She made it away without blundering into the madman and devoured half of the meat before succumbing to the most restful night she could remember.
Leif
His ploy worked. Over the last few days he had caught glimpses of the wolf following them over the hills, looking gaunter every day, and when they felled the animal, he told his father he wanted to sleep near the extra meat to scare off any unknown scavengers. Then there she was, as he had hoped, stealing a bit of food.
He was trying to convince her that it was his father who killed her family, not him, and he figured her displayed intelligence could understand that much. He hoped that she might approach him more readily if she thought he would have food and didn’t consider him dangerous.
The trees had completely given way to rolling hills and with every crest he could make out the city a little better; an immense cracked dome, glittering in the hot sun and made strangely small by great distance. He assumed this to be similar to those he had already experienced. The last one had been vast beyond imagining, impossible to explore in one lifetime. They had simply verified its emptiness, gathered what they could of the various discarded treasures, and departed. Cal said the powerful radiation was too dangerous to spend long in the shells.
Every once in a while he would catch a glimpse of the wolf and be reminded of how skinny she had been. They had done that to her. It was the same thing, he had realized, that had made him resist killing the wolves. He had, for the first time, truly felt what he did when he attacked the villagers and understood that his father had trained him to react in that way, without feeling. He resented it. He didn’t know why his father felt so little for other living things, but he had no right to remove Leif’s ability to do so.
He had much to think on while they traveled. One of his main sources of contemplation was that he still wasn’t sure why he was trying to make friends with the wolf. Perhaps he was simply looking for a way to make amends, but he felt sure there was something deeper. Even when he had first encountered the pack he had sensed a connection to this specific animal that he couldn’t replicate with the others. It didn’t make sense but he had felt it again when she came close to him. It was that, not the rumble her empty stomach had made, that had alerted him to her presence.
Two days later he was just about to begin his Kata when she appeared out of the tall grass. The haunch of flesh had added some to her frame but she was still painfully gaunt. He tossed her another from a kill the night before that he had snuck into his pack while they were carving it up. She snapped it up and slunk away, quickly vanishing into the early morning dark. He quickly lost himself in the familiar strain of the dance, knowing his father was doing the same and wondering whether it was as soothing for him.
A week went by and the city began to loom, it was at least as hopelessly enormous as the last one. The wolf; he had come to think of her as Shadow for her glossy black fur and the way she vanished in the dark, returned every other day for food, looking healthier every time.
They were still a considerable distance from the city yet it already filled half of the landscape, from north to south and a third of the way to the sun. Its originally obvious dome shape was less distinct, becoming a massive wall of cracked and crumbling metal. Whatever had broken such an incredible construction must have been simply unimaginable.
Two days later they reached the wall and spent another half a day finding an entrance. They never found any doorway in the shells or anything obviously designed to be used as such, it was always some rift in the strides-thick metal that allowed them passage into the long dead world so different from that outside.
As they stepped through the crack, he looked back and saw Shadow bounding toward them fearing perhaps of losing them in the unnatural monstrosity. Just before he crossed the threshold and lost sight of her he caught an odd glint in her eyes, something far more human than he had ever expected. Surely she was not a simple wolf.
Ria
What had at first been a vendetta quickly became survival. She now had little hope of taking vengeance for her pack and instead simply sought to stay alive. Golden had saved her. He had aided in killing her family, but he had also fed her when she was starving. The contradiction was ripping her apart.
Then the horrific colossus marring nature made itself known and some force began pounding at her consciousness, though never quite breaking through. Something was familiar about this strange and terrifying place but it was so buried in her past that its reemergence was as painful as a blow to the head, and seemingly unending. Every day they neared the source of her agony and every day she strained to remember, but nothing came.
She tried to find enough to eat on her own, but the prey was either two small and fast or far too large for one undersized wolf, so she kept going back to the glorious scent of the golden haired man. And he continued to provide. It made no sense. Snarl was his family, it was obvious from their scent, as different as it was, but he directly opposed him. If she had opposed Pine she would have left the pack, but he still followed Snarl. She couldn’t understand why.
She suppressed the pain as they continued toward the glinting dome, by then she was certain it was their intended destination and hoped maybe the obnoxious throb would resolve itself inside the still unnerving mountain of shiny rock.
The final hill leveled out and she panicked when she saw them disappearing into the wall and bolted to catch up. The panic must have acted as a damper for the mounting pain because as soon as she crossed the barrier the memories flooded in.
The wall ended and the city opened up before her. She stood on a landing that cut off abruptly where the floor had fallen away. The sight was overwhelming, pillars of all shapes and stages of decay shot brokenly from the middle toward the cracked transparent overhang so far above her, and below lay level upon level of shadowy curves, covered by the innumerable arches connecting the towers of the upper half. Much had become rubble, weird angles only exaggerating the complexity of her surroundings.
