As James observed from the point of view of the scout, the dense jungle foliage began to part, and the sound of the drumbeat grew fainter.

  It was apparent that the scout was moving out, either leaving behind the army he had come from or getting away from an army he had been spying on.

  Strange that I started in the middle of things like this, James thought.

  But he did not voice anything. He suspected that his mother could hear and answer any questions he might have, but he wanted to see what there was to see before he made any statements that might be proven redundant soon.

  Even if James had not known he was observing the point of view of a follower of someone called the Panther Queen, he would have gradually realized that he was inside the perspective of a semi-humanoid cat-like creature, a beast of prey that walked on two legs. He could tell both from seeing the creature’s paws—it had retractable claws, like all felines—and from the reflections he saw in pools of dew as the scout passed leaves where it had recently rained.

  This guy has excellent senses, James thought. He left implicit the worrying thought: Like me.

  If one of the Panther Queen’s subjects had such superhuman senses—able to scope out a fairly clear view of his own reflection in a few dewdrops in passing—how well-equipped would her army be in that respect?

  More importantly, are they as strong physically as this noncombatant is good at sensing?

  As James contemplated the possible strength of the Panther Queen’s army, the scout walked on across distance and different biomes. It was apparent that he was moving through different species’ home terrains. When he came near a Ruler, the scout would carefully avoid getting entangled in the Ruler’s aura and move around. There were clearly still open spaces to be found in between the territories controlled by Rulers, which allowed him to move freely without being observed by any of these beings that were much more powerful than himself.

  I need to be much more careful about security, James thought. I used to have a bunch of Skin Balloons flying around, just watching the area around the Fisher Kingdom, before I combined them with all my other random creatures to make my wyverns. Need more of those…

  But as James watched the scout spy on various species’ Rulers—or in some cases, non-Ruler leaders of groups of semi-sentient life forms—in multiple different territories, he had to admit to himself that his security system would not have worked to keep the scout out. Whenever the tricky Panther Scout approached a new territory, he would activate a Skill that seemed to make him almost completely imperceptible.

  How would I counter that? Besides the fact that my Fisher King powers would probably sense him if he actually invaded my territory—otherwise he wouldn’t keep trying to avoid directly entering people’s territories—how would I know if he was nearby? Maybe if I used the Great Sound Wyvern or some other creature that had the power of Echolocation…

  James also passively noted the various species that the scout encountered. There were some pink birds that were, surprisingly, not flamingoes. A species of bats that James had not recruited into the Fisher Kingdom. Some armadillo humanoids. Some lizard creatures with a strange marble color pattern on their bodies. A colony of snakes. A couple of different small groups of humans.

  And finally, the scout arrived at what seemed to be another territory without a Ruler.

  As the point of view edged around this specific scrap of territory, James recognized that it was familiar.

  This is pretty close to my old job, actually…

  After seemingly reassuring himself that there was no hidden Ruler with an incredibly subtle aura within the territory, the Panther Scout activated its Stealth Skill and advanced—seemingly marching directly toward the building where James’s old firm used to be located.

  No way…

  The scout walked briskly for fifteen minutes, until James could actually see the law office through the scout’s eyes. At that point, James could accept that the Pantherfolk were really targeting the people holing up in the firm building.

  But why? I guess they’re too weak to defend the territory—I said as much before I left them—but what’s the point of scouting out everything in between wherever the army was and here? It’s not like they can cross all that distance in force and be confident in conquering everything in between. If they wanted to try it, they would probably have to both divide their forces to go in more than one direction, and they would also have to leave what they already have basically undefended.

  This sounded uncomfortably similar to what James himself was already doing, however. He had sent the Royal Fisher Army out to seize as much territory as they could, up to the coast, while the Fisher Expeditionary Force moved in the opposite direction to scout everything they could going that way, at least to Orlando. Meanwhile, the Fisher Kingdom itself was only guarded by James himself, plus his police force who were effectively his Army Reserve.

  I think I’m starting to understand why Mom wanted to show me rather than just telling me what she got from the scout.

  The information that the scout had provided was clearly going to be instrumental in understanding the way the Panther Queen fought her wars.

  Next, the presentation style of the memories shifted. James observed as a sort of fast-forwarded recollection of the scout watching the law firm building played itself before his eyes. He tried to slow it down, and he found that all he had to do was will it, and the memory speed returned to roughly normal, but after ten minutes of watching ants walk along a log because nothing was happening, James allowed the scout’s fast-forwarded version of events to play on.

  James witnessed Dean and his people—some of whom he recognized—come back and forth from the firm building, make improvements and additional construction, recruit new people, and hunt periodically for food.

