The Truth about Heroes: Complete Trilogy (Heroes Trilogy)

by Krista Gossett

  The girl shot him a cold look but then smiled and turned her attention to him, that wickedly sexy sashay carrying her towards him now. Come and get me, girlie; better me than him, he thought. She extracted the claw from her index finger and laid the point at the tip of his chin, trying to intimidate him.

  “Careful now, kitty. Cat scratches leave infections from all the litter and urine you drag your claws through,” Krose dared to say with bravado. After Lumina had taken him down a peg or two holding his manhood in her clenched hand with the threat of removing it lurking in her eyes, he wasn’t particularly keen on letting any taunting little bitch hold power over him any time soon.

  He thought the little minx might lay open his chin but he held her gaze coldly and bright laughter followed. She spun around twice with a dancer’s unfaltering grace and then returned to Krose rubbing her body along his, swatting at his face with her tail as cats are wont to do and purring more loudly than ever. She bounded over to Dinsch and did the same to him and an uncomfortable keening escaped his throat but she leapt into his arms and nuzzled him sweetly.

  “I never, ever, ever thought I’d see anyone ever again! I thought I’d just die here like my parents, and theirs and theirs and theirs. My parents had been so devastated when I was their only child and my father and grandfather ran impotent, leaving me and my mother unable to produce more and we couldn’t even get out to breed with humans! When we first got here, my ancestors bred with humans a lot but then they were mortified that their faces were becoming so human that they might lose their leopard traits! If you ask me, I didn’t want to lay with my own family anyway and even in my heat I had no desire to let them touch me, I usually just pleasured myself,” the excitable girl had purred, every ‘r’ affected even with such rapid speech. “How did you get past those evil vines?”

  Dinsch and Krose looked at each other as the girl nuzzled Dinsch and swatted his face with her tail some more.

  “The vines are gone now; I didn’t catch your name,” Krose tried again.

  “Kahtya. Gone? So I can leave with you?” she exclaimed excitedly.

  Krose shook his head trying to focus on what they came here for.

  “We’ll leave tomorrow, but tonight, we would ask that you let us stay and tell us more about this place,” Krose added, wanting Kahtya to nuzzle him again. Truth be told, he hadn’t had much opportunity for bedding a woman since he had deflowered Rienna and he wouldn’t mind a woman’s touch. Although he didn’t want this moody kitty’s claws anywhere near his sensitive parts.

  Kahtya told Krose and Dinsch that her ancestors had ended up fleeing from Wheryf, a small group of snow leopard folk amongst the greater population of other Felis types, the last of their kind. There had only been 6 to start and only 2 had been females. They wanted to preserve the purity of their kind and try to repopulate so they had traveled towards the Stoneweld continent and tried to find a home there where they could do so in peace. They had avoided the Uzhuak Forest due to the fear they had of the womanshaped trees but the desert was no better option and they had lost three of the males before they found the place that would be their home. One male and two females had meant that they would need more human males or they would need to resort to inbreeding, which snow leopards were more repelled from than others.

  The group was frightened they would be discovered so when they kidnapped men, the men could never leave. If they were disagreeable, they would have to die. Snow leopard folk did not enjoy large litters as many of the other Felis did and it was hard to reproduce fast enough to keep the population growing; they still had to deal with disease, accidents and so on and every time their numbers grew, ill fate would reduce them to endangered again.

  Along the way, one of them had been horrified to note that offspring were losing some of the traits they had wanted preserved and he had then been adamant that they stick to their own kind, which proved to be no more fruitful and much less desirable to most of them.

  Kahtya had explained that the statues had begun with the originals being the ones they had seen at the start of the path and her ancestors had added more over the years, wanting to remember the other Folk to tell the tales to their children. At one point, it had been down to her grandparents, her parents and herself, and she had been but a child when she had heard the wailing of her family as they discovered the sexual inabilities of the men. Her mother had told her that she had to bring in a human, but the group had been isolated behind the gate for so long that the thorny vines outside of it had taken over to the point that they had no point of escape; cat claws had no use on rock.

