A Shade of Vampire 90: A Ruler of Clones - Bella Forrest Page 0,14
this time.”
Before either of us could say anything more, Anunit had disappeared.
Minutes passed in heavy silence while Unending and I gazed at the white towers with their metallic pin roofs. There was a lot on my mind. Perhaps too much for me to make sense of at once, so I chose to focus on what I saw and what I could do. The history of this place was unknown. The first men, some Reapers had called them. I wondered if they were in any way connected to the humans of Earth. Perhaps they had been one of the first humanoid races. I’d thought the Trakkians-turned-Aeternae to be the oldest, but Biriane seemed to go back farther than Visio.
“What do you think of all this?” Unending asked. She was on edge but doing a damn good job of keeping it together.
My eyes found hers, stars flickering within, bright with curiosity. The anger was alive, but a practical sense was coming over it like a warm blanket, and I could see the reason returning to her expression. “This feels wrong,” I said. “The World Crusher sounds like an ominous name. Why did Death put her away? I mean, the World Crusher must have done something to warrant this, right? Death, for all her faults... She doesn’t lock Reapers up willy-nilly.”
“We are on the same page, then,” she said. “Lots of questions, no answers unless we go looking for them in this place. The scythe-wielding ghouls might be of some help. To be honest, the original reason for this mission is fading with every second that goes by. But we must get to the truth either way, my love.”
“Absolutely. I think there’s a lot we don’t understand yet,” I said. “Not just about this World Crusher, but about Biriane and the ghouls and the people who used to live here. How’d they all die?”
“The anthropologist inside you is dying to know more, huh?” A faint smile danced upon her lips. She was trying to find a sliver of humor in this hot mess.
“Admittedly, I am curious. More worried actually, but focusing on satisfying the curiosity kind of takes the edge off where we are, if that makes sense.”
“It does. This place gives me the creeps. The ghost of the past hangs on, screaming through this silence.” She exhaled, trying to push it all away, if only for a moment. “We have a walk ahead of us. I’ll take us to the riverbank, but we can do the rest of the journey to the Temple of Roses on foot. You heard Anunit. It’s best if we ease the ghouls into it. Personally, I’m dying to know more about them. I’ve never heard of ghouls being able to use scythes. When the ghoulish hunger takes over and eats away at the Reaper, the connection to the scythe is lost. The weapon rejects its owner because the spirit is unclean and festered. Sure, the ghoul can still carry it as an object, but he can never access its power again.”
She was choosing to focus on something smaller, more manageable, before diving into the issue of the World Crusher; it showed her impressive strength of will, as she refused to succumb to the rage.
We appeared on the edge of the dry riverbed, the low white brick wall just ahead, partially blocking our view of the street. The buildings rose beyond, square and simple in their design, their elegance unmarred by the passage of time. The facades were no longer polished, and I could see the stone bricks with mortar still clinging to them. The windows were tall, their frames made of black iron. Most of the glass had been broken, but chips glinted in corners here and there. White dust flew off every horizontal surface whenever the wind blew, the particles sparkling in the sunlight.
But it was the silence that stood out the most. The silence of a doom long gone, its memory lingering in what it had left behind. Death had washed over this world, and only the buildings and the streets and the bridges remained. The stone and the metal. The dirt and the sand. I wondered what these particular ghouls had to feed on… Their kind wouldn’t die of starvation, but there was plenty of suffering and further degradation. I imagined it depended on how “ghoulish” they were as well. I knew of the stronger types that had founded Nevertide, and I knew of the slightly more beastly types like Rudolph and the others