167. [INTERLUDE] Dusk Is Dawn

ToNight, like all Nights, Oriole ere'Quinlan heeded first and foremost his own instincts.

Dressed in raven-black leathers, woolen breeches, and tattered cape, the ginger tabby blended easily into the darkness. He kept one eye on the streetlights—those great, roaring oil drums held up by rusted iron poles—and the other on the shadows that danced across the cobbled footpath. As much as he wished to avoid unwanted attention, he could ill afford to stray from the Highroad. Not when every second mattered in the race to make good on his oath.

ToNight, like most other Nights, the city-dwellers' foot traffic trickled downhill. Away from the abandoned observatory atop Veilwatch Hill and toward the slightly less abandoned factory in the Docklands. Oriole resisted the urge to spin around and join the flow of traffic, gulping down the taste of Feverfew's hotchpotch still fresh on his tongue. On a brisk night like tonight, the old woman would have no shortage of souls eager to do their part in affirming her oath. And while eating served no 'practical' purpose for Tiryagas, the Keeper damn it if it wasn't one of the more enjoyable ways to pass what few hours were afforded them each Night.

But no. ToNight of all Nights (and because it was like every other Night), the black-garbed ginger had to press on uphill. Against the grain and away from the promise of warm food and tolerable company. For Oriole ere'Quinlan had vowed to always follow his nose. And he had but a mere few hours left in the Night to affirm it.

Ere long, Oriole left the oil and rust of the city streets. He then climbed onto the wooded, sloping path to the observatory. Here, everything around him was one big shadow unto itself, especially since toNight happened to be a new moon.

Even so, the skyveils above in their gossamer consistency would occasionally catch light that shone from nowhere, perhaps leaking from the invisible and insensible other side of the Night-Day divide. Presently, one such spill cast one such ray of light against a rowan tree, thus allowing Oriole to spy a shadow that didn't belong to himself.

He was being followed, and he had a good inkling by whom. He maintained his gait and cadence, even as he took in an extra sniff of air. Floral perfume overpowered by marmalade. The scent of a sweet-toothed girl going on woman of the world.

Having confirmed his suspicions, Oriole couldn't help but smirk to himself, letting one fang glisten in the night as he did. Now, how shall I best punish this interloper? His better nature told him to go easy, but his nose said the girl was due for a proper lesson.

For the next little while, Oriole continued on at a steady pace, lulling his stalker into a false sense of security. He then used a bend in the road to mask his movements as he slipped into the woods.

Not one second later, the stalker's footsteps quickened, now loud enough to betray her position. Oriole stifled a giggle as he watched from the thicket. Sure enough, a young calico soon came into view, her viridescent eyes wide with alarm. The girl too had garbed herself in black leathers, but her cape still looked good as new.

The Keeper save her, Oriole muttered inwardly. She's even stolen my 'look'!

The stalker might share Oriole's fashion sense, but she had neither his experience in roguery nor his flair for surprise. The calico waded into the thicket, unaware of the trap she'd walked into.

"And now, you're dead."

The thicket was shrouded in complete darkness, but the two Tiryagas' cat eyes allowed both of them to see the truth of Oriole's words. For the ginger had sprung a hidden dagger from his gauntlet, the point of which now dug into the calico's exposed throat. He supposed he could've easily used his claws to do the same job, but his nose had pointed to this as the more effective demonstration.

For a Ksana, the girl's already widened eyes positively bulged with mortal fear. But then they narrowed in anger just as quickly. She slapped away Oriole's dagger and kneed him in the stomach in one smooth motion.

"Oof!"

Half-laughing though he was, Oriole's grunt of pain was genuine. Even his laughter became heaving coughs, as he doubled over to massage his smarting abdomen. It'd been at least several turns of the moon since he'd last sparred with Caraway ere'Lochlan, and the latter clearly hadn't been idle in the meantime.

"Serves you right, that does!" the calico girl snarled, whiskers aflutter. "Yer a right arsehole for sneaking up on me like that!"

"What are you on about?" Oriole shot back incredulously. "As if you weren't the one following me since halfway up o'Sullivan Bridge!"

"Only so you had someone to watch yer back!" Caraway refused to back down. "It's like yer Mum always said, innit? Us Anchoreds oughta stick together—never go out of the city alone. I were only looking out for her good-for-nothing son in Mrs Quinlan's stead—the Gloam keep her soul—but I never expected to be thanked with a blade in me throat!"

It was at this point of an impassioned speech that Caraway's viridescent eyes brimmed with tears, visible even in the darkness. She abruptly spun away from Oriole, then bounded onto the road, headed back toward the city.

Oriole's nose told him: good riddance. But his better nature understood that he might've taken things too far. On this rare occasion, his nature won out.

Still got time, he told himself, though rather unhappily at that. The Keeper damn Caraway for bringing my Mum into this!

