Dark Fate, Chapter 54 (Patreon)

Chapter 54 – Mountain Path

We did not have any clear idea about where to go, other than tracking along the trail that the last victim was supposed to frequent. Unfortunately, my pets and I hadn’t really focused on woodsmanship. After all, we mostly fought in the city, and didn’t have any need for tracking.

The only slaves I owned with that kind of knowledge were James and Zoe, and their levels were far too low for something like this. Sure, their levels were higher than the Ranger who was accompanying us now, but that wasn’t saying much. Their level was too low for me to be certain of their survival, and I would rather lose these people who had no connection to me than anyone I had made one of mine.

That wasn’t to say that I’d just throw the Ranger or the other outsiders tagging along with us under the bus and treat them like red shirts, of course. I had a reputation to consider, especially if I was going to be building an army to take on the aliens, when they came. People were less likely to follow someone that treated them like they were disposable toys, trash to be tossed out at the earliest convenience.

Sure, enslaving people into my inner circle was a defense against people turning on me because they didn’t like what I was doing, or how, or why, or because they thought that they could do better. But I could only enslave so many at a time, and still maintain control. Even with the System enforcing commands, a clever slave, or one that had enough time on their hands, could figure out how to push commands so that they could still rebel.

It was the same as inmates in prison, really. Even if they thought the rules were generally in everyone’s best interest, there’d always be people who spent all their time looking for loopholes, or ways to fight back. And when you had large groups of slaves, they had nothing but time to think, since most of them usually weren’t trusted with tasks that gave them a bunch of autonomy or featured situations that were mentally taxing.

So, we couldn’t exactly have the Ranger out front, leading the way. Anyways, if it was something that could be found at his level, then the park rangers probably would have found something by now. Sad, but that was simply how it was.

At lest the trail was well maintained, and it hadn’t rained in the last few days. It would have been more of a pain to try and deal with pushing our way through the underbrush, after all. The woods in the national park weren’t exactly the swamp or the jungle, but trying to blaze a trail through the forest could be a pain in the ass, all the same, especially without a woodsman’s skills.

We’d been walking along the trail for almost two hours when I heard the first whispers. They were quiet, at first. Indistinguishable from the rustling of the wind. It was like white noise, where the ‘sound’ blended in with the background so easily that it was hard to remember that it was there at all.

But the further we walked along the path, the louder the ‘whispers’ became. And it was soon clear that it was not simply the wind. The whispers were more felt than heard, as though they were reaching out to my mind. Drawing me in.

I held up a hand, signaling a stop. Talia moved up next to me as I scanned the trees, trying to find the source of the whispers. “What is it, boss?”

“Do you hear that? The whispering? Something is definitely out here.”

Talia and Hibari shook their heads immediately. The Sergeant and the Ranger also. But I could see Rachel nodding her head, while the Wiccan was looking off into the distance, almost in her own little world. Clearly, something was up, but it wasn’t affecting everyone equally.

Rachel focused on me. “I can hear it, just barely. But it doesn’t feel like it was meant for me. Or, rather, I think it wants me to go away, if that makes any sense. I can’t make out any words, but I don’t think it wants me here.”

Aura shuddered, clearly trying to focus on the here and now. “I must go. He calls.” Her voice was distant, unfocused. I sighed. Well, that made things more complicated.

“What’s going on, Greene? What’s Aura talking about?”

Looking over to the clearly worried Ranger, I said, “There’s some psychic field or warding in the area. I can hear it as a whispering in the back of my mind. Just like Ms. Aura, I can tell that whatever it is behind the ward wants me to come to it. On the other hand, Rachel is being pushed away, while the rest of you don’t feel it.”

Sergeant Matthews nodded slowly. “So, some magic, suckering certain types of people in, and keeping others away? We’d heard about the idea of warding magic, but the number of people capable of doing it isn’t as high as I’d like.”

He took a breath. “The other victims, at least the ones we know about, all had classes that gave them magic. System classified them as arcane magic users. But there was plenty of other crossover between them, so we didn’t think too much of it.”

I nodded slowly. “Well, whatever set up this ward has definitely put out the call for arcane types. And it looks to be laced with a bit of compulsion, like the Pied Piper.” My hand shot out, and grabbed Aura’s shirt by the back of her collar, pulling her up short. She barely even noticed, her eyes remaining locked on some point in the distance. “Yep, definitely a compulsion of some kind.”

Ranger Stevens frowned. “If the other victims reacted anything like how Aura is, then it is no wonder we never found any sign of a fight. We’d wondered how someone had managed to snap up all these victims, without leaving signs, but if there was no fight, then of course there’d be no signs of fighting.”

Matthews nodded. “We’d thought that the perp was just really good at cleaning up a crime scene, but this explains so much more. Clearly, there’s something bigger happening here. Maybe we should call for backup?”

