Firegrass - 3. Into the city

"I somehow expected that to be more eventful," William said after a moment, though the uneasiness hadn't left him. He felt something, just on the very edge of perception, like the chill wind that warns of an approaching storm. They were now in the city itself, standing in the middle of one of the streets that ran around the outer edge, just inside the wall. The street was blocked at either end by great piles of rubble, and there were chunks of stone scattered along the street ranging in size from a foot across to a piece of the outer wall that had to be ten feet wide.

"You wanted to meet whatever threw that?" Ben asked, pointing at the chunk of the outer wall.

"Threw?" William gulped.

"I don't think it walked on its own," Ben said as he turned to his right and started jogging towards a smaller street that looked to lead towards the center of the city. William shuddered and hurried after him.

The city was remarkably clean for all the destruction. While there wasn't a building of more than three stories standing intact, the only thing around was the rubble from the destroyed buildings and the grass that had worked its way in from the plains. There was no litter, no debris, and no signs of people of any sort.

The pair spent ten frustrating minutes making their way towards the center of the city, William's apprehension growing as they got closer to the center. No road had more than a few hundred feet of clear space before it was blocked by rubble. They could climb past some of it, but they spent much of that time detouring down connecting streets and alleys. They had just left one of the ring roads and were standing on the edge of one of the main radial streets when William felt a tingle at the back of his head. "Ben," William said, "this place is beginning to worry me. There's something just not right about it."

"Spooked at the silence?" Ben asked, amusement in his voice.

"More than that," replied William, stopping in the middle of the street, the tingling getting stronger as he did. "Look around. This is a huge city. Could have easily had a half a million people living in it, and it's been completely destroyed. But… there's no sign of the people. I mean… nothing. I have no idea how long ago this happened, but there should be something, some signs. Skeletons, clothing, jewelry, hardware, something. Hell, there ought to be something besides this one type of grass," he said, kicking at a bit of the offending plant that stuck out of a crack in the road, "but there isn't.

"Even if there was some sort of maintenance spell on the place, there should be something here. No maintenance spell on a city this size would ever go after personal effects, you know that."

"Maybe," Ben said after a moment's thought. "But it might also be selective. We…"

Whatever Ben was going to say was cut off by the sound of rock scraping on rock, a loud sharp noise that scraped down William's spine like fingernails down a blackboard. Off to their left, on the other side of the street, were the remains of a large, fancy building. It had a wide front entrance faced with three sets of double-doors, set back from the road by twenty feet. The entrance was shaded by a portico, held up in front by a dozen elegantly ridged columns , an offshoot of the road running under it, clearly to provide a place for coaches of some sort to let off passengers where they could be protected from the rain and sun.

On top of the portico roof were three irregular lumps of stone, one at each end and one in the center. The one in the center was moving, stretching out. The unease William felt grew as he watched. As it moved it was clear that what they had thought was just a lump was instead a creature, carved out of the same stone as the city. They couldn't make out its true shape before it leapt out into the road.

Neither Ben nor William hesitated. Ben threw, with deadly accuracy, the stone he had been carrying. At the same time that William flicked his sword, the crimson flames that had limned it lancing forward to bathe the creature. There was a flash of blue and red as the two connected with the thing, obscuring it for a moment with smoke.

The smoke dispersed in seconds, revealing what looked like a statue made of stone and smoldering grass. The creature itself was wholly unnatural, looking like a cross between a frog and a lizard. Its forelegs were long and oddly muscled, ending in human-like hands, claws extending well past the tips of its fingers. Its hind legs were twisted and misshapen, though it looked as if the thing could walk upright if it had to It was a grotesque mockery of a living creature, frozen in a crouch, its left hand on the ground providing support, its right arm upraised showing a clawed four-finger hand, its mouth open showing an array of needle-sharp teeth.

"Nasty," Ben commented, examining the creature. Its feet nearly blended into the stone of the street beneath them, and standing still as it was it looked more like a statue than a moving creature. It had cracks running across its shoulders and torso with tufts of scorched grass sticking out. The acrid smell of burning leaves wafted towards him, making in wrinkle his nose.

