Warden's Path

by Heath Pfaff

  “I know, and I understand now that I’ve lived so long. I forgive you, Arthos. Let’s be together again. Let me show you what we need to be free of this place. Let me guide you.” It was clear that this thing wanted to take us somewhere, show us something. It seemed so sincere, and that made me doubt myself for a moment. I didn’t know this Cathra person, what if they really did have some kind of resource that could get them here? What if I was passing judgement too quickly?

  I shook my head. No, nothing about this place was right. This was a trick meant to play on Arthos. He might not be able to see it through the haze of old emotions, but I could see it. I had to stay confident in my assertion.

  “Show us, then. We’ll go with you.” Arthos’ resistance broke.

  I held my tongue, though I wanted to tell him he was making a grave mistake. I could tell he wouldn’t let me have the final word on this matter. He was too far gone for now. I would have to watch this woman, keep my eyes open and stay ready to act. Arthos couldn’t be relied upon while she was here.

  “Good. Wonderful!” The imposter exuded excitement. She came forward then and threw her arms around Arthos, who dropped his weapons and put his arms around her in return. They kissed, and it wasn’t a soft, chaste thing, but a passionate, warm embrace of two people who had known each other exceedingly well. It felt wrong to see it at all, as though I was looking on something that wasn’t meant for my eyes. I looked to Dreea.

  Dreea was watching them as well, and I could tell by the set of her ears and her posture that she was more than a little concerned. I stepped in closer to her so I could speak softly for her ears only.

  “We will keep our eyes open, stay close together, and watch that woman. I don’t believe she is what she says.” I told her before recovering my weapon from the ground and returning them to my back.

  “No.” Dreea said. “Smells wrong, not a person, not fully.” She answered, voice low and worried.

  “Come, we must move quickly.” The thing wearing the guise of Cathra urged, and then she stepped back through the door, Arthos close on her heels. He glanced back briefly, giving us a look that was both pleading and somehow hostile. He didn't trust us, and wanted us to follow after without causing trouble. It had been so easy to twist his perception. Who was Cathra? Warden’s didn’t fall in love, and they didn’t have wives, but from what I’d gleaned of this situation, Cathra was a woman that Arthos had been with after becoming a Warden.

  I fell in line, and Dreea came with me. There was a persistent ache in my body from being tumbled by Arthos’ Will. I recovered my weapon and kept it drawn as we entered the hall, but things in the hall were back to normal. “Normal” wasn’t exactly the right word. The hall was shorter than it had been. We stepped out of the room and we were much closer to the piece of art that had been hanging at the end of the corridor, always just out of sight. It was a painting of the house we were in, though the sky was bright and bathed in sunlight, the gardens beautiful and full of color. There was no sign of the iron wall that existed around it now.

  We turned to the left at the end of the hall, and there was a door leading out of the house not far from where we were. This wall was apparently on the back of the property. The door was made of glass panes that looked out over the grass and trees beyond. Cathra lead us there and opened it easily, exposing a path marked with paving stones that meandered towards the opposite end of the property from where we’d entered. It was all so very easy.

  “That was simple.” I noted dryly as we began to make our way across the lawn. Now that Cathra was guiding us, it no longer felt like we were fighting to make our way to our destination. Arthos had to have noticed that.

  “This place can twist your perceptions if you let it. I am using my power to suppress that.” Cathra stated without looking back at me. There was no warmth in her tone for me. The words crawled with an unnatural malice, or at least I perceived that they did.

  Dreea laid a hand gently on my shoulder and gave me a pointed look. “Let the thistle grow in the garden.” She said softly, an old saying, one I’d only heard a time or two. Sometimes it was better to let something unpleasant happen if it was easier than the effort of preventing that unpleasantness. Dreea was urging me to be cautious about trying to pluck Cathra from our group. She was probably right, but it did not sit well with me.

  We reached the gates and found them wide open already, no guards in sight. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up. I noted that Cathra walked directly between the opening in the gates, as far from the glowing metal as she could get herself on either side, and she passed very quickly through them.

  Arthos was talking to her softly, sometimes laughing and smiling in a way that didn’t look entirely natural on his face. It felt like he wasn’t really here with us. He was lost in some place of fond memories, leading us towards . . . well, I didn’t know where that was exactly, but I suspected that wherever we were going it wouldn’t be pleasant.

  I drew the scrying stone from my pocket as we moved on, checking the direction of the door. We were traveling away from our destination now, not in the opposite direction, but clearly in a way that wouldn’t take us there. It took a sizeable effort not to immediately point this out. Crossing the property on which the house had stood would have taken us straight in the direction we wanted to go, but now we were headed off some other way. I had to wonder what motivation this thing had for leading us astray. What was gained by this, though I had a budding suspicion that I knew where we were going, or at least what lay at the end of our road.

  We walked for a long while before Cathra stopped us in front of a house. The building was surprisingly undamaged, almost pristine compared to most of the other places we’d passed. It looked untouched by the darkness and the madness around us.