I shook my head. “No, it wouldn’t do any good. The ward is powerful enough that even I, with a higher level and some mental resistance skills, can feel it. It isn’t to the point where I’m losing myself, like Aura is, but I’m definitely feeling a pull towards wherever it wants me to go, like walking downhill. Anyone who isn’t at least our level would be dead weight, at best.”

Looking at Aura, who was still trying to walk forward, despite my grip on her collar not loosening in the slightest, Matthews was forced to concede the point. “All right. I know when something is above my pay grade. What’s the play?”

Damn, it was satisfying to work with people who actually knew their limits, and weren’t afraid to admit it. “First, I’m going to try and snap our Wiccan out of this trance.” I pulled back on her collar enough that I could see her face, now blank of any thought and emotion. With a sudden movement of my free hand, I slapped her twice across the face, hard enough that she would feel it, but not so hard as to cause any real damage.

Aura jerked awake at the sudden violence, and I could see her eyes start to regain focus. “W-what happened? The last thing I remembered, was we stopped, and there was the whispering. I still hear it.”

Well, that told me it was a persistent effect, rather than some targeted attack. “Cast your best mental protections on yourself, Aura, or I will slap you again, until you do. I’m not letting you go traipsing off in there and getting yourself killed that easily. Not good for the reputation.”

“Oh. Right. Yes. Yes, I’ll cast a resistance ward. It should cover anyone near to me.” The wiccan was definitely still not firing on all cylinders, but I watched as she concentrated for a moment, and then her eyes returned to their normal look. “Oh, fuck, that was freaky!”

I let her go, and she stood still, instead of going off trying to follow the whispers again. Not great, but it would do. “All right. Now that’s settled, Aura, I want you keeping those barriers up. Don’t worry about anything else, just keep with the Sergeant and the Ranger, and keep the defenses up.”

I looked at the three of them. “I won’t lie to you. Personally, I’d send the three of you back to the parking lot, so I didn’t have to worry about you getting in the way. But there’s no telling what we’ll be facing, and you all have skills and knowledge we might lack. So, I’m going to suggestthat you all keep back, keep quiet, and stay out of the way. But if you see something we need to know about, speak up. I’d rather you tip off something big and nasty to our presence, than walk into some trap you notice, and we didn’t. Understand?”

The three nodded, so I turned to my girls. “All right. Rachel, you’ve got the most experience with carving your way through a ward without just overpowering it, and this ward seems to dislike your type of magic, so you should be able to feel the ‘edges’ of it easier than I can. See if you can find the right string, and unravel enough to get us in.”

“Of course, Boss.”

Looking at Hibari and Talia, I said, “Be prepared to fight. Whatever is doing this looks like it is more reliant tricks and lures than it does physical confrontations, but even a cornered rat will fight like hell when it is trapped. And just because all we’ve seen of the thing is a lure, doesn’t mean they aren’t just as capable of fighting as we are.

“Assume they’re just using this lure because it is convenient, since it delays their discovery. Sure, it probably won’t be that bad, but we always expect the worst, right? That way, we’re prepared, and we aren’t running around like idiots.”

“Yes, Boss.”

I looked back to Rachel, and saw her carving out a circle with runes and symbols around the outside. Instead of trying to blast the ward down, she was going to try and use a ritual to open a metaphorical gap in the defenses. With any luck, the whole thing would happen without whoever (or whatever) was behind the creation of the ward from finding out.

The longer we kept the opposition in the dark, the closer we could get, before they started getting serious about their defenses. I wasn’t about to give them more warning (and more time to prepare) than necessary. They clearly had magic, and the more time you gave anyone with magic to prepare for a fight, the more dangerous they were. And if they were powerful enough that even I was feeling the effects, then I wasn’t going to underestimate them, and assume that they couldn’t actually hurt me.

Rachel’s ritual took ten minutes of preparation, followed by another minute of chanting, and focusing her power. Magic flared from her circle, as she finished the ritual. To the side of the path, where Aura had been trying to follow the voice, the air shimmered, and then cleared, revealing a rough path through the trees, one that had been hidden by magic moments before.

The Ranger grunted. “Well, I guess this explains why no one ever figured out where the missing people were disappearing to, even when we sent out searchers. They couldn’t see this path, unless they were one of the intended victims.”

As we stepped onto the path, we all started hearing the whispers, but Aura’s ward held up, so no one got glassy-eyed, or started losing their minds. Soon, however, we found ourselves face to face with a cave. About ten feet wide, and just as tall, it was a big cave.

Stevens frowned. “This shouldn’t be here. There’s no cave on the maps, and the last survey was two years ago. Nowhere near long enough for something like this to form.”

Hearing the Ranger say that this shouldn’t be here was not comforting in the slightest. Looking at the entrance to the cave again, with a more critical eye, I had to curse. “That’s because this cave wasn’t here two years ago, or at least it wasn’t open. Look at the walls, the edge is too smooth, too clean. This isn’t a cave, it is a tunnel, and nothing mother nature dreamt up made it, that’s for sure.”