"Um, Ben?" William said, looking around nervously. His unease was building to full-blown panic, which he was having a tough time holding in check. All up and down the street he saw that many of the buildings had the same sort of lumps this creature had just been. They were on the surviving building ledges, showing through the cracked facades, and in spots along the sidewalk. The scraping sound that he'd heard when this creature had started to move was starting to sound from other places. Many other places.

"What?" Ben asked, sounding distracted.

"I really think we should run!" William turned and dashed for the street they'd just come from, catching the briefest glimpse of movement from the creature he thought they'd disabled. The tingle in his head went away as fast as it had come as he entered the street, the panic fading with it, Ben hot on his heels.

"We should get out of sight," William said quietly, his breath saved for running.

"That one," Ben said, pointing at a three story building a little ways down the street. "Looks like an inn." From behind them they both heard the sounds of stone striking stone, what must've been the footsteps of stone constructs like the one they had disabled. Many, many footsteps.

"You sure?" William asked as he picked up speed, racing towards the building Ben had indicated.

"The sign over the door says 'Night's Rest Inn'. Seems likely."

The sign Ben referred to was a rectangular bare spot in the stone front of the building, directly over the door. A line of loops and curlicues was carved into it, looking both elegant and complex. It was vaguely familiar, nagging at the back of William's mind, the script of an ancient civilization he felt he ought to have remembered. William couldn't read it, though, and was to busy running to try and puzzle out where he knew it from. A quick glance around showed similar markings on many of the surrounding buildings.

"You can read that?"

"Yes," said Ben as he ran towards the building he'd pointed out, his longer legs letting him outpace William a little.

"And you didn't mention it earlier? Like when it would've been useful?" William's voice pitched up half an octave, clearly pissed.

"No," said Ben. "Thought you could read it."

"I don't suppose any of the buildings we passed had said 'Monster Lair here', did they?"

"No such luck," Ben said as he opened the door.

"Damn inconsiderate monsters," William muttered as he followed, closing the door behind him. "They never make it easy." William flipped the latch on the door. He had no illusions that it would stop a creature made of stone but it might slow them down a second or two, and any advantage was a good one. The stone door, he noted, had no windows in it. He was glad of that, hoping that if they were out of sight the creatures would take longer to find them.

They were standing in a large entryway. Straight ahead was a wide polished wooden counter, behind it the wall was full of square cubbyholes. A few of them had papers in them, ancient mail waiting for people who would never receive it. Above each cubbyhole was a hook, some of which still had keys hanging off them.

Off to the left was a large dining room, a dozen tables still set with yellowing linen, small glass vases with the shriveled remains of ancient flowers in their centers, tarnished silverware still laid out. Two of the tables had plates and coppery metal tankards at them, their chairs askew as if the diners had just stepped away.

To the right was a common room. On the far wall was a large fireplace, nearly as wide as Ben was tall, with the ashes of an ancient fire still inside it. There were overstuffed leather chairs and couches scattered throughout the room, while on the floor was an oval braided rag rug done in browns and greens.

Ben and William both paused, breathless and silent, and listened. They could hear the faint sounds of stone footfalls from outside, but they didn't seem to be growing louder. Their relief was palpable.

"I think we lost them," William said.

"Indeed," Ben agreed. "But why did we find them in the first place?"

William frowned. "I don't know. I remember seeing those piles of stone things all through the part of the city we were walking through, but none of them leapt out at us, not until we hit that central street. There was something else interesting there too," he added.

"What?" asked Ben.

"I don't know," William admitted.

"That isn't helpful," Ben answered.

"I know, I know," William said, sounding testy. "We stepped out into the middle of the street and I felt… something. I didn't get a chance to figure out what before that thing jumped out at us. Whatever it was, I lost it when we came back this way."

"We lost the creatures too," Ben said. "Don't know for how long. Do you still have that picture?"

