After we got home from the interrogation, I immediately headed to see Benny. The whole bullshit game with Deathwish had made me think long and hard about power and how or why it should be used. Thinking back to my conversation with my best friend, I realized I’d fallen into the same trap I’d seen so many Ascendants fall into.
It wasn’t that I prioritized power, that was an obvious conclusion. I loved Benny like a brother and didn’t want to see him die. No, it was that I’d abandoned him to find his Path all by himself.
Of course, common knowledge told us that Paths are deeply personal and need to be discovered on your own, but I was aiming to be a god. I’d already made the decision to toss aside anything that regular Ascendants believed to find my own path to divinity.
Benny had been there for me since day one, and fear or not, if he needed help I’d help him, just like he’d helped set me straight the other day. I knocked on his door and waited patiently for him to get up and answer. When he opened it, his expression was cold. “What can I help you with, oh glorious leader?” He asked stonily. “More edicts to pass down?”
“I’ve decided I’m being stupid.” I said bluntly.
His blank expression cracked a bit, his lips twitching. “I mean, you’re awake, so there’s pretty good odds. What specific bit of stupidity are you thinking of in this instance?”
“Ass.” I said with an eye roll. “Come for a walk with me. I want to talk to you about your Path.” His face started closing down again, but I held up a hand. “It was shitty of me to just throw you under the bus because most people can’t help someone form a Path. We’ve been friends for most of our lives, if anyone can help you form your Path it's me. So I want to do that.”
He stared at me hard for a minute or two, then sighed. “Alright, I’ve been wracking my brain for how to manage it, so I suppose we can give it a try. Lead on then, oh stunning genius.” He gestured sarcastically and I rolled my eyes again, leading him out into the courtyard of the inn.
“Alright, so tell me what you know about Paths and what you’ve tried.” I attempted to sound confident, but honestly I was kind of worried. I’d formed my Path by accident, and me giving lessons was ridiculous. The only saving grace to this plan was that learning how techniques worked had given me some more insight into what Paths really were and how they functioned.
He shrugged. “A Path is…I don’t know, like a special power you use to make yourself stronger. It’s a way to exert power in a different way to be more impressive.”
I blinked at him. “Wow. I can’t even begin to tell you how wrong that is. That’s like, impressively wrong. You should try to find some sort of universal record society to submit that definition to, maybe you can win a prize for being more wrong than any person in history.”
“I’m sorry, is this supposed to be helpful?” He demanded. “Because I think this is literally the opposite of help.”
I shrugged. “Well your answer was really dumb. A Path, you unbelievable dipshit, is the connection between the soul and stats. It joins together two completely separate elements of your being in preparation to truly combine them. Your Path isn’t some mystical expression of power, it’s the way you can exert your full strength more directly than with a Skill or ability. In a word, your Path makes your will a reality, albeit on a small scale.”
Techniques were the most direct application of that I’d seen. Fantasy helped you conceptualize and shape your will in a way that allowed you to properly apply a Path. I suspected it wouldn’t be necessary inside a Domain, but forming one of those was a last step once you had long since hit S-rank.
Benny paused. “That’s…then why are people’s Paths so different from their abilities?”
“You’re born with an ability.” I said bluntly. “You can alter it to suit you better, but only so much depending on what Skills and stats you have. Paths are more personal. But it’s not like you can only find a perfect Path. There are people who never manage to crack C-rank because they never find a suitable Path. If you pick the wrong one you can fail to integrate it into a Skill and never condense a Solid Path.”
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He chuckled bitterly. “So no pressure, right? I just have to pick the perfect Path the first time.”
“Nah.” I said with a shake of my head. “You can change them, plus you have tons of brilliant people around to work with you. You just need to take the step to form one. Everything else can come later. You don’t need a Solid Path to be strong. With techniques you can use an Illusionary Path to be a real threat.”
He nodded, letting out a long breath. “Alright. I can work with that. So I just need to figure out what the best way is for me to exert my will on the world. Any idea, since you know me better than anyone?” His tone was dry as he threw my words back in my face.
“A few.” I said slowly. “But ultimately it’ll work better if it comes from you. Callie got hers after seeing the Abyss of space and being enlightened, but that’s rare. Still, I have to assume that being profoundly influenced by a thing would make it more likely for you to form a Path, and a strong one at that. So what influenced you most on our journey?”
He mulled it over. “You know, coming on this trip, I expected to be left behind. When you told me to form a Path I was angry, but not surprised. I thought early on that my power would be enough to keep up, it’s got a ton of potential, and I know it can be strong with the right resources. But even on Callus, back when we were at the Academy, I was already feeling how weak and helpless I was compared to you.
