Alisiyad Chapter 31 ~ Kill Them All

Adayzjia was a grim place, a dull place, drearier than the dirtiest Burger House bathroom stall.

Liseli felt a sense of helplessness; she didn’t know how she’d gotten here, and now there seemed no going back.  The last thing she remembered clearly was walking into the cave with Leeton, then everything was confusion, and then she was in Azmanval.  It wasn’t like Alisiya — that world had been beautiful, if strange and dangerous.  This place looked like the desolation of a war zone.  She didn’t want to be anywhere near such a place.  But she wouldn’t go back until she found Russ.  She couldn’t go back until she found him . . . but where would she look?

It was a huge place, Leeton assured her, a vast city that could cover the state of Illinois.  That’s where he’d been born, he said.  Illinois.  It was hard to believe that he’d ever lived in a place so mundane.  Harder to believe that Azmanval, this city in a strange world, could be so large.  And Russ could be anywhere in it, by now.  It had taken hours for Leeton to finally relent and take them through; it took a long time for his fear of the Gate to be overcome by Liseli’s insistence.  Russ could have gone a long ways in that time.  What if he’d disappeared into some hidden place in the underbelly of this vast, decaying city?  How would they ever find him?  What if he’d died, how would they ever know?

“It’s changed,” Leeton said absently soon after they arrived, standing in the street, looking around at the crumbling buildings.  “I remember this part of the city . . . of course, this is the very Gate we escaped through . . . the buildings weren’t like this, then.  Deserted . . . bombed . . . .”

Liseli was impatient with his walk down memory lane.  Since Russ wasn’t anywhere to been seen in the buildings around the Gateway, she saw no reason to linger staring at the architecture.  She had been afraid at first that Russ and Alisiya had never made it through the Gate, and that’s why he’d never come back and was nowhere around.  But Leeton, still absent, his eyes on the ruins, said that no, they had gone through.  The Gate had told him so.

Leeton also seemed unworried about finding Russ and Alisiya.  Or at least, Alisiya.  “The dogs know her, they could sense her even miles away,” he said.  “They will lead us to her.  Look at them, they’re already straining to go north.”

“But what if Russ isn’t with Alisiya?” Liseli asked.  Why would Russ stick with Alisiya?  Why hadn’t he come back right away?  Why?

“I suppose,” Leeton said with maddening slowness, “we will find out when we find Alisiya.”

It went dark as they walked through the city, following the dogs.  They came to a more populated area, where less of the buildings were destroyed, but the people ran inside and hid when they saw the monsters coming.  If the authorities were summoned, they didn’t show their faces.

Liseli thought that perhaps she should find the sudden darkness worrisome, but then why shouldn’t something like that happen in a place like this?  Perhaps this was the bad part of town and elsewhere in the megatropolis the world was not so dreary, but she found it hard to imagine.

She was worried that going through the Gate had done something to Leeton.  In the time they’d spent by the waterfall back in Alisiya he had been very quiet, pensive.  But ever since crossing over he’d become quiet in a different sort of way; absent since the moment they’d arrived, slow to respond.  Like part of him was still in a different place, as if his mind hadn’t made it all the way over.  She hadn’t said anything to him about it; he was still an imposing man.  She didn’t like being alone with him.  He reminded her of his daughter, especially when he turned those strange blue eyes on her.  That, thankfully, was not often.

They halted at the sound of dogs fighting, ahead of them through the darkness.  Some of the dogs had got far ahead of them, jogging along on their fast, powerful limbs.  All the dogs would have left them far behind if some had not been compelled to stay around them, as protection.  They could not see the dogs who were fighting, but the sound carried back through the deathly still of the dark Adayzjian afternoon.

“Why are they fighting each other?” Liseli asked nervously.

“They’re not,” answered Leeton.  “There are other dogs in this world.”

Liseli felt silly for having overlooked that obvious fact, but then said, “They should be able to tear any other dogs apart.”

“I suspect that is what they’re doing.”  Leeton began to walk again, egged on by the restlessness of the dogs who’d stayed behind with them.

Liseli followed as they sped to a brisker pace.  Soon a large building atop a hill rose before them, and she saw the dogs circling it in the dim faux-night.  They were like shadowy demons, she thought, swarming.  But she felt relief.  Alisiya must be inside that building, and if so, maybe Russ was with her.  Or at least she might know where Russ had gone, what had happened to him.  If she did anything to him . . . or let anything happen to him . . . .  Liseli clenched her fists.  She didn’t know what she could do to Alisiya, with her power, with her father’s and her dogs’ protection, but she would find a way.  Alisiya would pay, if anything had happened to Russ, anything at all.  If he had the slightest little bruise, Alisiya would pay for it.