"Alright, alright," he called after the girl, hands held out in placation. "I was wrong, and I deserved your retribution. Now join me on the road, won't you, and watch my back like a good Tiryaga neighbor?"

Caraway stopped in her tracks, her caped back aslouch in momentary indecision. But when she turned back around, a bright marmalade smile filled her soft-furred face.

"See? That's what you shoulda said all the way back on o'Sullivan Bridge when you first noticed me!"

Oriole returned his younger friend's smile with a wry shake of the head.

"I wouldn't have noticed if you were any good at sneaking," he scolded with no real sense of authority. "Learn to use the shadows better. Right now, your ridiculous cape is more hindrance than help. And you've got to do something about those claws of yours. Could hear the scraping from a mile a—"

"Oh, save yer nagging for someone who cares, why don't you. Off we go now. Wherever yer headed, we haven't got all Night to get there."

With that, Caraway took the lead, her fluffy tail so uplifted by good moods that it poked out from under her cape. Oriole shook his head once more before following from a slight distance. But if he'd harbored any hope for a quiet, peaceful walk, it was quashed in short order.

"Why are you headed up the Hill anyway?" Caraway asked, now giving off nothing but her marmalade scent. "All by yer lonesome this far out from city limits, almost like you'd up and turned Wayfarer."

Oriole scoffed.

"Me, a Wayfarer? The Keeper save me from such calamity! It's bad enough that I have to scramble every Night for something for my nose to follow. Can you imagine if I had to worry over an Oathborn on top of it? Once you reach your oathing age, you'll understand."

It was Caraway's turn to scoff, and quite loudly at that.

"You say that like yer some gray-whiskered oathkeeper! And like I'm not only a few turns of the moon out from becoming one meself! Or did you forget?"

"I haven't forgotten," Oriole said—more solemnly than he showed. "Incidentally, have you a sense of what your oath might be? Word of advice: instead of trying to be an… individual about it, pick something common you can share with the neighbors. Or, you know, throwing in with Feverfew's lot is always a good shout. In other words, don't be like me."

"I… As a matter of fact, I do have an oath in mind."

"Oh? What is it?"

"I… Well, I don't know if I've quite got the wording down, but it's… erm…"

Oriole frowned. It wasn't like Caraway to hem and haw like a touch-shy kitten. He had half a mind to pick up his pace, the better to investigate what might've gotten into her. But then—

The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

"We're here."

Caraway stopped on her own accord, and Oriole soon followed suit. He then looked up and around at the abandoned observatory atop Veilwatch Hill.

Up here, the woods had been cleared out since ages ago—the work of Tiryagas far more industrious than the ones that populated Duskpool today. The night sky spread above and around, unimpeded, along with the skyveils that hung over the land of Tidereign like colossal, gossamer curtains.

These fluttering skyveils bathed the whole hilltop in faint light, even in the pitch darkness of a new moon. And further into the elevated distance, the Sanzu's waterfall lent its eerie umber gleam, carrying with it the runoffs from Manesfera above.

But enough about things and places even his nose couldn't sniff! As long as Oriole was Anchored to Tidereign, he needed only to reaffirm his oath each and every Night. To that end, he had but a hop, skip, and jump to complete his climb. From the footpath, through the crumbled bricks of a dilapidated building, and onto the circular dome of the observatory proper.

Here, the air felt somehow 'thinner' than at ground level, despite a difference of only about twenty feet or so. One half of the roof had somehow remained intact over the ages, but that still left much of the room exposed to the elements—including the bulky, intricate apparatus known as the telescope.

The thing was mostly metal. At least it looked that way to Oriole's untrained eyes. Yet it'd somehow avoided the wear, tear, and rust that permeated much of Duskpool's Tiryaga-made structures. In fact, it was still in working condition—again, as far as Oriole could tell. At the very least, its enormous optical tube turned on its axis with the help of a hand-operated winch. Trying to see anything recognizable through the eyepiece, however, was a different matter.

"Just what would've possessed our ancestors to build something like this?" Oriole muttered aloud, one eye squeezed shut while the other tried to make sense of the hoary blur on the other side of the lenses. "What were they reaching for? Did they really see something we can't? Or could it be that they simply had more time on their hands?"

Even with both eyes occupied, Oriole could somehow picture the bored expression on Caraway's face. Sure enough, the calico answered his question with another, entirely unrelated question.

"So, who put you up to this?"

"Whatever do you mean?"

"Don't play coy with me, mate. Pretend all you like that yer nose is some mystic window to the great beyond, but we all know yer so-called 'hunches' are just tips you picked up from the Duskpool riff-raff."

"Careful," Oriole said breezily, eyes and hands still busying over the telescope. "Don't let Gladiolus hear you call him 'riff-raff'."