  “This is where we need to be.” She said, looking over at the house.

  I checked the scrying stone again, and it was pulling us away from where we were now. We’d walked further from our goal than we had been when at the mansion by a considerable amount. What was in this house?

  “You need to go inside and upstairs to the bedroom at the top of the stairway. In there will be a chest. It’s not locked. Open the chest and look for a small black pouch. It’ll fit easily in the palm of your hand.” She reached into a small pouch on her hip and drew out another pouch, though this one was made of a strange thick leather, tattooed in signs and sigils I didn’t recognize. “Put the pouch in this, and then bring it back here.”

  “What is in the pouch?” I asked. “Why do we need it?” Dreea moved closer and firmly grabbed my arm, again warning me to keep my mouth in check. In a way it reminded me of what I’d often had to do when I was with Zarkov back in training. I’d always had to look out for his too-clever mouth. Dreea was apparently trying to act as my sound reasoning.

  The Cathra thing didn’t answer me. Her attention was on Arthos, and his was on her. “Alright, I’ll go get the pouch. Is there anything inside that I should be worried about?”

  “No, it’s safe.” Cathra smiled as she spoke, the expression looking stiff on her face.

  “Why don’t you go and retrieve it since you know exactly what we’re looking for?” I asked, and Dreea squeezed my arm harder.

  This time Cathra did look at me, and for a small moment, a fraction of a second, I thought I saw something else standing in her place, something twisted and dark, a creature that wasn’t all human. It happened so fast that I questioned my sanity for a moment. Cathra smiled. “You don’t seem very eager to leave this place, child. Do you want to remain here for some reason?”

  “I know how to leave this place. We’d have been to the door by now if we hadn’t taken this side trip here.” I answered firmly. “Now you’re ordering us to fetch things for you. What is in the pouch? Is it the tesseract? This place has been trying to get us to pick up that cursed box since we got here.” I spoke my suspicions aloud, unwilling to pander to this thing in the guise of a human woman.

  Cathra tu
rned her back on me, looking at Arthos. “Your little friend is clearly jealous of our feelings for one another. Maybe she thought you’d want her, but now that I’m here she can never have you and that is making her furious.”

  Arthos frowned for a moment. “That . . . Lillin doesn’t think of me that way, nor I her. Cathra, that’s . . . “ He paused, and then frowned again, his brow furrowed. He shook his head and the expression deepened. “What is in the pouch, Cathra? Why do we need it?”

  “It’s the key!” She responded, sounding angry. “The door will not open without a key. Without the key we’ll all be trapped here.”

  Arthos had questioned Cathra. Something about pushing Arthos against me had been enough of a shove to get his mind working again. I leapt on this change, seizing the chance to make him see more clearly.

  “The magic isn’t in the door itself. It’s in the flagstone. We could break down a door without needing any kind of key. This doesn’t make sense, Arthos. Her being here doesn’t really make sense. I know you want it to be her, but it’s not. It can’t be. It is just another trick to make us fetch this tesseract thing. We’re being pushed just as we have been this entire time. Think of how easy our trip here has been since we started following her, how straight the path has been. Nothing has been that simple in this place.” I kept my voice calm and tried to list the facts of our situation. He was so close to seeing.

  His brow furrowed and his hand moved slowly towards his weapon. Arthos opened his mouth to say something, but then Cathra hissed, the sound rising up out of her as though she were an angry snake. She leapt at me, and as she did the illusion of what she was seemed to peel back from her, burning away in wisps of black smoke and revealing something terrible beneath.

  It was humanoid in shape, but its body was green and black, the skin leathery and damp looking. Its feet ended in hoof-like shapes, though they didn’t make a click as they hit the street. Her arms were so long that they hung past her knees, and ended in hands with three, long and thick fingers that each had two extra joints allowing them to bend and flex in unnatural ways. I thought of it as “she” because it had taken the form of Cathra, but there was no clear gender to its body. Its “head” was a tangle of writhing pieces that looked like the brambles of a thorn bush given agency to move as they liked. As it lunged these opened up, spreading like a mouth, though they rolled over one another, the sharp jutting parts grinding like teeth that could move freely about. It made a sound like a hundred different voices raised in agony, the mix of tones a frightening mess of noise that was almost painful to hear.

  The creature hit me hard and I was immediately pushed down to the ground as it grabbed me in those strange, incredibly powerful hands. I managed to get an arm up between myself and the things vine-like head, but then it lowered its mouth to my flesh and I felt the cloth and skin beneath shredding as it began to eat into me.

  I let out a scream of shock and then a blur of motion struck the thing from the side and I watched as Dreea went tumbling past, rolling the thing over and to the ground on the other side of me, her claws ripping into its terrible body. It struggled to fight back, but Dreea was stronger, and her claws were fast. That was the second time she’d come to my rescue. I got to my feet and brought my weapon to the ready, coming to her aid.