  This fast-forwarded view of events went on for several days. Then, on a morning that at first seemed no different from the others, it slowed down to roughly normal time.

  What’s going on? James thought.

  Then he saw the collared men. Five figures walked up, led by one of Dean’s henchmen. The five were wearing black leather collars, which was strange enough. But it wasn’t their appearance that caught James’s attention. The scout’s senses—and therefore James’s senses—buzzed as a familiar scent entered the scout’s nostrils. He knew these men.

  And James recognized in an instant that they were no men at all. The smell the Panther Scout recognized was of his own kind. These were Pantherfolk, somehow disguised as humans.

  “Did you recognize what happened there?” Zora’s voice suddenly boomed from all directions, and the events that had begun to play out before James’s eyes paused.

  “It looks like the Panther Queen sent in some infiltrators,” James said. “They seem to have the ability to disguise themselves as humans, but for some reason, they’re wearing collars like animals. I’m guessing that’s a requirement to maintain the disguise.”

  Did I get all the answers right, Mom?

  “All correct,” his mother agreed, “but I actually meant something else.”

  Damn.

  “What did you mean?” James asked.

  “Well, you have been experiencing the Panther Scout’s memories, which I had to torture him to get,” Zora said. “My methods use my Necromancer abilities, so when I do this, I directly injure his soul rather than doing something gross like ripping off his fingernails or gouging out his eyes.”

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  “Right,” James said.

  “I had the option of torturing the soul of his lover and making him watch, but that seemed a little bit much to me. I tried to keep the damage to a minimum.”

  “Nice of you.” James himself was not certain he would have been particularly careful in torturing an enemy spy. Or even an enemy spy’s loved ones, if he believed the spy had important information.

  How did you even get access to the soul of his lover? James wanted to ask, but he knew it was totally irrelevant, so he refrained.

  “But he nevertheless did not show you anything about the Panther Queen yet,” his mother said. “Nor did he give you any insight into when he sent a report back to her, which led to her decision to send these infiltrators. Curious, isn’t it?”

  “That does seem a little strange,” James admitted. “I guess he fast-forwarded through that.”

  “He did, I am almost certain,” Zora agreed, “even though my instructions to him were to show us all relevant details that would provide insight into the Panther Queen’s operations and the scout’s own modus operandi.”

  Well, I didn’t know that, James thought.

  “Of course, you had no way of knowing that,” his mother continued, echoing James’s thoughts almost suspiciously closely. “But the bottom line is, I think it’s extremely unlikely that the Panther Queen sent in infiltrators without sending or receiving any communications with her scout. For some reason, the scout resisted showing us that.”

  “What’s your point, Mom?” James asked.

  “I think that there are parts of this story our friend left out, son.”

  “Yeah, I guess he resisted your torture,” James said.

  “Doubtful. At least not with Will alone. And most of the Skills a person has seem to be attached to the body. Not all, but most. He’s a disembodied soul, now. His body is in my Small Bag of Deceptive Dimensions.”

  The magic satchel, James thought.

  “How do you think he did it, then?” James asked, since it was obviously what his mother wanted him to ask. She liked to make him think, to turn conversations into lessons.

  “Good question,” she said. “It has to be one of two things. Either he has a Skill that’s specifically meant to resist torture and that somehow failed to desert him after death, even when his soul is separated from his body—or it’s actually the Panther Queen blocking him from telling me anything.”

  “You think she has a Skill like my Compulsion,” James said. “She placed him under some kind of command, and it hasn’t worn off.”

  His mother already knew most of his Skills from a strategy session they’d held together weeks ago, when they were dealing with Sister Strange’s nocturnal attacks on the Fisher Kingdom, so he did not need to explain Compulsion.

  “That’s correct. I think she bound him with a Skill that at least functions in a similar way, although I have no clue how exactly it works.”

  “So, you’re bringing this up, just so I have a better idea of what our enemy might be capable of?” James asked.

  “And to ensure you keep that in mind for the scenes that follow,” she replied. “We have no idea to what extent the Panther Queen may have forced the Panther Scout to edit his memories. Don’t put complete faith in anything you see. The important portions of his recollections begin now.”

  The memories unpaused.

  There was a fast-forwarded sequence of the collared infiltrators going into the firm building, then going back out occasionally in the company of some of Dean’s people. The collared men had quickly been integrated into Dean’s hunting parties.

  James inwardly groaned.

