Spires of Infinity (12 page)

In the distance Kari could make out the remains of several palaces. Huge domes were caved in with ragged holes blown through stone walls. One dome seemed pierced by a huge spire that appeared to have broken from its own top.

Mixing with the stench of sulfur, was the smell of char. Everywhere Kari looked she saw ash, finely coating everything, and in little piles all around the paving stones that were cracked and blackened by fire. Here there was a porcelain bowl, and there a half-burnt wooden doll. Piles of clothing, and other such possessions, appeared to have been tossed aside by people fleeing in terror. Nowhere did she see any remains.

“What happened here,” Michael gasped.

“This is terrible,” Jonathan agreed.

Turning in a slow circle, the closest thing Kari found resembling life were the toppled and semi-demolished statues, one at every street intersection.

“This city is
huge
,” she whispered. In the dead silence even a whisper was deafening in her ears. “Where have all of the people gone?”

“Right here,” Jonathan visibly gagged as he toed a pile of ash on the ground.

Taking a step closer, Kari gasped when she saw that amidst the ash were small

fragments of fire-blackened bone and a single gold tooth that was miraculously unscathed. Turning another circle, she scanned the streets in every direction. Hundreds of identical piles of ash were within sight, thousands even. If the rest of the streets in the city held as many as this one did . . .?

“Millions,” Michael said, his wolflike ears drooping. “There have to be millions dead. How?
Why
?”

Cupping her hands to her mouth, Kari took a deep breath. “Hello? Is there

anyone left alive?”

Adding their own shouts to hers, the twins joined in. They could have yelled

themselves hoarse and not even the dead would have heard. Falling silent, Kari gestured for her brothers to as well. Blanketing the city once more, the palpable silence settled over them like a shroud.

Hitching her pack, Kari pointed toward what looked like a fortress on the horizon.

“Let’s go there. If there’s anything to be found about what happened here, it’ll probably be there.”

“Smart as always,” Jonathan nodded, checking his broadsword.

“Indeed,” Michael agreed, also checking his weapons.

Settling into Kari’s bones, the eerie silence filled her with unease. The back of her neck prickled with the sensation of being watched, but there was no one to watch her save the dead, which was a frightening thought.

Moving steadily toward the fortress, they climbed over rubble to an adjacent

street when a fallen tower blocked their progress. Kari tried hard not to step in any of the piles of ash out of respect for the dead, but it proved impossible. She winced inwardly every time one of her heavy leather boots sent a puff into the air.

Many of the streets were made impassable by rubble, fissures and craters.

Navigating to streets that were clear was hard due to the fact that partially standing buildings often blocked Kari’s sight. Many times it turned out a street that appeared clear from a distance wasn’t.

By the end of the third hour of trekking through the ruins Kari was thoroughly annoyed with her skirt. Skirts were not made for all the leaping across chasms and craters, and climbing over shifting rocks that they were doing. To her horror she was covered from head to toe with ash, and utterly miserable about it, and their destination was no closer for all her pains.

“Here,” Michael pushed a canteen of water at her.

Drinking gratefully, she washed what she hoped was not the ash of former human beings down her throat.

“You look hideous,” Jonathan said, his grin marred by the ash smudged on his

face.

“A sight straight from a nightmare,” Michael agreed. “Tell me to do my chores and it’ll be a perfect fit.”

Unable to stop herself, Kari growled at her brothers, a threatening, animal sound that rumbled deep in her throat and chest. Freezing, the twins began babbling apologies.

Rarely letting her temper get the better of her, Kari prided herself on her control over both her Demon and animal instincts, but she was just too miserable to keep a short leash on them now. There were a few memorable past incidents, when she’d lost her temper, ending with her brothers beaten and bloody.

By far the strongest of the three, Kari was also the most dangerous. Amongst

Heretics, females were typically stronger than males. Long ago, humans thinking to breed Heretics as weapons to use against their Demon sires used some form of genetic alterations to limit the birth of males to less than one percent due to their aggressive and uncontrollable nature. The few males that were born were often weak, overly docile and sometimes gender confused as a result. Their mother had been born under those strictures. Though diluted, they still held some effect over her offspring.