“It was tearing me apart, though I tried to hide it, but I think the thing that really turned me around, the one thing that showed me I had a shot, was the Bone Wyvern.” He laughed as I cocked my head in confusion. “It’s weird, right? Why that? But something about it was just…beautiful. A collection of bones merged together into a single, terrifying, colossal whole.”
I nodded slowly. “So you saw it as kind of like a perfect Invention. The most flawless use of resources to create something more than the sum of its parts?”
“Exactly.” His face lit up. “Exactly that. That’s what I strive for, to be more than the sum of my parts, literally. I can do that in so many ways, I know, but in the end that image sticks with me, that one being exemplifies what I’m striving for.”
Closing his eyes, he stopped talking, letting his memory bring him to wherever he felt he needed to go. He let himself drift and I could practically see him tapping into the Focus that was such a big part of him. With that much of the mental stat, he could undoubtedly remember the monster perfectly. Then he started to move.
He punched. Then punched again. Shaking his head in frustration he took out a sword, the weapon he’d been working with.
I activated my Eye of Revelation, letting my crown do its work Behind him, I saw a weird, twisty blob of white trying to form. He swung his sword again, and again. One side of the blob started to sharpen, but it didn’t stick, dissolving again and again.
He pulled out a second sword, using one in each hand. He tried to swing them, stumbling over his rhythm when he switched to dual weapons, since he had no training. It was hard for normal people to use two weapons, the brain is designed to focus on one thing at a time, you have to combine the movements from both into a single line of action.
Benny’s Focus was pretty damned high though, and he learned fast. One strike, then two. His clumsy swings started to become more fluid after ten minutes, then twenty.
I knew what he was doing. It was smart. Using the physical movements to anchor his Path like I did with my forms. Creating a sword art that would let him attach those ideas he had to the physical world.
Behind him, the blob sharpened and took shape. It was a colossal form of gleaming white bones with terrible eyes of cold flame. Benny’s was a ghastly pale green. The creature reared and snapped as he moved, and looking at it from further away, I could almost see the swords wings as he moved slowly, figuring out the martial art that would let him take that first important step.
His hands flickered, swords whipping, both at once as he tried to balance it, sometimes tripping up and overdoing it on one side.
Slowly though, the form of the great bone creature changed, became more refined. Not just the shape, but little details that made it seem to be a different creature altogether. I knew what they were, too. The creature had started out the same as the one we’d faced before, a bone wyvern, but it was growing less like a wyvern and more like something much scarier.
We’d both done research into dragons. They were really cool and powerful and we just genuinely wanted to know more about them. Benny in particular had always been a fan, not that it was some novel thing, everyone loved dragons.
The creature behind Benny changed as he moved, becoming more draconic, more terrifying. An aura of palpable dread surrounded it, of consumption, and I could see that this beast wasn’t any mere bone golem in the shape of a lizard. This was a true undead dragon. A monster returned from the grave that forced its soul back into its desecrated remains with magic. A Dracolich.
And why not. Paths could be anything, could represent our hopes and dreams and nightmares. Benny saw himself as this thing, in his wildest dreams. This uncontrollable monster that could devour its enemies and grow from their strength. It was fantastic.
Being sort of macabre didn’t make it or even Benny evil. Just kind of edgy, and it wasn’t like I could throw stones, what with the whole demon motif. I grinned at him as I saw the creature…solidify, in a way I somehow knew had made it something more than what it had been. “Nice sword style. What’s it called?”
He stopped, snapped out of his reverie, and lowered his blades. “I’m calling it the Dance of the Dracolich. My Path is the Path of the Dracolich. I have a few ideas of where to take that.”
“Advantages of being late to the party.” I said with a laugh. “Callie and I formed our Paths before we knew what they were. We’re having to feel them out as we go. Having a potential road to advancement is a good idea.”
Slumping down onto his ass, he chuckled woozily. “That was…rough. Does it usually affect your soul this much? I have a headache.”
“No idea.” I shrugged. “Like I said, wasn’t something we did on purpose, so we don’t know the normal procedure. Callie might have been a bit shaky after she had her epiphany, you’d have to ask her.” I helped him, walking him over to a bench and then dropping down beside him. “So…Path of the Dracolich, huh? Sounds neat. Can’t wait to see what you do with it.” Because I had a feeling Benny had great things in mind, and I’d make damn sure to help him achieve them.