  I briefly noticed that Arthos was off to one side, standing silently, looking shaken and confused. I didn’t have time to focus on that just then. I used my weapon to help Dreea, and together we ended the beast, not letting it go until it was limp and lifeless on the ground. I offered Dreea a hand up and we looked down at our work. I wished I’d had the sharpness of focus to use my Will against the thing, but I’d been too stunned at first, and then worried I’d hit Dreea accidentally. No matter, it was dead now.

  “Never seen something like that before.” She growled. “What was it?”

  I shook my head. “Nothing I’ve heard of.” I looked down at my arm. It was bleeding profusely, the flesh torn and shredded. I would need to bandage it, and then my Will would finish the healing slowly. I could still move my hand so the muscle hadn’t been too badly damaged, though my grip on my left side did feel a little weak. I should have hit it with my Will when it first attacked. I hadn’t thought to do so. I wasn’t a very good Warden.

  “It looked just like her, Lillin. She was exactly like I remembered her.” Arthos’ voice drew my attention back to him. He was still just standing there, the words of his justification as hollow as his eyes looked.

  “We can’t trust anything here. This place is like one of those carnival houses that they set up with all of the mirrors and the colored light, things aren’t what they appear. We need to get to the door and then leave this place.” I tried to keep my words steady as I spoke, but I was angry. Arthos was supposed to be the one in charge. He was supposed to know what to do, and he wasn’t supposed to fall for tricks like this. He was there to teach me, and to protect me while I learned. My faith in his ability to do that was shaken.

  “You need to get yourself together. You just watched while that thing attacked me. We’re working together. We need to look out for each other.” I told him firmly. “If I start falling for something that is a trap, I need you to have enough presence of mind to do something about it.” I looked at Dreea. “If it wasn’t for her I’d be dead twice over now. We’re Wardens. We’re supposed to be protecting her, but right now it feels like she is the Warden and we’re just taking up space.”

  Dreea’s ears gave a flick and she tucked them down as they turned a bit pink inside. “I want to be a Warden.” She spoke quietly, sounding a little embarrassed.

  Arthos let out a small sigh and nodded. “You’re right.” He told me, and then he looked at Dreea, some form of minor resolve inside of him seeming to build. “There is a place I could take you where you might be trained, but the training is incredibly difficult, Dreea. You have strength and spirit, but that doesn’t mean you’d make it. I think in some ways you’re better than a Warden. You’re already strong, you can heal quickly. You don’t have control of your Will, but you have other advantages. When we make it out of here I will take you for training if you still want it.”

  Dreea’s tail whipped quickly at her back and she nodded. “Yes, I want. I . . .” She looked back and forth between Arthos and I, her eyes stopping on me. “I will have to leave you both?”

  Arthos nodded. “Training lasts several years at the school on the other side of the the Expanse.”

  Dreea’s excitement dwindled, her tail slowing. “I will think about this.”

  I came forward and put a hand on her back. “Whatever you choose, we’ll see you get where you want to be, and if you want to stay with us, that’s okay too.” I told her, not really wanting her to go. Arthos and her were my companions, but Dreea, I felt, was a friend. A real friend. I didn’t want to lose her, though I was certain I would at some point. I lost everyone eventually. I thought of Ori and Zarkov and my heart ached keenly. I never forgot them, but it was so difficult to actively think about them.

  Dreea’s tail swept a bit more slowly back and forth. “I will think.” She said, leaning into me for a moment, a small gesture of affection.

  “We should go.” Arthos said, giving another look at the house in front of us. It still seemed like an island in the dark. It was almost inviting.

  “You’re still thinking about what’s in there.” I guessed, and it wasn’t a difficult thing to do. I was thinking about it as well.

  Arthos gave a single nod of his head. “I’m wondering if we shouldn’t at least look at what it wanted us to take. There has to be a reason, right? It must be important. Even if we don’t take it, maybe we should know.”

  I opened my mouth to tell him it was a bad idea, but was it? It felt like something dangerous, like tampering with whatever was in that house might be a very foolish mistake, but at the same time I couldn’t fault his logic. “It might just be a trap.” It was the only real counter I could think of other than that it felt like
the wrong choice to make.

  “I don’t think it is.” Arthos replied. “I think Cathra . . . “ His face twinged as if in pain. “I think that thing wanted us to take whatever is up there back with us. They want it to go from this world to ours. I think you were right that it’s the tesseract, but what is it? Why is it important to them? Seeing it might give us those answers.”

  “Feels wrong, dangerous.” Dreea gave her opinion, looking at the house. “I think it’s a mistake.”

  I nodded my agreement. “I don’t think it’s a good idea.”

  “I’m afraid this isn’t up for debate. I’m going to go see what it was we were supposed to fetch. I’m not taking it with us, but it’s important to know. When we we get back, we need to have a complete report to make, and if I leave this detail out, the report won’t be complete.” Arthos tone was firm. I could tell he had no intention of taking our advice on this. He was once more ignoring what we had to tell him.

  He went on. “You’ll wait here and I’ll be back shortly. It won’t take me long. If I need help I’ll call for you.”