William rummaged around in the pockets of his cloak, searching their contents. Before they had left the inn in pursuit of the creature that had carried off the innkeeper's daughter, the man had given them a drawing his son had made of the creature itself.

"Ha!" William exclaimed in triumph. "Got it."

He pulled the folded paper from out of a pocket, brushing off the dirt and soot that had gotten on it. Opening it, he and Ben both looked at the image. It was a simple line drawing, done on parchment with charcoal taken from the fireplace of the inn. There were sooty fingerprints around the edges, but the creature, rendered with two dozen lines in a few minutes, bore a striking resemblance to the one that had jumped at them just minutes ago. The artist had even managed to capture the sense of menace that seemed to have shrouded the creature.

"Yeah," William said, "that's the one." He sighed. "So they're lurking around part of the city, waiting to pounce. Great. Why'd that one run out and capture the girl? And why didn't any of them jump out at us before this?"

Ben shrugged at the obviously rhetorical questions. "We seem to have a few minutes," he said. "Maybe something in here will give us a clue as to what happened to the city. Those creatures seem part of it, constructs almost."

"Right, right," William said, starting to sound excited. "City destroyed by some sort of creature, populace seemingly vanished, stone creatures roaming around, it all adds up!" He stopped, a sinking feeling hitting his stomach. "Crap. It adds up to this city being a big trap."

"Yes," agreed Ben. "Sounds that way."

"Great," William said. "When we rescue the girl and get out of here that innkeeper is really going to owe us."

Ben smiled a little smile at that. "We should search this place," he said.

"Got it," William said, walking into the common room. He gave it a quick glance around, noting that the front windows, the ones that would overlook the street, still had heavy curtains drawn across them. "First things... Hel-lo, what's this?" William knelt down next to the remnants of an armchair. The fabric and stuffing had long since dried out, but had resisted the effects of dry rot. Laid on the chair was a complete set of clothing, tunic, shirt, pants, and underclothes. On the floor in front of the chair was a pair of boots, the pants dangling so their ends were nearly touching the boots. A quick look inside showed a pair of socks. On the floor to the left of the chair were two rings.

William poked through the clothes with his dagger and found a chain with an odd pendant attached buried inside the shirt. The pendant, which looked to be made of the same stone as the city, was a pair of stylized wings with a large green gemstone in the center. The raised edges of the pendant were gilded, and the chain it was on looked to be made of gold.

"This is interesting," he said, holding the pendant up for Ben to see. "See the gem? It's the same color as the plant magic in the city walls."

Ben was across the room at another of the chairs. Like the one William was at there was a pile of clothing and a pair of shoes. He pulled another pendant, identical to the one William had, from inside it. "Here's another," he said.

A quick look around the room showed three more sets of clothing, two women's and one men's, in three other chairs. One of the tables had a platter with the desiccated remains of a cooked bird from a long-abandoned meal, and on the floor under one of the couches was a metal tankard.

"Search the rest?" Ben asked.

"Yeah. Split up?"

"Yes," Ben responded. "Take upstairs, I'll take down."

It took only ten minutes to do a fast search of the building, and the pair met back in the common room.

"Upstairs was all rooms for rent," William said. "Half of them had signs that people were staying in them. I found another dozen sets of clothes, all with pendants in them. I also found a bed that had two pendants and a condom under the covers, and a tub in one of the rooms with a pendant. It looks like the city had running water and indoor plumbing. No signs of any human bodies.

"I did find one interesting thing, though. One of the rooms had what looked like a dog's corpse in it. Dog was dead, there wasn't anything left but a dried-out husk, nearly mummified, but from the scratches on the inside of the door it looked like it was trying to get out when it died. No signs it had been attacked, and the corpse was too old to tell what happened to it.

"I don't like this," William said. "It looks like everyone in the building just… disappeared, all at once. No corpses, though, and no bones. I think there's a maintenance spell going, since there's no sign that anything has decayed, just dried out. There's not even any ashes on the fireplace hearth, If the people were dead there should be bodies, but whatever happened to them all seems to have destroyed the bodies but not any clothing or jewelry. And everyone seemed to have those pendants on, even people who weren't otherwise dressed."