Something hit her like a strong wind radiating from the city all around her, surrounding her. She collapsed and felt her body strain. Images, words, smells flooded her head, adding to, no, coming with the unnatural wind. A voice came, high and forceful, worried, her mother’s voice.
“Ria! Maria baby, come to me!” Then a scream.
She saw wood, flat wood held close together, light coming through the cracks, flickering, dancing light. A fire, a raging fire, dancing through the town, consuming. She screamed. She had been screaming the whole time. It didn’t stop.
Her father now, his big, hairy back to her, blurred and distorted through her tears, remembered or real.
“Murdering fools!” He shouted, the last word turning into an animal roar as he charged. Something flashed in the crazy red light and he sputtered, flailing madly. The entire world was mad. It would never end.
Slowly her screaming subsided, her raw throat would scream no more. Instead she shook with sobs, the images dying, leaving her mind empty and raw as her throat.
When she stood, so long after that her face had dried, she found herself on two bare, human feet, and knew it was right. She lifted her hand and thin, pale fingers brushed long strands of black hair from her eyes. She still remembered some of it, the important parts; crawling from the ashes, scooped up by a big, hairy beast, learning to run on all fours. She longed then to howl, to flee from the place that had forced her past upon her, but she knew that her only chance for survival after such an ordeal lay within the horror before her and longing for her familiar wolf body would only result in her death.
A light breeze whistled through the rust and she shivered, looking down and finding pale, naked skin. What had been the noon sun when she entered had fallen beyond the mass of ruined architecture and she was starving again. Taking a step, she expected the soft, human feet to betray her, but it felt barely different from before and, when she bent to inspect her sole, she found that her feet were tough as a wolf’s paws. She sniffed at
the air and to her surprise could still smell Golden’s sweet, hearty musk on the breeze. After taking some time to find something to shield her fragile body from the wind, she took off toward the only source of hope she had left.
Alec
“You fought fiercely when we reclaimed you, non? Was it for those others with you, the boys and that old man? Or did you fight for yourself?”
The mention of the boys startled him, he had forgot to look for them after he arrived. It had been one of the thoughts that kept him firm through the hellish ride and he had completely forgotten.
“Your men caught me sleeping, I fought from instinct.” He spoke calmly, sensing rebellion would get him nowhere.
“Then your instinct must be as strong as your body. I expected much from you and you have not disappointed me.” His voice was like a deep river, slow and smooth, with a strange, lilting accent. He turned back to face the expanse and silence fell for a short time before Alec broke it, more from discomfort than anything else; the unfamiliar fear was still lingering deep in his chest. This man was unnatural.
“What do you want from me?”
“A leader.” The statement was so abrupt and foreign that Alec didn’t understand it at first.
“Leader?”
“I grow tired of incompetence; I seek strength and find only brutes. Brutes serve a purpose but I need intelligence as well. In you I see this intelligence. You observe your surroundings and understand them, as do I.”
Alec had sensed a superior intellect in this monster right away but attributed it to his overwhelming superiority complex. He began to wonder whether it was as unwarranted as he originally assumed.
“I still don’t understand.” He said, again mainly to break the silence that fell like a great weight after the man spoke.
“Then I will educate you.” He said this as a father might to his favored son and beckoned Alec to stand beside him at the rail. Alec suppressed another shudder, the man was a head taller than him and his arms were as thick as Alec’s legs. At such close proximity he could see faint lines behind the man’s beard and something of age in his narrow brown eyes. The thought that such a man could grow old seemed incongruous somehow. Perhaps he really was only a man, Alec thought, then he began to teach.
“Before our fathers destroyed themselves so recklessly, men did very little real work. It mattered not the size of a man’s muscles, what was important was his brain. So, many men made thinking their purpose, knowing it to be the way to dominate their fellow man in the age of ideas.
One such man postulated that all of reality had grown from one tiny particle, working its way through the millennia to where we are now. The way, he surmised, that it decided how to develop, to progress, was what he termed ‘natural selection’. This selection is inherent to all nature. Through it the strong dominate the weak; replace them, so that, in the end, only the strong are left.
The only problem with this process remains its rate of progress. I mean to fix this problem. I will find the strong. I will dominate the weak. I will create humanity as it should be; as it is in me.”
The truth of the giant’s purpose was so far beyond what Alec could ever have guessed, yet so ludicrous, that he could think of nothing to say. The man was truly mad.
“You are what I have been seeking.” He said, turning his terrible gaze on Alec, the deep flow of meaning continuing to crash over him. “Strength and intellect combined. In these lesser men, my soldiers,” he continued, waving a hand across the fortress, “I have strength. In the old man you were taken with I have intellect, but I must have both.”
“He’s still alive?” Alec interrupted with surprise. The mention of the old man had snapped him out of the spell the giant had laid on him and he was suddenly reminded of his purpose.
