“I think it’s coming from those towers,” Kari nodded to the crystal around her neck, which seemed caught in some sort of magnetic pull toward them.
“That’s certainly worth investigating,” Jonathan stuffed his crystal back down his shirt.
“First I think we should figure out why these people are running for their lives like the world is ending,” Kari said, grabbing a passerby, another foxgirl who eyed her second tail as though she wished she’d thought of it first. “Excuse me. Can you tell me what’s going on here? Why is everyone running?”
Blinking as if she’d been asked if water was wet, she eyed them, her tail twitching nervously. She was obviously wary of the twins, especially Jonathan with his overgrown meat cleaver that he called a sword.
“Haven’t you heard?”
“Obviously not,” Michael said impatiently.
“No,” Kari kicked him in the shin on general principle. “We just arrived. What’s going on?”
“It’s the Apostle,” the foxgirl said fearfully. “He’s a mutant, they say. Face so grotesque that he has to wear a mask to hide it from even himself. He organized the other mutants in the Quarantine Zone and came over the walls.”
“Quarantine Zone,” Jonathan asked.
The foxgirl pointed in the opposite direction of the towers. Turing her head, Kari saw a massive cement wall rising out of the ground in the distance. It snaked off for god only knew how long in both directions. Who would bother building a wall so big, and why?
“The Imperial Army, and some Imperial Guardsmen came to defend the walls, but
the Apostle and his army of mutants came over them like a flood. The Imperials fled north and the Apostle is marching for the Spires of Infinity,” the foxgirl nodded toward the towers. “And we’re right in his path.”
“The Apostle again,” Michael muttered. “Doesn’t that bitch know when to quit?”
“I guess that means she survived,” Kari sighed. That could cause problems, as she was reasonably sure Jonathan had fallen for her. She didn’t like not knowing whether or not she could trust him to do the right thing if the time came that the Apostle had to die.
“They say the Apostle was even born with his tail,” the foxgirl leaned in conspiratorially, lowering her voice.
Blinking, Kari didn’t follow. Of course the Apostle was born with a tail, she was a Heretic. Realization dawned, and suddenly a town full of Heretics that weren’t Heretics made a lot more sense. Had these people been born human and later altered their bodies to imitate Heretics? What human would ever want to look like a Heretic? It was a ludicrous thought.
“I need to go,” the foxgirl said. “They’re waiting for me. If I don’t get to the wagon in time they’ll leave without me.”
With that she scampered away, carrying her basket awkwardly.
“Whatever those Spires of Infinity are,” Michael fingered his shard of the Gate through his shirt, “there’s something strange about them. Maybe there’s some sort of weapon that the Apostle wants. Whatever it is, we can’t let her have it.”
“Agreed,” Jonathan nodded.
Kari nodded her agreement as well.
“We need to get there before she does and find out what’s making our crystals act like this,” Michael said.
“Let’s go,” Kari started toward the Spires of Infinity, but came to a stop when someone caught her eye. First it was the curious beasts that looked a cross between a horse and a wildcat that gave her pause, but then the man riding one of them. He was the only person in town that appeared to be human.
He was ruggedly handsome, with disheveled, wavy dark hair that was mostly
hidden under a wide-brimmed hat, and pale blue eyes. The several days of stubble on his face reminded her of her father. She’d rarely seen her father clean-shaven, and she supposed she’d grown up thinking that real men always had stubble on their faces. There was something about the man that drew Kari to him. She had the strangest feeling that they’d met somewhere long ago, and she’d been trying to find him again ever since.
Nodding a greeting to her, the man navigated his animal through the crowd. He had an air about him of someone that did not belong, of course that could just be his lack of a tail. Still, the way he held himself, and the way he looked warily at everything around him, screamed that he was a stranger here.
Drawn by an odd desire to learn more about him, Kari took a step after him, but stopped, shaking her head. This was no time to be pretending at fairytale love at first sight. There were far more important things to be thinking of.
Taking one last look at him before he rode out of sight, Kari realized that his companion was glaring at her, her bushy wolf tail bristling. Her long silver hair was done up in twin braids and she had what looked like a stuffed cat of all things resting on her shoulders. Glaring daggers at Kari, her golden eyes glinted metallically in the dimming sunlight. Showing a ridiculous amount of cleavage, Kari thought it was a miracle that she didn’t pop right out of her skimpy top with the movement of the animal she rode.
With a body like that she couldn’t possibly be as young as her face would lead one to believe.
“He’s mine,” the girl mouthed. “Find your own.”
Kari shrugged an apology and waved her away, pointedly not looking at her
rugged companion again until they were out of sight in the traffic. He was handsome, but if someone already had a claim on him, she didn’t want any trouble.
“And she says we communicate without talking,” Jonathan said close at her right side.
“She thinks we read each other’s minds,” Michael replied, close on her left.
“Women,” they said together. “I swear the two of you just had an entire
conversation without opening your mouths.”
Looking from one brother to the other, Kari shook her head. Men were so blind sometimes. They never paid attention to the mood of a situation, people’s facial expressions, or their body language. She sometimes wondered how they managed to communicate with each other at all. They never understood that sometimes words just weren’t necessary, and others, not enough.
Kari gave each of them a glare in turn and they both flinched back from her.
“See,” Jonathan said. “Like that. That look has an entire chewing out in it and you didn’t even have to say a single word.”
“Message received, loud and clear,” Michael gave her a mock salute. “We annoy you, stop acting like idiots. Yes ma’am!”
Well, maybe they weren’t completely blind, only selectively so.
“Let’s go already,” Jonathan said, trying to shoo Kari forward. “Time’s wasting.”
“Yeah,” Michael agreed. “Why were you glaring that kid down anyway?”
Shrugging, Kari could hardly say that she’d been admiring the girl’s man. They’d never let her hear the end of it. Besides, they were right, there were far more important things to be thinking about now, like what power lay in the Spires of Infinity and how they were going to stop the Apostle from taking it.
Chapter 28: The Spires of Infinity
The Spires of Infinity loomed over Gabriel like the huge fangs of a gigantic beast stretching for the heavens. Far taller than any building he’d ever seen, they would have dwarfed even the Sears Tower in Chicago. The tallest building in his home city would have looked like a tiny house next to the Spires.
There were nine towers in all. Eight of them were fang shaped, arranged in a