  Dean, really? You trusted these strangers that quickly? Maybe you didn’t have much choice, but this reflects either bad judgment or a bad situation that you’re in. Probably the former. Then again, maybe Dean has had better experiences trusting people than I have. In my Orientation, I got mind-controlled by a harmless-looking old grandpa, and a seemingly respectable lawyer made a deal with a death god to sacrifice me and all our other companions to secure his own family’s future. In Dean’s Orientation, he wound up finding that he could trust a pair of felons. Our different experiences of this strange apocalypse may have led us to different conclusions…

  As James was musing about his former boss’s decision-making abilities, two of Dean’s people had gone off hunting with the collared men. The scout followed from a distance, simply observing—probably on some instructions from the Panther Queen that had somehow been excluded from the memory.

  When the party reached an arranged spot, the Panther Scout deactivated his Stealth Skill and leaped out from behind some foliage, and a dozen Pantherfolk did the same from other directions. The two men from Dean’s camp were surrounded. The collared men had led them into a perfect ambush.

  One of them spoke to the two humans.

  “You have nothing to worry about if you surrender here. If you obey the Panther Queen, she will treat you well, give you responsibilities, and reward you when you accomplish them. If you refuse to serve her, we will have to help these Pantherfolk here butcher you instead. We would prefer not to do that.”

  An extremely civilized murder threat, James thought sarcastically.

  The collared men were still pretending not to be Pantherfolk in disguise themselves, to boost their credibility with their supposed fellow humans—or perhaps they were actually brainwashed humans who had spent a lot of time among the Pantherfolk already? James had no way of knowing for certain. The Panther Scout had not given him those background details.

  The two men meekly surrendered to the Pantherfolk and went off with those who had leaped out from cover, while the Panther Scout returned to his post. James was forced to leave the interesting question of what happened to those who surrendered for later, since the scout had no direct knowledge of it.

  The collared men likewise walked off in the direction of the firm building. They did not speak to or acknowledge the scout, who had already reactivated his Stealth Skill and ran ahead of them.

  The Panther Scout retook his position, and a few minutes later, James watched the collared men enter through the front door. James noticed they had given themselves some superficial injuries, to create the illusion that they had been in a fight and struggled against the other side rather than helping to overwhelm their two companions.

  Presumably, they must have given a good account of what happened, because a few days later, the Panther Scout witnessed them go out hunting with a slightly larger group. Leading the expedition was the ex-convict Viktor, who James recognized from his last encounter with Dean’s group.

  This probably won’t end well, James thought.

  Sure enough, the Panther Scout followed once more, and James watched as the group was led into a second, similar ambush to what had happened to the previous pair of hunters.

  Over a dozen of the Panther Scout’s colleagues jumped out from behind bushes, brandishing weapons, but this time, the numerical disparity was not so great.

  Viktor and his crew engaged the Pantherfolk in combat before the ambushers could even try to propose a surrender. The fighting looked surprisingly even to start with. Blades hacked bloody hunks of flesh off of combatants on both sides, and James thought that this skirmish would end in favor of Dean’s side.

  Then the collared men transformed into Pantherfolk, and they joined their cohorts in attacking Dean’s crew.

  The fight continued back and forth for a few minutes without anyone making any moves that particularly impressed James. The combat was relatively even, which was what allowed it to last so long without one side collapsing.

  The number of Pantherfolk involved was slightly greater, but James judged that without the element of surprise and a couple of early injuries to the human side, the Pantherfolk would have lost.

  So, the average Pantherfolk is not stronger than the average human, or at least not by much, he thought.

  Then the Panther Scout stabbed one of the humans in the back—he was using his Stealth Skill in combat to make it impossible to see him until he struck the blow—and James felt the tide of the fighting turn in that moment. The scout had chosen his moment perfectly. A gap opened up between the humans. One of them stepped backward and began to trip over the fallen body of the scout’s victim. Another human was distracted by the sight of his comrade falling in his peripheral vision, and he suffered a stab wound to his right bicep in that moment of inattention.

  Shit, the humans here are all going to die now, aren’t they?

  As James had that thought, the Panther Scout darted backward into the brush, and the other Pantherfolk pressed in closer, preventing the squad of humans from trying to give chase.

  But as James could see, the human fighters were in no shape to pursue anyone. He wasn’t even certain how they would survive this encounter.

  Then Viktor—the ex-con who James had disdained from the moment the two men first laid eyes on each other—did something that surprised the Fisher King.

  He pointed his sword at the nearest Pantherfolk, he gripped the hilt tightly, and he winced. James thought that if he was in his own body, he would have sensed something move from Viktor’s body, through the sword, and into the Pantherfolk.

  As it was, he only had access to the Panther Scout’s senses, which were powerful but still limited in ways that James’s were not.

  From the Panther Scout’s perspective, what happened was that the Pantherfolk nearest to Viktor suddenly swelled up slightly—and then exploded.