Path of Dragons

Book 3: Chapter 51: The Breaking Point

Sparks flew as Carmen hammered the red-hot billet of steel, and as she worked, she left her worries behind. Yet, even as the metal began to take shape, she couldn’t escape the reality of her failures. Over the past week, two more people had deserted in the dead of night without even bothering to say goodbye. If ever there was a judgement on her leadership, it was that the people who’d followed her out of Easton refused to even remain in the same town she occupied.

Her hammer fell, filling the forge with the sound of metal against metal. Frustration mounted as she dwelled on her shortcomings until each hammerfall began to descend with ever increasing force. One after another, she slammed the summoned hammer against the metal, flattening it until it was paper thin.

And then, she shattered it.

With a growl, she kicked the pieces away, then hurled the hammer at the wall. It never reached its destination, dissipating into motes of ethera the moment it left her hand. Still, she couldn’t stop herself from smashing her fist into the anvil. She didn’t use all of her vaunted Strength, but it was enough to send a stab of pain up her forearm.

Which only added to her irritation.

She sank to her knees and hung her head.

Eber was supposed to have been the answer. A safe space where they could recover. A town they could hopefully call home. And yet, as perfect as it was, her people had slowly chosen to abandon its friendly confines in favor of the devastatingly dangerous wilderness. It was madness, and the only viable explanation was that they simply couldn’t stomach sharing a town with the person who’d ruined their lives.

Carmen thought she’d accepted her faults and failures.

Clearly, she was mistaken.

Sometime later, Willa found her on her knees, with tears tracing tracks through the soot on her cheeks. Carmen looked up and said, “What? I’m almost done with the –”

“It’s not that. I need you to come with me. Now. We don’t have much time, and I need to show you something,” Willa said.

“Huh?”

The other woman snapped her fingers in front of Carmen’s face. “Wake up! I know it’s difficult, and I don’t want to be insensitive here, but I need you to…you’re not even listening,” Willa said with a sigh. Then, she stepped forward, cocked her arm back, and slapped Carmen across the face.

“What the hell was that for?!” Carmen demanded, her melancholy briefly forgotten as she threw herself to her feet and summoned another hammer. It erupted into fire as she used Augment Weapons. She had no idea why the other woman had attacked her, and her mind swam in a sea of confusion, but she knew precisely how to react to threats. Or at least her body did.

Willa raised her hands, saying, “I’m not your enemy. Or I don’t want to be.”

“Why did you slap me?” Carmen asked, trying her best to keep her voice even. But anger roiled in the back of her mind, mingling with the frustration of only moments before to create a volatile and violent brew that could erupt at any moment. “Talk quick, because I’m on the verge here.”

“You have been manipulated,” Willa said, taking a step backward. She glanced at the door. “The others are distracted right now. I need you to come with me so I can show you what’s really going on here.”

“Tell me.”

“It won’t do any good. You have to see it.”

Carmen cocked her head to the side. “That sounds a lot like you’re trying to lead me into a trap or something,” she said.

“I’m not. I tried to warn you before. Don’t you remember?”

“I…I don’t…”

A piercing pain jabbed its way through Carmen’s brain, and for a moment, her vision went white. It only lasted for an instant, but when it faded, she remembered when Willa had confronted her in the longhouse.

“What did you do to me?” she rasped.

“Nothing. I haven’t…but…it’s difficult to explain,” Willa said. “Please. I need to show you. Put this on.”

She shoved a large cloth into Carmen’s hands. When she looked down, she saw that it shimmered like silver, but it felt like a thick, wet blanket. At Willa’s insistence, Carmen slipped it over her head. Surprisingly, even when she was completely covered, it didn’t impede her vision except to cast everything in a slight fog.

Willa said, “Follow me. Do not make any undue noise.”

Carmen did as she was told, letting the other woman lead her out of the smithy and into the waning sunlight. She hadn’t realized that she’d been inside the building all day; she hadn’t even stopped for lunch. Suddenly, her stomach rumbled.

Will whipped around, hissing, “Marshal your hunger! Do not give in!”

“But I’m so…hungry…”

And she was. Ravenous, in fact. It was as if she hadn’t eaten for weeks. Yet, she could distinctly remember feasting only that morning. But the memory was blurry. Ill-defined. Carmen couldn’t make sense of it.

Fortunately, the hunger faded a moment later, replaced by thick nausea. She pushed that aside as well, and a few seconds later, she was once again following Willa through town.

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Oddly enough, as she walked through the town, it was like no one could see her. The townspeople who would usually glare at her with blank expressions simply stared through her as if she wasn’t even there. It wasn’t just unnerving. It was alarming in a way Carmen couldn’t adequately explain.

Slowly, they made their way through the town, turning away from the main street on their way to the town’s small cemetery. Carmen had never visited it, but she’d seen the collection of tombstones from afar.

However, what she now saw was very different from what she’d observed in the past. The tombstones were the same, but in the center of the small, fenced graveyard was a mausoleum fit for a king.

“What…what is that?”

“Our temple.”

“Temple?”

“You’ll see.”

After that, Willa led her forward. With every step, Carmen’s dread grew more poignant until she could scarcely put one foot in front of the other. Without Willa dragging her forward, she never would have made it to the cemetery’s gate. As it was, her stomach tightened with fierce anxiety that she couldn’t quite understand.

Before they reached the door to the mausoleum, Willa whispered, “When we get to the bottom, do not react. Do not speak. Simply watch. When I leave, follow. Do you understand?”

