Earlier that day, they had seen Verity and Finn fly over the south gate and it had lit a fire in their spirits; they, too, had decided to go off to that place they had been anxious to visit. Melchior might not like it, but Dinsch and Krose weren’t prisoners here and they had every intention of leaving by the east gate. For one, it was a scarcely traveled road anyway and there were plenty of places to duck out of view if they did see anyone. No one would even know they had gone.
In any case, they were both bothered by the place. It was obviously not a used path, off of a barely-used road and why, by the gods, were there any kind of Folk relics on a continent where most Folk never dared to travel? The Reishefolk even were definitely not fond of carving so it would stand to reason it was probably humans. Even so, the real burning question here was why did anyone feel the need to make them? It was entirely possible that there were no real answers there but they had only seen the pair of statues and they had been feline and there was no telling what else lay up that path, more statues or what.
Krose had also been itching to talk to Dinsch about Scryshaw. Dinsch sometimes talked in his sleep—not just talked, but whimpered and flung his limbs around fitfully, which was not something he had done before his time there. He clearly heard Dinsch say something about the caverns and the ogres and he had seen his friend weep in his sleep. He knew bits and pieces of what had happened there, but he thought there might have been more to it. Once he had seen his first love Seles, the dreams only seemed to get worse. He knew Dinsch wouldn’t talk about it around the others but Krose had hoped Dinsch would at least open up to him.
Once they had made up their mind, they simply walked up to the east gate and the guard had tried to stop them with an air of authority. Krose grinned humorlessly, like a cat humoring a mouse it intends to eat.
“I’ve been told to keep anyone from leaving just yet, sirs,” the guard had said politely but with an edge that he thought brooked no room for argument. He was wrong. Melchior wasn’t forcing people who lost their nerve to stay, but he did make it clear that even if they didn’t fight, they couldn’t risk appearing on Myceum’s radar with foot traffic going in and out. Even supplies into the city were coming in through a smuggler’s route.
“We thought you might say that, but we’re leaving anyway,” Krose said with good humor, but with a sharper edge than the guard had mustered. “My friend Dinsch here, I’m seen him use his legs to send a man three times your size through a foot-thick wall of stone. How thick are Mythec’s walls anyway?”
The guard’s eyes shift over the two men nervously and he decided to step aside and let them pass. Dinsch was a wall of muscle and his natural restless bounce had done enough to show off the strength of the muscles in those legs.
Krose patted the guard’s shoulder twice sympathetically as they passed. “Just tell Melchior we’ll be back in three days’ time if he even notices we left at all. I wouldn’t be the first to bring it up though, my friend; he doesn’t seem in any mood to even humor the first girl he ever had a crush on, let alone the rest of us peons.”
Once they were well out of earshot, they broke down in laughter and sped off down the road. Rienna was going to strangle him if anyone made that connection but it was a worthy distraction as the guard tried to piece it together.
Once they had reached the spot where the statues stood, their moods were no longer so buoyant.
“I don’t suppose you know any spells to tell these vines to back off,” Krose asked Dinsch unhappily.
“Couldn’t you use light to burn through them?” Dinsch countered.
“Only if you’re looking to send up one hell of a smoke signal. I’m fairly sure Melchior doesn’t want us tipping off Myceum that we’re over here though,” Krose snapped back, his humor draining away from him. Despite the fact that their powers didn’t depend on their elementals being present, neither of them were too keen on using them as freely as Melchior liked to. He sunk against the Felisfolk statue into a sitting position. To their dismay, neither of the rough stone statues had any script of any kind to hint at what their purpose was here.
“Felisfolk…” Krose stated absently. “Where do they hang out anyway?”
Dinsch kept inspecting the thorny vines that blocked their path. Without looking at him, Dinsch answered Krose.