They approached the building warily, thinking it must be guarded.  But when they climbed the hill and came to the courtyard outside the front doors, they saw the dogs milling around fallen bodies.  So that was the guard.  Very handy, those dogs, Liseli thought with forced glibness, trying not to look at the tangled lumps.  Thank goodness it was dark, she didn’t want to see another sight like she’d seen when Russ was attacked.  He had been as good as dead, but for the magical healing of the Chaiorra water.  These people had no hope of that.

Leeton stood in the courtyard as if paralyzed. At first Liseli didn’t understand the stricken look on his face, then she saw where he was looking, and covered her mouth involuntarily.  One of the bodies was female, covered ineffectually by a tattered and bloodied dress.  The long black hair splayed around the head could belong to anybody, but the way the dogs circled her, diffidently, sorrowfully whimpering as they tried to nudge her awake, left no doubt as to who it was.

Leeton broke from his stupor and rushed to the body, brushing dogs aside.  He knelt and reached a hand to turn Alisiya over, but hesitated.  Liseli came up behind him and saw that Alisiya’s body was twisted inhumanly; facedown yet on her back at the same time.  One arm splayed out at an impossible angle, the other pinned below her body.  Her pale white skin, which almost seemed to glow in the darkness, was marred with splotches that looked like bruises, as if someone had beat her with a stick.

One of the dogs sat back and howled — a long, hair raising cry of loss, so full of eerily human pain that Liseli almost forgot for a moment that she hated Alisiya and was relieved to see her dead.

She was relieved . . . wasn’t she?

But all she felt was horror . . . and dread.  If this is what they had done to Alisiya . . . what had happened to Russ?  Liseli felt clammy all over, and started to say something to Leeton.  She swallowed her words when he stood up, and she saw a tumult in his eyes that made her shrink away.

Suddenly, the doors of the building exploded open, slamming into the walls on either side.  Liseli heard the shattering of glass, and took a few steps back; gaping at the building, afraid it would burst into flames at any moment, or explode like it was rigged with dynamite.

“Kill them all,” said Leeton, in a voice so low she almost missed it.  But the dogs hardly even needed this prompt, the explosion of the door had barely fazed them, and they leapt towards the building.

“Wait!” Liseli cried, “Russ might be inside there!”

Leeton didn’t seem to hear her, he just stood with his stormy eyes fixed on the gaping doorway.

Liseli heard her own words, though, and was filled with sudden, horrifying doubt.  With a little cry she turned and ran to one of the other fallen bodies, and without a second thought reached out to turn it over.  Not Russ — some hard faced man still clutching a sword.  She ran to another body and repeated her actions, with the same results.  There were canine bodies lying about as well, not Leeton’s dogs but smaller, scruffy looking dogs . . . they looked like they had been street mutts.  She didn’t see Russ anywhere.  The only bodies belonged to strangers and dogs.

She was hardly relieved, though; she didn’t have time for that.  She ran back to Leeton.  “Russ may be inside there!” she repeated, standing in front of him, putting herself directly in his wild gaze.  “You have to tell your dogs not to hurt him!  Or stop them or something!”

He just stood, trance-like, deadly still except for the maelstrom in his eyes.  Whatever he was seeing, it was not her.

Liseli heard terrified screams and shouts from inside, accompanied by the snarling of the dogs.  Kill them all, Leeton had said.  And the dogs, with their deep love of Alisiya, were in a fury that went beyond their master’s orders.  She feared they wouldn’t discriminate, that they would kill everything that moved.

Leeton was useless.  She would get no help from him.  Liseli turned in a circle, desperate, and then made up her mind.  She ran back over to a fallen Adayzjian and wrenched the sword from his cold, clenched fist.  The sword hadn’t been much of a match against the dogs before, but right at that moment she didn’t care.  She was going in.

The doorway gaped ahead of her like a hungry mouth . . . now why did she have to think such a stupid thing like that?  It was only a doorway . . . even if there were hungry, chomping, tearing jaws waiting inside.

Right.  She held the sword in front of herself, ineptly, she feared.  But it gave her courage, and with one last glance at Leeton she plunged into the darkness.