"Whatever it was happened before the city was destroyed," Ben said. "The kitchens and cellar were the same. Piles of clothes, and things lying around like the people were in the middle of normal activity when they disappeared. No sign anyone was doing anything unusual. Wouldn't expect things to be that normal if monsters were rampaging through the city."

William sighed. "I really don't like this, Ben," he said. "I don't think we've got the time to look into it, not with the girl out there and those creatures wandering around. Maybe after."

Ben frowned, but reluctantly nodded. "There was an access door into some sort of subterranean tunnel system in the kitchen, probably part of the city's infrastructure. I don't think the monsters, or whatever they were, came from underneath, though. All the damage seems to be done from the outside of the building, not the inside."

"Still think the center's the place to go?" William asked.

"Yes," said Ben. "And you have got to learn a more accurate tracking spell."

A sound from outside the in stopped them, the distinctive clacking sound of stone on stone. There was a creature outside, and very close by from the sounds.

They quietly made their way into the common room, weapons drawn and ready. Neither readied any magic, worried that the creature may be able to detect magic work, both counting on surprise and enchanted swords if it came to a confrontation. Ben crept to the window and carefully moved one of the heavy curtains aside. On the sidewalk across the street from the inn was one of the creatures they'd earlier encountered. It was slowly walking down the street, its head waving back and forth as if it were trying to catch scent of something. The creature's path wandered a little as it walked. It struck Ben that the thing was moving along a crack that ran down the length of the road, the creature moving along it without crossing.

"Interesting," Ben said, as he watched the thing scan the area. "I don't think it knows where we are. That's new. It knew exactly where we were when it first came at us."

William risked a look out the window. "Can it see us, do you think?"

"No, I don't think so. Doesn't look like a visual hunter. Look how it's moving, right at the edge of that crack across the road. Probably uses the city's maintenance spell matrix to find things most of the time."

"I want to find out for sure before I count on that," William cautioned. " Do you think you can take it out if you need to?"

"Yes."

William relaxed and let his sight shift into higher planes. The massive spell that permeated the city became clear to him, the green and brown strands of mana woven into the spell, creating the matrix that made it work, still so unusual in their uniformity. The threads were heavy in the stone around him, though he could See a few gossamer threads floating in the air. He could feel the slow decay of the building in them, felt the magic that was so slowly leaking out of the spell matrix. William touched Ben’s bare shoulder, the contact helping bolster his Sight. He pushed his vision slowly forward, towards the creature outside.

The creature gave no notice that it had any idea he was looking. William let out a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding, and took a moment to get a better look at the thing. As Ben had guessed, the threads didn't cross over the cracked roadbed. The creature itself looked to be a part of the city, the threads of magic animating the same color as the ones in the building walls. It looked as if it were actually connected to the threads in the street, though William couldn't tell without a closer inspection, something he wasn't willing to chance.

There was one troubling thing he did take the risk to look more closely at. The threads on the other side of the crack in the street, the ones on the creature's side, were slowly moving, working on repairing the street and rejoining the two sections of the city.

"We have a problem," William said as he let go of his Sight. "The city's fixing itself. It won't be too long before this section's joined back up. I think we'll be seen then."

Ben scowled. "That's not good."

"There's more. That thing, it's not a creature. It's the city, or part of it. The same magic that runs through the rest of the city is animating it. It's a construct, but not a golem. It's tied to the city, and I don't think it could act independently."

"Person?"

"Can't tell. Could be controlled by a person, could be some sort of spirit construct."

Ben risked another glance out the window. The creature had moved a few buildings down the street, but it was still looking around, and he had no doubt that it was only a matter of time before they were discovered. A single creature was no problem, but they'd already seen dozens of the things, and hiding just wouldn't be an option, not unless they were lucky and found another disconnected part of the city.