“Wheryf. You know, that island, continent, whatever off the coast of Stoneweld. not a short journey. Stoneweld but you still couldn’t see it from there. They were territorial when they were on Vieres, pretty much pissing everyone off, humans and Folk alike, once they had escaped the facility so there was that uprising where a mob had drugged the lot of them and shipped them off to that island. Gave them their own little sandbox to piss in, so to speak. Not really the best solution, since the natives had to deal with them. It wasn’t even just them either; both Vieres and Stoneweld started shipping off all their unwanted there. each other out, right? I guess it’s northwest of here technically, but We were just west of it when we got to
Figured they’d just go about wiping A century had passed, I think, before anyone bothered to check it out and I guess the Felisfolk had organized and got rid of that feral streak, got civilized. Even surprised everyone by the inhabitants making a unified society not just splitting up by race. The Felisfolk still get a bad rap though because our history books don’t talk about their reformation. They have segregated tribes to the North still, but it’s more diverse on the southern end. Pierait had mentioned once that it wasn’t being Soulless that had made some people hostile towards him, like his own grandmother. It was the Felis eyes he had inherited from his father that made them wary. Some Felis still prefer their own kind like the rest of us and we’re all too happy to let them.”
“Pierait talked to you about his past?” Krose asked with disbelief.
Dinsch shrugged. “You just can’t ask him how he feels about things, really. He doesn’t know how to describe what he feels and he doesn’t retain memories of pain or joy like we do. As long as you ask him about facts, he would talk a blue streak about anything. I asked him about his family and he was adamant that his grandmother hated him so I asked if she told him why and he had overheard her telling his mother… Damn it, there’s just no way past these things!”
Dinsch was talking about the vines and had given up, sitting against the big cat statue on the opposite side of the gap. Krose watched his friend for a moment. It was time to ask but now that it was time, Krose was suddenly tongue-tied.
“Dinsch…you’ve been having night terrors since Scryshaw. I don’t think anyone else has really noticed but me and, well… sometimes, you say things about it that scares the hell out of me. You never talk about it, but I wonder if you’re okay,” Krose said, unable to look anywhere else but his wringing hands as his heart raced more with every word.
Krose wanted to look but he couldn’t; every moment that Dinsch didn’t speak, he felt his own heartbeat squeeze the air from his chest, as if his heart swelled and flattened his lungs as it did.
“It was those ogres, Krose. I’d never seen living things so cruel. I’ve seen things coldly kill for food or because they thought they were threatened, but those ogres… There’s a reason those bastards have their own little island way off of the coast of western Vieres but it ought to be on the bottom of the ocean and taking them with it. Krose, they would take these girls, not even women yet and they would… they would take turns on them in front of us until they were dead or just completely dead inside. The really dead ones, they would lay there with their eyes still wide open, their eyes still moist with unshed tears for hours. They would just leave them there for the other children to see… Sometimes, they would just grab up a scrawny kid and snap its neck, dead, just like that and you could smell the flesh cooking shortly after. They always cooked the ones they took, sometimes they would even force one of us to eat the meat they brought or they would beat us with it.
“We thought they were just taking the ones they couldn’t sell, but sometimes they wou
ld grab up an able male, a warrior, and just… tear his legs off. Rabbit leg stew, they said it was the best part. He would lie there and bleed and when he was close to death they’d get the rest of him to cook for a snack. They wouldn’t kill him before they threw him in the boiling water either…”
“No more, Dinsch, stop,” Krose said, regretting he had even asked. He had a feeling that things got much worse than that even and seeing his friend’s face drain of life was more than he could bear. He had no idea Dinsch had been hiding that behind his usual lively exterior. He had seen the haunted looks of the other Bryfolk, but they were all so quick to put it behind them and he had admired that resilience. “I didn’t want you to feel like you had to tell me just because I’m your friend. I can’t take away the memories for you and I can’t stand watching the life drain out of you. If you want to talk about it, fine, but please don’t do it for my sake. I won’t be able to stand it if you come to hate me for bringing it up.”
Dinsch had shook the horrors from his mind and smiled at Krose.