  So from the time she was a small child, she watched the light start to fade from her family and she was left alone to play and amuse herself as her family dropped off and eventually left her alone to finish out what was left of her life.

  “How long have you been here alone?” Dinsch asked sadly. Dinsch had not had parents, but he had never ever had to be alone.

  Kahtya had shrugged easily and smiled, the glow of the campfire making her look more regular leopard than snow.

  “I don’t really know; it can be hard to keep track. I never had much concept of time, not even of how old I am. My parents stopped keeping track when I was maybe 8. I know I am adult now because I stopped growing tall years ago. Years I am guessing. But there is a lot to do here if you know where to look,” Kahtya said, and both men were solemn with the sadness of it.

  The canyon might have looked big but it was a small sad place for a beautiful young girl to spend her life in alone. Neither of them was prepared to leave her here, but she was not any safer where they were headed.

  “You shouldn’t go where we are going, Kahtya; we are soon going to battle with an enemy we may not be able to overcome and we do not want you to lose your life before it even starts in this world,” Krose explained.

  Kahtya smiled and shook her head so that her wavy hair danced over her full, jiggling breasts.

  “I am going with you, still,” she insisted stubbornly. “You have rescued me from a lonely place and I will not leave your side. I do not care what awaits me at this place; I am more resourceful than you know. Please do not try to turn me away. I will follow you anyway.”

  “Are you sure you aren’t part goat?” Dinsch asked unhappily.

  “Stuff it, bunny boy!” Kahtya said, with a very literal hiss sizzling out at the end. Just like that, she then smiled serenely. The moon was climbing higher in the sky and she threw it a glance. Krose and Dinsch watched as Kahtya began turning in circles and clawing at the soft ground before curling up in a ball and purring herself to sleep.

  “I don’t like her at all, but I have to admit that was pretty adorable,” Dinsch admitted seriously, turning to Krose. Krose laughed shortly but his face fell somber again.

  “I don’t feel right about her coming with us, but she has to go through Mythec either way; Uzhuak is too dangerous as is the desert. I would say she should head north along the Walk, but damn. Felisfolk are rare, and as far as I know, she’s the last of her kind. Folk can’t breed with Folk outside of their species, right?”

  Dinsch lifted an eyebrow at Krose like he’d gone mad.

  “I’m not following your train of thought at all, you know,” Dinsch scolded. “What does her rarity have to do with the Walk and why are you interested in who she can breed with?”

  Krose laughed, realizing it did sound odd so he backed up his thoughts and tried to sort it out.

  “Mycean soldiers on the Walk, they may have seen some Reishefolk in their lifetime but they sure as hell have never seen this little hellcat and that sexy walk of hers. Soldiers that probably haven’t seen many women since Myceum started their psychotic attacks. That’s what I mean; I’m not sending her anywhere near Myceum. She mentioned something about only breeding with humans once they were thinning out though. She could still breed with Felisfolk at least, right? But what about other Folk? You all have human compatibility…”

  Dinsch sighed and shook his head like
Krose was being ridiculous but at least he’d been demoted from bat-shit crazy.

  “How many cat-rabbits do you see running around, Krose?” Dinsch asked exasperated.

  Krose grinned sheepishly at his friend. “Who said anything about cat-rabbits? What have you been thinking about over there?

  Dinsch rolled his eyes. “I said I didn’t like her, I never said I wouldn’t screw her. That’s not what I meant anyway. It doesn’t work because it’s the animal genes that make breeding impossible.”

  “Well, 200 years ago, no one thought humans and animals would mix either,” Krose argued.

  “Nature doesn’t splice genes, Krose. There are a lot of things you may have noticed that don’t line Folk up with animals or humans. For one, we don’t have big litters or multiple births often at all. Having more than one is exceptionally rare, more than two is unheard of. Rabbits, cats, birds, foxes, the list goes on, we used to have litters or lay a lot of eggs as the case may be, since the mortality rate in the wild is higher and often we’d lose half of our output before or during birth and then some before they could even reach adulthood, right?”

