(USFB): Twenty-Two: Shades of Truth

The shutters murmured against an intense out-of-season wind storm that arose from nearly nowhere. However, if it had bothered Amirot, he did not let it occupy much of his mind. In his stasis, suspended in the air like so many leaves winding around the steeple, his thoughts were anywhere but in the immediate. He had to find that wolf so close to the buck that he should have done more to win him over. Once he had what he wanted, the caribou knew he could comfortably lay waste to the bulk of the invading forces. And once they were neatly handled, he would have an almost limitless citizenry at his disposal.
Again, the heavy shutters moaned against the whipping currents, only tugging a scant bit more at the Darkstalker’s thoughts. Had he not been so engaged, he might have broken his trance and found nails to affix the loose boards more firmly. They would go unworried as he finally found the trace of the red. As his sights grew in the darkness, he found the wolf in a place far removed from where he had last known him. In so many ways, impossible as it was, it looked to Amirot as though the man lurked in some deep recess of the cathedral itself. Still, that was unlikely as there was no place attached to his home that dwelt beneath the earth as clearly this location was.
Moving as a shade, Amirot pressed past disorganized rows of stubby monoliths and abstract stone shapes. He had seen sights like this before, though rarely were they in a state worth examining. At every turn, be it in an attempt to read inscriptions, conclude the idea of the shape, or the function of such markers, the results had come to Amirot as nothing more than ruins. Yet, whatever these symbols in the earth, deep within as though in a cave, judging by the hanging fungi and mineral deposits, they were clearly considered a danger.
Coming nearer the flame, approaching the wolf and a cohort who held their lantern, Amirot found he was on the far side of a heavy iron gate, bedecked with spiraling rows of thorns like that of a rose. The seal would prove no struggle for the caribou, in the form of a shadow nothing physical could bar him, but that faint radiance still held sway over him. It could not fully banish him, not so far beneath the earth, but the man holding it, a fox, gave him pause.
Amirot had only the one memory of any personage of that race, and that recollection was one near enough to make him flee. Though that one had been a woman and clearly different from so many of her countrymen, Amirot couldn’t be sure if her abilities were not something to be learned. For all he knew, he might press through the bars and, engaging in peace, still find himself burnt away by a light to rival a dying star. And though such trauma would not physically eliminate him, he had felt the vicious tongues of light through shades enough to know he would not walk away unscathed. Watching as he crept nearer, he lingered a moment, but that breath of time was quickly forgotten.
The wind no longer made the shutters whine and squall. Instead, the shattered boards whickered around the tower as ceramic tiles layered across the roof whipped inside, erupting into fistfuls of shards that dug, cut, and buried their way into soft flesh. As injurious as the impromptu blades of tile were, what burnt Amirot was the faint sunlight that pushed in through the slightly parted clouds that kept the region in near-constant twilight. He cringed away from the rogue beams, but there was nowhere in the tower he could hide himself that would obstruct the light. It wasn’t until the shape of a man lay its shadow over him that Amirot could draw focus away from the damning sun.
Looming over him, as his shades had done for so long, stood a figure he did not recognize but in the vaguest sense. Amirot had seen men similar to this one, but not nearly one whose fur was so grandiose. Like the sky before a storm, swaths of cloudy gray moved freely over his form as though buffeted by the strongest of torrents. The vision of the foreigner was so striking the caribou hardly made notice of his indecency. Yet, had he, it would have been wasted breath as the leopard, his agile frame belying his strength, took Amirot by the collar and lifted him out of the window in the whirling nightmare of the tornado.
At once, he began to plead until the wind whispered with Pulzar’s voice, “I offered you anything, a price you could name, and you’ve spit in my face. I don’t care to hear your reasons, but I want to know why her.”
“I am the furthest thing from breaking our bargain. Quetal, trust I have just not found the right time to strike. There are more players in this game in the south. I can not jeopardize everything without knowing what might happen.”
“Who did you send to kill me? What sloppy sellsword did you hire to kill the Kammherits?”
“None, I’ve hired no one at all,” Amirot found breath into his lungs as the sun’s radiance began to feel like a massive weight on his chest, “I will make whatever move you want, just let me from the sun! I will personally go to this lion of yours and break him if that is what is required.”
With a sudden jolt, the caribou was tossed from outside his tower to the opposite end, just beneath the railing. The faint bit of shade against the light wasn’t enough to give Amirot strength, but he hardly felt his fur growing ashen. He tightened his robes over scorched and exposed fur before meeting Pulzar’s gaze. As though the step was that of a gentle breeze, the Quetal had crossed to squat just before the caribou. Gradually, as he waited for Amirot to catch his breath, the furious tempest in Pulzar’s eyes faded to cool spring breezes.
Once his query finally seemed composed, the leopard began again, “I need to know who the assailant is that you have sent out? Was it you directly or one of your shadows?”
“I haven’t sent anything to do what you’ve asked yet. I have a man in the south. He is going to address one of my bigger concerns and open up my line of assault against this Orin fellow,” with a shuttering sigh, Amirot winced back up, “I am sorry I have dawdled. This is not an easy predicament I find myself in.”