“That’s just it, though, Krose—as horrible as it seems, there’s not a one among us who hasn’t had our soul frozen by the evils we have seen. Sometimes our demons are men but sometimes they’re much more powerful, elementals and maybe in part, the old gods. I’m not going to fall apart or hate you because, if anything, I’ve learned the lines between friend and foe and I know where you fall without question.”
The ground beneath them started to rumble and a gathering mound started to form under Dinsch. He frowned and looked down but realization came to his face as he leapt to his feet then off of the mound, announcing “heads up!” as a little stocky man popped up from the mound.
“What the–?” Krose started to say, but Dinsch laughed nervously.
“Meet Girdinus, gnome and earth elemental…” Dinsch whispered as the grumpy cuss brushed away clumps of dirt and grumbled.
Krose managed an “ahhhh” of understanding before the gnome threw them both a look and put his stumpy little clawed fists on his hips and started talking.
“…Which one of you did I come here for?” Girdinus asked with his ornery tone of voice even more prickly than usual with confusion.
Krose tried not to laugh; Dinsch wasn’t kidding when he said the gnome never remembered anything.
“That would be me, sir,” Dinsch offered, bowing respectfully.
“Ah, right, of course… You having a birthday party?” Girdinus tried, scratching his head and this time Krose couldn’t stifle the laugh that burst from his lips and he doubled over to hide his face as Dinsch rubbed his back.
“That one sick or something?” Girdinus asked, even surlier.
“No, sir, just allergies. I summoned you to ask if you if there’s a way to get us past these vines here. The thorns are razor-sharp and neither of us can figure out a way to safely get through,” Dinsch explained.
Girdinus scratched at his chin and looked at Dinsch as if he had two heads as Krose had gathered his composure.
“Are you daft, boy?” Girdinus shouted, and Krose had doubled over again, his face now red from the trials of holding in his laughter.
“You need to get that one some driproot; it’ll clear that weird sneeze up. Anyways, you’re a child of earth, by gum, just reverse their growth cycle, coax them back into seeds!” Girdinus barked as if it were a recipe for boiling water.
“Ah, no disrespect, sir, but you never showed me how…” Dinsch said meekly.
“Dadgummit, I have to do everything around here, and stop calling me ‘sir’, boy, you know my name!” Girdinus ordered him, shrinking back the vines by raising his arms.
“Ah, but how do I do it, so I don’t have to bother you again?” Dinsch asked unhappily. Krose was weaving like a drunk trying to breathe and not crumple to the ground.
“Just tell the blasted things that Girdinus is coming if they don’t get the hell outta the way! Anything else, boy? I have things needing to be tended to!” he added crossly, folding his arms over his chest.
“N-no, thank you, Girdinus,” Dinsch started but before he even finished, the cranky gnome was diving into the dirt and gone. Krose had collapsed into a frantic fit of laughter, his face losing its bloody redness and he gasped for air between peals of mirth. Dinsch blushed with frustration. He knew how to use some of the powers, but it hadn’t occurred to him to just UNgrow something. They had always experimented based on forward thinking.
“I’m glad one of us finds this funny; he scares the ever-living shit out of me,” Dinsch grumbled. Krose rarely ever heard Dinsch swear so he knew he wasn’t exaggerating. Krose was sobering both from exhaustion and his poor friend’s misery.
“Sorry, pal, but I couldn’t believe how spot on you were about that guy. He has a few rats loose in his memory banks, for sure,” Krose admitted, rising shakily to his feet. “The path is open now, so let’s check it out.”
Long ago, Krose learned not to make a race out of anything with Dinsch. It only took one time to learn he’d end up leapfrogged with a mouthful of dirt.
The path was a narrow one so they could only fit through single-file and Dinsch had let Krose go first. Dinsch was much taller and there was nothing but rock wall to look at as far as they could see. In Krose’s case, it would be rock wall or Dinsch’s fluffy little ass decoration of a tail. No arguments with going first there. As the path wound through the rock, it widened up gradually, eventually allowing them to walk side by side and then wide enough to accommodate another before they saw a huge stone gate ahead, guarded with two more stone statues, these ones of a fox and its Kitfolk equivalent.