“Care to borrow some trousers,” Michael rummaged in his pack. “They’ll be

huge on you, but I imagine they’ll make for much easier going.”

“That would be lovely,” Kari nodded. “Thank you.”

Taking the proffered garment, Kari chose a relatively whole wall to change

behind. As a child, she could remember bathing together with her brothers and not caring that they saw her, but that was a
long
time ago. Just the thought of changing her clothes in front of them, even with their backs turned, caused her face to heat uncomfortably.

The wall was not completely whole, of course. But despite being full of holes and cracks, it offered enough privacy for her to change her clothes in comfortable modesty.

Self-consciously, Kari checked her surroundings one last time, though she knew there could be no one watching, and removed her heavy leather belt, then her skirt. An odd sense of freedom filled her as she swished her twin tails to work out the cramps caused by remaining weighed down and motionless by her skirt.

Eyeing her two tails, Kari wished to go back to when she’d only had one. Such was the curse of a fox Demon. For every hundred years of her life she would grow a new tail until she had nine. Her fur was so poofy that having two was really quite a chore sometimes, and the thought of having three, much less nine, was almost horrific.

After stretching, she pulled on Michael’s trousers. With how much bigger he was than she, they fit horribly, far too big around the waist, and there was a foot of the legs past the end of her toes. Rolling up the legs into large cuffs at the ankles, Kari managed to get her belt around her narrow waist without the trousers falling around her ankles with a bit of creative juggling.

Kari had never even owned a pair of trousers. She was a girl, and she enjoyed being a girl, always wearing skirts just because she could. It was what proper girls wore, after all. However, her current situation was not ideal for wearing her preferred garb, and she was delighted at the freedom of movement trousers offered. Perhaps it would be wise to buy a pair of her own once they got to a more hospitable world. Whilst packing for their departure from home, she hadn’t foreseen any situation she couldn’t get past in a skirt.

Bending to collect her things, Kari felt the prickling feeling of being watched again. The sound of stone falling on stone nearby in the dead silence startled her so badly that she cried out. In a split second she had her bow strung and an arrow knocked, scanning the rubble around her with ears pricked up to points as she listened for any further sounds. Due to the sulfurous stench in the air, Kari could not scent anything on it.

Known for its hardness and ability to bend under pressure, the bowstave was

ironwood. Thick as her wrist, it stood a foot taller than her. Because no other material was strong enough, the string was steel. The thumb thick arrow was weighted with a heavy, razor sharp head made to slide between human ribs. When she drew her bow back to full, Kari could put an arrow entirely through a brick wall. Neither of the twins could even draw it at all.

Looking to her for direction, her brothers appeared with weapons drawn.

Lowering her bow, Kari blushed. “Sorry. Just shifting rock. The quiet has me a bit jumpy.”

Examining his ridiculously large trousers on her, Michael cracked an amused

grin. “You look very silly wearing those, sis.”

“I see you’d like me to put a hole through you,” Kari raised her bow.

“Ah,” Michael raised his hands in a placating gesture. “Did I mention how

ravishing you look with comically large trousers on?”

Laughing out loud at the exchange, Jonathan suddenly went stiff with alert, eyes scanning the shadows beneath a wall that had toppled off at waist height and strangely remained unbroken, making a dark triangular cave.

“What is it,” Kari’s sharp eyes saw nothing but blackness. Though, as seeming compensation for her superior strength, the twins had much sharper senses.

“
Not
your imagination,” he said, anger flitting across his typically passive face as he glanced at her filthy skirts still lying on the ground. “You sure picked the wrong girl to spy on, pervert. She’s
really
scary when she’s mad.”

Choosing that moment to fluctuate again, gravity increased Kari’s weight tenfold one second then made her almost weightless the next. Feeling a lurching wave of nausea, Kari’s stomach swam as a few smaller rocks scattering the ground actually rose a few inches before gravity was righted again.

A child’s terrified cry echoed through the oppressive quiet.