  “Okay, I’m following you…” Krose pushed him to continue.

  “The ones that made us thought that with human intelligence, reproductive rates among Folk would allow higher survival rates and lead to overpopulation. Yeah, some of the Folk had been created with the issue of sterility, but they intended breeding to be able to occur outside of a test-tube so they had to… you know, do tests to make sure we could breed well if at all.”

  “I wonder about those guys. I wonder how many really got into watching something more animal than human screwing each other ‘for science’,” Krose added, doing the obligatory finger quotes.

  “Why do think they started looking more human than animal?” Dinsch said with steely unhappiness.

  Krose had been intimate with Folk before and, but for a few odd characteristics, they were mostly like him. At some point in time, Krose’s ancestors were monkeys, true enough, but there comes a point where evolution draws a line in sexual interest for most species. His ancestors being monkeys didn’t make him at all attracted to them now. He had seen a few since coming to Stoneweld and they did nothing for him, any more than rabbits or birds did. It wasn’t above humans to do some pretty twisted shit to fulfill fantasies, but he hated to think that some of those scientists signed up for that project just to rationalize that ‘it wasn’t technically bestiality if they’re partially human, right?’

  Krose shook off that dark path his thoughts had taken and frowned at Dinsch.

  “All right, so humans are sick and it’s no wonder so many Folk keep to themselves, but when it comes to breeding, how often have folk stretched outside of their own kind to know if it’s possible anyway?” Krose added wanting to find out just how much Dinsch knew.

  They never really talked about this before and not many did. Some of the things that project entailed amount to genocide, living autopsies, behavioral modification and debasement that most people can’t stomach to talk about. Up until Dinsch had admitted what he had been seeing in Scryshaw, he would have thought that kind of madness was long past with the Folk but he was sadly mistaken.

  “It was part of the testing. Apparently, the more predatory ones like lions were more interested in eating birds or rabbits and they had found that since we still have keen senses of smell, like our animal ancestors, the scents of certain kinds we just find too repellant to feel anything for them,” Dinsch continued.

  “Cats and rabbits don’t like each other anyway, but you said…”

  “I said the original ones, not the ones alive today. We’re more human than animal or did you forget?” Dinsch spat back.

  Krose shook his head and put his hands up in a sign of surrender. “I’m on your side, remember? I don’t really get it, Dinsch, but it doesn’t mean I don’t try to. Hell, I don’t even get humans.”

  Dinsch seemed sorry that he got defensive and slunk back against the fallen log he was propped against, looking over at Kahtya.

  “It’s actually easier for Folk to not inbreed than humans because of smell. We never forget the smell of our parents. I guess the one thing humans and Folk have in common there though, is that even knowing, sometimes we don’t care or have the luxury to do so.”

  Krose looked at Dinsch for a moment. “You know, you always tried to convince me you were pretty stupid, but you sure as hell sounded pretty smart on all of this.”

  Dinsch smiled lopsidedly and shot Krose a look.

  “I’m still pretty stupid. Most of what makes me sound smart came from Seles. She mostly avoided me except for those festivals, you know, but once she started drinking and we got done screwing, she would lay there and tell me all the things she read about in books.”

  “Do you think you might fall for someone like that again?” Krose asked seriously.

  Dinsch shook his head and shrugged.

  “Probably not. What about you? You never talked about anyone you were fond of,” Dinsch pressed.

  “There wasn’t anyone. I’ve had little crushes, but then I’ve never settled down anywhere long enough to really get to know anyone. Except for you and you kick in your sleep so I don’t think we’d ever work out,” Krose added with a laugh.

