit prevaricating and tell us what you think. Not just what you can prove.”

Timothy hated doing that! “I don’t do that sort of thing for a reason, Spirits. My guesses, wrong or right, are not the only pathways forward. But if you hear them, then it’s like a pink elephant. You can’t not think about it. They will poison your ability to find your own way. I have no wish to do that!”

“Knowledge is power, and has a cost!” Holla leaned forward, “We are not leeches, Runes, we will pay a fair price.”

“That’s not the point! I designed the framework of these dreams. Trust me. I want humanity to be stronger, I would not hold this over your heads for a price. To grow stronger we need variety. Dozens of paths forward because not everyone is suited to each path. A single narrow path forward will result in most of humanity’s elites stuck at a bottleneck at best, at worst that path leads to a dead end and we are all screwed!”

He stood up abruptly, pacing back and forth as he lined up his thoughts. “I won’t tell you a specific path. But I will make a few observations. After a great deal of work the mana density of an aura seems to max out. Call it a lake of power in the mountains, the more it accumulates the more it wants to run down to the sea. You spend more and more of your will merely keeping it confined, instead of accumulating more. At a certain point you can’t store any more as lake water, you need to find another way. Likewise the body can only grow to a set extent before the muscles become obstacles instead of aids. Where you can’t bend over nor raise your arms straight up. The same for the will. There is such a thing as inhuman pain. We call it that because it is beyond the natural human’s ability to bear. ”

“I see these three common areas. Aura, Body, Will. Don’t be limited to my three. There are probably more. But in each case there is a limit, I would call it a human limit even though we have gone far beyond what that limit used to be. To progress further you need to move past such ‘human’ limitations. How do you do that? I have some ideas that might work for me. But even if I told you, my path is through the will, not the aura or the body.” He looked around, Kevin and Oscar both heavily worked with the will, but neither was exclusive to it. Even there, his guesses might hurt them even worse than the rest. He had some guesses for aura, mostly from observing Jenny’s sacrifice of mobility and freedom for power and control. But he had no clue at all for the body. In any case, his guesses would not help them, and would not help humanity.

They would have to find a path forward that fit them. Only then could they leave behind a path for the guardians to progress through.

Conversation stalled after that, as each of them descended into thought. The days ahead would be drought with danger. The dream was just that, but it held a solid truth, those who didn’t grow would be eclipsed.