“Of course, I waste nothing that is worth saving. Those others in the village were weak, useless. One did have some strength, but he was too old. He would only have tried to supplant me and cost others of more use. I can see such intent in men like this.”
He understood then. This man was intelligent. He was also without a conscience. He treated those around him as a tool to be used or discarded. This great plan of his was nothing more than a logical excuse to kill anyone who got in his way. The biggest problem was the man himself, he was smart enough and strong enough to make people do what he wanted.
“I brought you here to show you what I am offering. You will be my second, my man of action. I tire of dealing with these lesser men, they disgust me. Instead, you will carry out my wishes, you will lead them, you will be my heir. Do you accept?”
He could almost feel the man’s eyes piercing him, as on that first day, into his very soul. He felt sure the beast would see the lie, the desire to end the madness, and would crush him like a bug. It was all he could do to respond. This man imposed his will on all that he touched, but not anymore.
“I accept.”
Leif
The city was just as forsaken as all the others. Buildings of majestic proportion lay where they had fallen twenty-three years ago, many crashing into the under city through the innumerable openings revealing the dark interior. They passed along one of the intact bridges that spanned the lower levels and Cal indicated a rendezvous point at the base of an enormous dead oak, twenty or thirty times as tall as Leif. They would split up and return there by sunset, then make camp outside the edge of the radiation field held within the city.
As they separated, he looked back for the wolf, curious as to what she would do. Leif wondered whether Shadow would find her chance to kill his father, he wasn’t sure if he wanted her to or, for that matter, if he wanted her to succeed. Cal was his father, but that seemed to mean more to him than it ever had to Cal. Leif had looked through his past and found not a father’s love, the love he saw in the families of the towns they left behind, but instead he found a man making something useful, then using it as he would, without regard for the person he used. To Cal, Leif was a tool, just like those blood spattered blades.
Leif had accepted this revelation and allowed it to pass through, leaving him not unchanged, but not broken. He was the wind; he hit obstacles and found the ways through them, coming out whole.
The way he had chosen was leading him up into some less damaged areas. His feet crunched on broken glass with almost every step, but the buildings around him were more solid than most. This was probably one of the more affluent areas; he had chosen it for that reason; less crumbling debris, more undamaged and accessible loot. Up here the sun was less obstructed as well. Being the only light source, it made searching all the easier.
Hours went by and slowly he looped back toward the tree, the great gouge in the wall guiding his path for the most part. Much of his loot had been pulled from corpses and would need to be cleansed if he wanted to avoid any strange illness they had carried, but he had been lucky; two handfuls of jewelry including diamonds, emeralds, rubies, and lots and lots of gold. It was so nice of gold to be so easy to melt and reshape. He had also found some excellent thick, black material in a cavernous chamber with many rows of beautifully designed chairs facing a slightly higher level with one row of far more extravagant seating. The room’s sepulchral dome had been pierced by a massive shard of building, providing the only light and revealing thousands of skeletons filling the ornate seats, the black cloth coming from those on the dais.
He came out on the largest road he had yet found and saw the broad crown of the great oak some distance ahead of him. The light was dimming more noticeably now, orange just beginning to hint at red, so he made his way down the highway without raiding any of the likely looking structures on either side. His pack was near overflowing as well, so he didn’t feel any loss.
Just when he could begin to see the ancient trunk through the buildings and rubble, a strange sound caught his ear, drifting on the breeze that had begun moaning through the city. A clanging of metal on metal peaked his interest when shouts joined the ruckus, followed by a cry of pain and he ran.
Ria
The heady aroma lead her to a colossal tree, its dead, brittle branches creaking in the wind dredged up again that feeling of immense loneliness that had hid beneath the anger and hunger for weeks. She forced it down and continued, ignoring as well the ever present waves of radiation that engulfed the ancient graveyard. Who would willing go to such a place?
At the tree she took a moment to muddle out the scent that had, until then, been singular. Here she could faintly smell Snarl going one way and Golden another, but stronger, and from straight ahead was Golden again. She decided to follow the stronger one, thinking it to be coming straight from the source, instead of being a lingering trail.
The faded grey and yellow scrap she had wrapped around her torso kept coming undone in the random gusts of wind and it was frustrating her, why couldn’t she just have her nice, warm fur back. She stopped to retie it for the fifth time when she heard a commotion, a distant mirror of the memories that haunted her dreams, then she saw the bright, sunlight stream of hair. She rapidly adjusted the cumbersome garb so it draped only to her mid thigh, allowing her to better attempt the odd running motion humans did, and took off after him, hoping she wouldn’t be too late.
Golden had ran down an alley some way down, but she could hear the fight closer and on her left, so she took a passage toward the noise, assuming it to be his destination. She tripped a few times, stumbling on the awkwardly long legs, and scraped up her legs and hands on some sharp rubble but eventually found the source of the clashing and shouting.
Of Wind and Waves - Chronicles of the First Age, Book One Page 6