  Dinsch got Krose on the forehead with a piece of rotten fruit and the laughter increased until it died out like the embers of the fire. Kahtya didn’t even stir despite the noise they made. It was getting late and if there was more to say, it could wait until morning. Krose wasn’t sure how the others would take to Kahtya, but he hoped they wouldn’t regret this. They had been quick to accept her story, but in truth it was a really strange story and they had no way to confirm or reject it. Still, it bothered him. The vines were out of place and the canyon didn’t really look like a place that was ever a village. It didn’t sit right with him, but sleepiness was taking over. Krose had yawned and looked over at Dinsch who was already fast asleep. One thing he could say about Folk is that when it’s time to sleep, they sure as hell don’t fool around.

  Chapter 5: The Undead Never Lie

  Pierait had never been much of a leader before and even when he followed his companions, he was not very good at sticking to any plans. Lyria depended on him as they moved about and a couple of times along the way, she had lost her footing and had to grab for him to keep her feet. She had been so afraid of touching his skin that sometimes she would fall rather than do so. The sand around Maharyjab was compact from centuries of traffic and civilization so she wasn’t used to the slippery loose dunes of sand outside of there either. Pierait hadn’t wanted to burden her with extra clothing in the hot desert, but after he saw her take in a mouthful of sand, he stopped them and dug out the filmy gloves he had bought her in Maharyjab before leaving.

  Lyria’s eyes had gone round and kind at the thoughtfulness, but Pierait had mechanically told her “You told me that the touch can be bad sometimes, like when you touched me. We are headed for a big city and there will be lots of bare hands to frighten you. I was going to wait until we were close but you’re having a hard time of it now.”

  With that, Pierait had shifted his pack and walked ahead, but Lyria was not less touched that a Soulless had been thinking of her discomfort at all. They were not entirely heartless but they weren’t often creatures of forethought. It seemed the further they traveled east, the more Pierait was answering her questions without even being asked. He said that he liked that she did not burden him with questions (not that his former companions had, but it was always strangers that were more invasive), but it seemed he was somehow beating her to the punch and that alone made her curious. She held her tongue. It was obvious to her that at the very least, he would tell her what she needed to know when she needed to know it. It had been ingrained in her not to be too openly curious anyway and she hadn’t really needed to. Besides the fact that she could usually find out through a touch anyway, there were a lot more people even with souls who didn’t apprecia
te anyone being too nosy. A barmaid knew that better than most.

  “We are going to the city of Sorrow,” Lyria began, wanting to steer away from too many questions. “Have you been there before?”

  Pierait threw her a glance then looked ahead. The Barri Mountain Range could be seen even from the west side of Stoneweld but they were nearly ¾ across the main continent at this point and there was no sky to the West once you were this close. The purple black wall of mountains was so high that it looked like a two-dimensional unfinished palette covering a sky that was under construction behind it. There weren’t many towns at all past the Walk for that reason; it gave the impression that you were walled in on the ends of the earth. It would be a few days yet before they would reach the Wailing River and that’s where his map had ended. He wouldn’t need a map for that place anyways; not only was it completely uncharted past the Wall but he knew how to reach Sorrow and they would know where to cross the Wall. They wouldn’t want to tell him but his needs overrode their wants. Once past the Wall, he would just march ahead. He did not think about ‘if’ he would find his Purpose there. Pierait couldn’t conceive of it not being there and failure wasn’t in his vocabulary. Until he died, all he could do was do what he must to fulfill his Purpose. People would tell him it was certain death, but those people were not even certain of what was there, so it wasn’t credible.

  Lyria was sure that she had made Pierait unhappy and was about to apologize when he turned his head to face her again.

  “I am from Vieres, in Morgaze. Until I met my friends, I had only left the city when my mother took me out to give me my Purpose. I returned without her. Before I left, a man tricked me and I killed a lot of people. I had been… sure that the ones who woke me from control were going to kill me. It was the first time I had been wrong. My former companions, I never met anyone like them. Even Melchior, they had hated him and wanted him dead, but they gave him a chance. I would have stayed with them if my Purpose had allowed it, but it didn’t.”