Shoving her bow at Jonathan, Kari stepped toward the small, dark cave.

“What am I supposed to do with this? Beat people over the head with it?”

Looking into the artificial cave, Kari was relieved to find that it was lit from the other end as well, making the silhouette of a child huddled against the wall perfectly visible. Reaching a hand toward him, she smiled warmly, careful not to show any of her wickedly sharp, bestial teeth or fangs.

“It’s all right,” she said soothingly. “We’re not going to hurt you. You can come out now. There’s nothing to be afraid of.”

“You’re monsters,” the boy cried in utter terror, “Demons!”

Taking a deep breath, Kari let it out in a sigh. She’d grown up without the

prejudice against her kind that was so rampant most everywhere else in the universe. She was horrified to see how people viewed Heretics. She’d known that almost every legend about vampires and werewolves could be traced back to one of her kind, but she hadn’t expected such hostility. Though she’d been nothing but friendly, many people seemed to hate and fear her on general principle. It was hard to live down the fact that you were half Demon amongst people who could still remember that Demons almost exterminated humankind in the ancient war that destroyed humanity’s homeworld of Earth.

“I know we look scary,” Kari said soothingly. “And I suppose we
are
Demons, if you want to get technical. But you know what, not all Demons are bad. Come on out.

There’s nothing to be afraid of. We’re not going to hurt you.”

“I’ve heard stories,” the boy cried. “All the monsters say that!”

Sighing again, Kari resisted the urge to climb in and drag the kid out by the scruff of his neck. It probably wouldn’t do much for his opinion of her status as a monster.

“Please come out,” Kari smiled harder. “There’s nothing to be afraid of. You’ll be safe with us.”

Hesitating for a second, the boy cautiously moved toward her. When he reached the light Kari saw that he was filthy as a child could be, wearing little more than rags.

His face was gaunt and hollow and his jade eyes had a vacant quality to them that nearly broke her heart. His hair was so matted, tangled, and dirty that she couldn’t tell what color it was.

“That’s it,” Kari soothed. “Nothing to be afraid of.”

Face twisting in anguish, the boy threw himself into her arms, sobbing loudly.

Hugging him tightly as she murmured comforts to him, Kari was horrified at how thin he was under his rags.

“That’s it. You’re safe now. Nothing to be afraid of.”

“Great, now we’ve got something to eat for dinner,” Jonathan said jokingly.

The boy went rigid in her arms and began shaking violently in fear.

“
Jonathan
,” Kari snapped. “That was
not
funny! Can’t you see that the poor thing’s terrified! Now is
not
the time!”

Shrugging under the force of her withering glare, Jonathan looked uncomfortably abashed and muttered an apology.

“It’s all right,” Kari soothed the boy. “The colossal idiot was only joking. We’re not going to hurt you.”

“Please,” the boy said weakly, his voice muffled somewhat with his face buried in her bosom. “Do you have any food.”

Rummaging through his rags, he removed a battered golden crown. “I have gold.

I can pay for it. Please. I can’t remember the last time I ate. I’ll do anything.”

Holding the crown out in a trembling, skeletal hand, he seemed on the verge of bursting into tears again. “Please. I don’t think I can go on much longer.”

Placing a hand over his, Kari gently pushed the crown back to him. “That looks very precious to you. We have food, and we’ll share it with you, as much as you can eat.

You keep that. Instead, you can tell us what happened to all the people, and why everything is in ruins.”

Clutching the crown to his chest tightly, the boy gave Kari a look of supreme

gratitude. “Oh thank you. Thank you!”

Throwing his arms around her, the boy burst into tears again.

Patting his back comfortingly, Kari held him tightly. “Everything is going to be just fine.”

“Aw, look at that motherly instinct,” Jonathan said with a chuckle.

“
Her
motherly instinct frightens me,” Michael said with a mock tremble in his voice.

“I’m Kari, and that’s Jonathan and Michael. They say lots of stupid and silly things because their heads are completely full of sawdust. What’s your name, little one?”

“I’ll have you know that it’s wood chips, not sawdust,” Michael protested.