“Kitfolk…” Dinsch whispered. “At least it’s not a turtle or something. How stupid would that be, a talking humanoid turtle?”
“I’m sure they thought the same thing about bunnies, Dinsch. And I wouldn’t envy a human woman a natural birth there, supposing shells were part of the deal,” Krose retorted.
“Turtles lay eggs, Krose, it would be a hatching-birth,” Dinsch pointed out distractedly, missing the joke.
Again, the statues had no inscriptions or any indication of who had put them there, so that was no help. Krose looked at the tall stone gate and wondered about what they would do next. Dinsch was beside him hopping on either foot, charged up to go and before Krose could say anything, his friend was already bounding between wall and gate to sit atop the wall. Krose rolled his eyes and gave the gate a try. Despite its formidable size, it swung open easily and Krose stuck his tongue out at his frowning friend and stepped through. Dinsch had leapt down onto the other side and they looked around this lush paradise before them in awe. It was a sort of temple and there were more statues around them; the fox Kitfolk as well as Bryfolk, Reishefolk, and even the different varieties of Felisfolk, but Krose frowned as he noticed now that the statues definitely had the snouts of animals where all the Folk he had ever met had distinctly human faces.
“Hey, Dinsch, how come they have animal faces?” Krose asked his friend and Dinsch had smiled a small sad smile.
“When we were still kids, Seles had told me that Folk were originally more animal than human, but it made it hard for them to speak too. Because their smell and size made them different from animal kind, they found it harder to associate with animals and ended up breeding into humankind over time. It reduced some of their senses as animals, but increased their intelligence. If they had stuck to breeding solely with their own kind, there would have been too much inbreeding, there were just so few of them back then. Even then, most of them had enough human sense to detest inbreeding. It might heighten our strengths but it also intensifies genetic weaknesses.”
“My kind, especially, found it harrrd to brrreed outside of ourrr own kind, but the ferrral trrrait was a harrrd one to brrreak,” came a young purring female voice purring on every ‘r’ from behind them and they spun around to see a small lovely snow leopard Felis girl swishing her feline tail in amusement. She looked friendly, but her claws were out, daring them to cause trouble.
The young woman was shapely and strong, her skin so snow white you could barely distinguish the hair from the skin. The hair on her head was wavy and black and she let it hang loose around her. Her eyes were that pale blue-grey that only leopards seemed to possess and she wore a metallic bikini top and matching tiny thong that left little to the imagination. When she sashayed towards Dinsch, her hips bounced with both a grace and a sex appeal that Krose had never seen a human woman be able to pull off. When she grinned, he could see the tiny sharp canine teeth of a cat among the straight white teeth of a human. He’d be damned if she wasn’t purring; even when she wasn’t, she was using those rumbling ‘r’s.
The girl was every bit woman but still look like a child standing next to the towering Dinsch. She crooked her finger in a come-hither gesture and Dinsch lowered himself to the heels of his huge rabbit feet, a stance he very rarely allowed anyone to see him in. He was conscious of those large feet like humans are conscious of large ears or teeth. Just as they might wear hats or smile with their mouths closed, Dinsch would walk on his toes to give the illusion of longer legs and smaller feet. He didn’t seem happy to do so, but they were trespassers and Bryfolk were very respectful when they were in the wrong. She still purred as she ran the tips of her fingers over Dinsch’s hipbones and along his pectoral muscles that jumped involuntarily at her touch. She giggled but kept touching him unabashedly, her tail swishing in great sweeps behind her. Krose watched with interest but Dinsch seemed to be in a great deal of discomfort. It certainly wasn’t about being shy. When Krose thought a bit deeper, taking it back to animal instinct and barring their human genes, this was just a cat toying with a scared rabbit.
“Not to be rude here, but you mind telling us who you are and what this place is?” Krose interjected, trying not to get angry with this silly girl who was frightening Dinsch to the point his ears twitched unhappily and his muscles tensed for flight.
The Truth about Heroes: Complete Trilogy (Heroes Trilogy) Page 33