The faintest hint of tumultuous winds roared again in Pulzar’s gaze, but he held his composure. Rising with a twist, he made his way again to the far side of the tower. He let the torrent of his power subside so that all but the faintest breezes were gone from the lands. Searching the horizon, he could see nothing more than the wilderness that surrounded the basin on all sides. How anyone had found this place, stranded so deep in a desolate land, was beyond Pulzar. This place did not radiate life to him, but felt ready to consume it just to carry on surviving.
And that was simply the way of it, surviving. Pulzar looked south by the sun and knew that there, somewhere beyond this infernal thicket, were others doing all they could to survive the incursion from the Kammherits. Not unlike himself, his tribe, or that of Neuthera and her clans, which served almost a better example. They were battling against something they could never have seen coming nor known the severity of. Where he and his had been fortunate, Pulzar himself possessed of a remarkable ability, not everyone could be so blessed. Thera had her might, be that come at the price of so much that having it was nearly useless when it was done. Meanwhile, in these lands, it seemed the best they had was a man slinging shadows against the day’s might and vainly chasing some dream of conquest. Pulzar had to hope that somewhere in the south another had come to rival the gifts he and the others held. Finally, the aln caught his attention.
Taking little account of the disheveled man, looking all the worse for trying to avoid the sun, Pulzar asked, “That tree, the very tall one, are they common to this edge of the realm?”
“That tree? That tree is no natural tree. It is an abomination. It is the totality of a power unsanctioned and uncontrolled, left in the incapable hands of a buck,” Amirot hissed, further bunching himself against the wall.
Pulzar didn’t question the accusation, “I would find the one responsible there, at the tree, no?”
“If you find him, I’ll trade his life for that of your lion in an instant, even in the longest of suns.”
Pulzar took note of the thought but paid it little heed. He extracted what he could of business from the caribou for now. Though he wasn’t certain Amirot was guiltless in the death of his sister, he had, if nothing else, put a fear into him over his inaction. It seemed he might not need to worry of Orin II for long, but it hardly hurt to keep the tension taut on the one who may facilitate his end. Stepping onto the ledge, Pulzar gave a parting wave before plummeting into the open air, which consumed and erased him from the space midway down the tower where it found him.
Indignation flashed across Amriot’s features as the vague semblance of what he came to call, to his dismay, his master flitted across the breeze. There was a plethora of reasons for this disgust: the arrival, the attack, his indecency, but foremost was how little he regarded it all. Pulzar seemed hardly moved to worry about the damages done and instead had focused on the tree and the buck who had reared it from the earth. If he had the strength, which was only barely beginning to accumulate again as the sun was swallowed by the clouds, Amirot would have plucked the fragments of the man from the sky and crushed them deep into the earth.
He hadn’t needed the leopard, but having met headfirst with what he was capable of, Amirot was sure he could not deny the man either. Taking the life of this foreign king would be no task at all, but it was what would come from it that perturbed him. Amid all the tumult and fighting, he had hoped Orathone would be an easier target, but now he found himself without easy access. Yet, if he could trust the wolf to bring

him away from the light, even snuff out his lantern while he slept, Amirot thought he might still secure himself before committing the act. Then there was the question of the lynx and any other fool nestled within the briars and brambles who might run counter to him. There were too many enemies beginning to cloud the horizon, and even with the Lord of Blood working in tandem with him, there was no easy way to clear his view.
The thought of Pai’gen spurred him on to that other fool who had at least come to see that Amirot was his better. He had been away a long while, but if he could recall Kovarlin after his deed was done, the complexion of all fates might still change. As he replaced the shattered shutters the best he could, using his extra limbs of shade, Amirot began a quiet search of the hidden and furtive places in the dark lands far south. It would be no easy task, but if for nothing else, finding the puma meant getting a word in with the Goredrinker that did not require opening his veins for the old devil. And that was the last thing he wanted to do.
Amirot had come a long way since his first encounter with the ancient blood-cursed thing, and he hardly would yield his accomplishments from the time thereafter. As he set his true paws on the ledge of the tower, still exposed as the shadows rooted out more material to cover it, the caribou lamented all that had to be done in those days. Far afield, somewhere that was never unmired by shade, the remains of a cottage, the roof fallen in ages ago, still sat. The pendant of his love, herself faded even further into time than the home she had called her own, still dangling in the breeze of broken-down walls. That polished shell, the cabin of pine, and the life of a simple woodsman were now nothing more than what consumed them, a shade over life no longer silhouetting the genuine article.
With the final shutter reset and sealed tighter than before with a dense plaster dredged from a deep bunker beneath the perimeter of the cathedral where so many vestiges of ages gone by rusted in silence, Amirot felt safe again. The brush with Pulzar was the first in a great while, since the fox, that Amirot had experienced a sense of fear and mortality. Had it been night or even closer to dusk, nothing the leopard did could have meant more than a momentary dismay for him. And had it been deep into the dark hours, Amirot would have dismembered the upstart and fed his flesh to the winds that waved the trees in sign of storm beyond the safety of his walled tower. But it would come soon enough, his moment of triumph over yet another who thought mockery would go unaddressed, his injured pride disregarded. While he waited, there was still the matter of those two who may serve as unwitting allies.