Carmen said that she did, albeit in a barely audible voice. It was all she could muster with the way her insides had been twisted with formless fear. Slowly, she followed Willa through the open door, then down a set of stone steps. Each footfall came with an increasingly foul smell. It wasn’t quite decay, but that was the largest part of it. Lacing it was something else Carmen couldn’t quite identify. It was sickly sweet, reminding her of rotten fruit mixed with sulfur.

The odor was nearly enough to push her stomach into full rebellion.

But she shoved that down, swallowing hard as she followed Willa down the stairs and to a long hall lined with flickering torches. It seemed far too large for the village’s needs, and after the first ten feet, they passed a set of doors on either side. Constructed of steel, they were closed, but Carmen was tempted to investigate them further. Remembering Willa’s warning, she chose not to.

Slowly, they kept going until they passed another set. Then another after that. Ten more sets came and went until a realization dawned on Carmen. It was not a mausoleum. It was a dungeon.

Carmen’s muscles tightened in anticipation.

Willa continued on, though, so she didn’t have any time to investigate things before, at last, they reached the end of the hall. A quick glance backward told her they’d come nearly five hundred feet.

But she was far more interested in what was ahead.

A door loomed before her, larger and more elaborate than any she’d passed in the hall. Willa pushed it open, then stepped inside. Carmen followed, and she had to force herself not to gasp at what she saw on the other side.

Remembering Willa’s warning, Carmen ground her teeth together and dug her fingernails into the palms of her hands. She didn’t feel the pain, though. Instead, the whole of her attention was on the scene before her.

Three people – all of which she’d thought were deserters who’d fled into the wildernesss – knelt in the center of the room, though Carmen could scarcely see them. Not with five villagers surrounding each one. None of them moved. The deserters all just stared ahead, expressions of full contentment playing across their faces.

It wasn’t until Carmen glanced at the far wall that she realized what was happening. Still, she wished she hadn’t.

The walls were lined with mirrors, and the scenes reflected in those silvery surfaces were not the same as what Carmen saw in the center of the room. Because the villagers were not people at all. Not as reflected in those mirrors, at least. Instead, the reflected figures were exceedingly tall, skeletally thin, and wrinkly creatures with grey skin and tiny heads. Upon those heads were huge, pointed ears and faces that looked like they belonged to humanoid bats.

Yet, even more disturbing were the proboscises extending from within their open mouths and connecting to the members of Carmen’s party. At a rhythmic pace, glowing bulges would travel from the far end of each proboscis and into a creature’s mouth.

Finally, Carmen noticed the crates piled against the wall nearest the door. Willa didn’t hesitate to reach down and grab a crate before leaving the room. Carmen almost forgot to follow her but remembered at the last second. So she hurried to catch up, desperate to find out what, precisely was going on.

However, there was one obstacle in their way.

“Willa,” said Wendy. “Have you settled your misgivings?”

“Yes, mother,” Willa said with a dip of her head. “I am still growing accustomed to our new place in this world.”

“Indeed,” said Wendy, reaching out to run her fingers along the other woman’s cheek. “It does take some adjustment. It is for the best, though. Soon, we will have the equipment we need to venture out into the wilderness and spread our influence. The world will be ours. You will see.”

“Yes, mother,” Willa said. “I look forward to when we no longer have to hide.”

“Of course. You are ill-used to such necessity. You did not live in the old world, before it was taken over,” Wendy stated. Then, she looked down at the crate in Willa’s hands. “Ah – I am keeping you from your task. Go. Feed our guests.”

“As you say, mother.”

With that, Willa hurried past the other woman. Carmen followed, narrowly avoiding Wendy in the tight tunnel. Her heart beat out of her chest as she followed Willa through the tunnel and up the stairs. She barely even breathed until they returned to her smithy. The moment the door shut, she ripped the concealing cloth away and demanded, “What the ever-loving fuck was that?!”

“Please be calm.”

“Calm? You want me to be calm? Those monsters –”

“I am not a monster.”

“Y-you’re one of them?” Carmen asked, suddenly putting two and two together. She backed away, summoning a hammer. It burst into flames a second later.

“You needn’t fear me,” Willa said, holding up her hands. She certainly looked just as human as ever, yet Carmen could now sense that something was wrong. “We didn’t ask to come here to this world. We were snatched away from our homes along with this entire region.”

“What do you mean?”

Then, Willa explained that her people were known as sidhe, and they were not native to Earth. Somehow, when the World Tree had touched the planet, it had transferred Willa and her people to Earth. Since then, they’d been struggling to survive.

“What do you mean? You have food. Safety. You have –”

“We do not eat as you know it,” Willa said. “We feed off of others’ memories, carried to us via a natural ability through a transfer of ethera. It is not immediately fatal, but after a few feedings…our…prey will never recover.”

“So, you’re saying…”

“That you must escape if you wish to survive,” Willa stated. “My people will try to stop you. We are stronger and faster than anyone in your party, save for you or the swordsman. If you wish to live, you must create weapons specifically to combat my people.” Willa handed Carmen a piece of paper. “That is an enchantment. It makes any weapons brittle, but it is also deadly to the sidhe.”

“What? Why are you doing this?”

“Because I would rather die than kill innocent people. On our world, our prey were deadly creatures called orcs,” she said. “They were only sapient by the most basic of measures. They were also warlike monsters who only thought of conquest. Killing them was no great tragedy. But this? I cannot support it. I would rather perish.”

Carmen wanted to ask more questions, but she never got the chance. Willa’s head whipped toward the door, and she said, “I must go. Your people must be fed. Do not eat the food. It is conjured via a skill, and it muddles the mind.”

And then, she disappeared through the door, leaving Carmen confused, furious, and terrified, all in equal measure.