"That invisibility spell," Ben said, "the one you were working on before this all started. Any hope?"

"No," William said. "Not a chance. The magic was just too complex for me. If there's an easy way to do it I don't know."

"Damn," said Ben. "We'd better get moving. Put some distance between us and that thing, and hope there aren't any more around."

"Wait," said William, grabbing Ben's arm. "I think I have an idea. I can't make us fully invisible, but if this construct is tied in as deeply to the city as it looks, I don't have to. I only have to deflect the threads that make up the maintenance spell, and there are only a few colors of those. I think I can do that."

Ben thought for a second. "If whatever's running these things is clever they'd still be able to find us, but it'd be difficult. Do it."

William nodded and relaxed, letting his mind relax and his vision slip into the higher planes wizards use when weaving spells. All around him the city's maintenance spell became clear again, looking like fine filaments of color, threads woven throughout the building and the city beyond. He reached into his store of mana, tapping into the force that drives all magic, forcing it to his will.

This wasn't a practiced spell, something he could throw fully formed. Instead he had to do it from scratch, creating the threads from raw mana, weaving and knotting them into an impromptu spell matrix, hoping a little that it would work. The real world was just a shadow here, where magic lived, but that didn't matter. His will bound the mana, color marking its function; his fingers shaped the spell, leaving trails of colored threads as they moved; his voice gave form, fine structure to the weave of the spell.

William wove the spell first around Ben and then himself, surrounding each of them in a cage of force, tinged the same color as the threads woven throughout the city. Whorls of green and brown force, like little dust devils, danced along the threads, ready to deflect any outside threads that matched their color. It took a minute to finish and tie off the threads of his spell, completing it.

"There," he said. "Done. Should last about half an hour, but that's the best I can do." The cages were gently pushing the city threads away, moving them without disturbing them. It wasn't complete protection if something could sense the movement of the threads, but it would be difficult to detect, much tougher than the direct contact they were making earlier would have been.

"Good enough," Ben replied. The spell was invisible to him, and William looked the same as ever, but he trusted things were in place.

William heard a noise then, like a two-toned bell, ring out through the building. He let his vision slip and saw the threads around them grow a little brighter, get a little tauter.

"Just in time," he said. "This section's linked back up." Ben reached into the pocket of William's cloak, pulling out the heartstone. Instead of the pulsing rosy glow that had been there, it was dimmer and shot through with threads of green and brown. William spoke a word and waved his finger around it once, summoning the threads they had followed earlier. The trailing filaments were still there, though like the stone had green and brown tints to them. They were still outstretched, nearly straight, all pointing in the same direction, though they weren't as taut as they were earlier.

Ben and William just looked at each other. The implication was clear.

"We have to go," Ben said. "Quickly. We better split up. You head for the tower. Find whoever's running things and distract them. I'll take this," he said, gesturing with the heartstone, "and see if I can't find the girl while she's still alive."

"Ben," warned William, "I'm not sure the spell will last you all the way to the center of the city. It's slow going, and I won't be able to do anything to it from a distance."

"I'll head into the service tunnels if I have to," Ben said. Don't worry, Ben thought at William, his voice echoing in William's head. I'll be fine.

"Yeah, and I'll still worry," William said. "I'll go out front. The thing's still out there, and we'll find out soon enough if the spell worked."

"Fine," Ben replied. He sounded nonchalant, but his grip tightened on his sword.

William slowly opened the front door to the inn and slipped out. The creature, construct of the city, was a block down the street, its head slowly bobbing and weaving, scanning for something. Its blind gaze passed over William, who felt a shiver. He figured his shield had just deflected some probing threads from the city and held still, waiting to see if there was a reaction, mentally running through the biggest destruction spell he had at his disposal. It wasn't needed, and he let out the breath he didn't realize he was holding.

It works, he sent to Ben. We're good to go. With that he started jogging down the street towards the central thoroughfare they'd been on earlier. It was the fastest way to get towards the center, even if it was blocked in spots. He just hoped Ben would be OK.