"Hah!" Caraway exclaimed, dripping with sarcastic delight. "Weren't you going on about how you hated Wayfarers just a minute ago? Yet here you are, following their word to the arse-end of nowhere!"

"I don't hate Wayfarers; I just feel sorry for them. Besides, Gladiolus is… different. He takes his Path seriously, almost as much as he does his oath. You won't find another soul in Duskpool who's seen as much of Tidereign as he has. So, yes. Whenever he has something to say, my nose tells me to sit up and listen."

"Alright, let's have it. What lofty nonsense has Doc filled yer head with this time, eh? You expecting to find something inside that clanky tube?"

After straining his vision for what felt like hours, Oriole finally stood back from the telescope. He then turned his naked cat eyes onto the night sky.

"Perhaps not," he admitted. "But according to Gladiolus, he did see something up here. On a new moon like tonight, and gazing up into the skyveils above."

"Of course he did." Caraway scoffed again. "And? What did he see exactly?"

"A woman."

"What?"

Oriole glanced over his shoulder, caught off guard by Caraway's rather tense reaction.

"A woman," he said again, thinking the young calico might have misheard.

"What kind of woman?"

"A Tiryaga woman. What else?"

"I know that, you sod! I mean who was she? And what was she doing here of all places?"

Oriole took a moment to recall the Wayfarer's account. He then turned his gaze back onto the skyveils, as if he could spot the very woman within their folds.

"I—he doesn't know. Reckons the woman wasn't, you know, real… or at least not here. Not physically, anyway. A vision, maybe? Either way, he said she was the most beautiful creature he'd ever met. Said he felt a kind of connection to her that—"

"So that's it, is it?"

Oriole swiveled back to Caraway, more than a little alarmed by the rough edge to her voice.

"Gladiolus saw this oh-so-beautiful lass up here, so you thought to take a gander yerself." Caraway's words spilled out in a mad rush, even as her face darkened into a belligerent scowl. "And for what? You fixing to carry the memory with you to sleep—hoping the fair maiden might warm yer dreams toMorrow?"

"Well, I haven't thought that far ahead," Oriole said weakly, his muddled mind now puzzling over the abrupt shift to his friend's mood. "But why not? I mean, it's interesting, isn't it? It's different, at the very least. So what if my nose told me to follow something impossible instead of the same old rubbish we live through each and every Night?"

Caraway crossed her arms and averted her gaze, but she still wore the same scowl.

"I'm going back."

"What, now? After following me all the way here? Don't you want to wait and—"

"No! And if you had any sense, you'd start making yer way back too. Not long left in the Night now, and you wouldn't want to be caught unmoored when Dawn breaks."

"I think I'll stay," Oriole said flatly, as he too looked away and back at the night sky. Now, his actions were driven by something even more powerful than a ginger tabby's sense of smell. Namely his spite.

"I'm serious, Ori!" Caraway raised her voice, along with a note of pleading. "Let's go back to the city together! We shouldn't—you shouldn't be alone out here!"

Oriole gave no answer, pointing his eyes stolidly at the sky. Some time passed in silence, then came a sniffle, followed by the scrape of ill-disciplined claws against a brick-laden floor. The scent of marmalade soon faded from the air.

Oriole was alone again, as he'd planned to be since he'd woken toNight. No distraction. No unwanted attention. Only the veiled sky and the impossibilities his nose had promised.

He lost track of time. His muscles grew sore. At some point, he became aware of gradual yet unmistakable changes to the sky. Dawn was about to break, and with it, the skyveils' gossamer folds spilled more light into the moonless Night.

Oriole sighed. He hadn't expected much, but he was disappointed all the same. ToNight, he'd followed his nose again, only to end up in the same place he did every other Night. The arse-end of nowhere, with nothing but the short few hours of the next Night to look forward to.

So much for that. It was time to trudge back to the oil and rust of the city streets. Duskpool might be a sorry excuse for a bastion of civilization, but it was home. And it was, like Caraway said, the best and safest place to settle in for a long, long sleep.

But just as Oriole made to turn away from the open dome, he saw it. He saw her.

A distortion in the air, separate still from the skyveils' unraveling folds. Before Oriole even knew what was happening, his nose, eyes, ears, and indeed every sense known to Tiryagas told him he wasn't alone. Had never been alone.

His muscles tensed. His hackles stood on end. His ginger tail bristled and poked out from under his cape. Instinctively, he tensed his right-sided gauntlet that hid the dagger. Yet, for reasons utterly inexplicable even to himself, he reached out with his bare left hand…

And found another doing the same from the other side of the veil.

The hand was a delicate, short-haired thing, with a white-spotted coat Oriole couldn't identify. On its ring finger sat, appropriately enough, a bejeweled ring. Earthy red upon unassuming copper. Even in the midst of wide-eyed wonder, Oriole couldn't help but note just how unremarkable this piece of jewelry appeared to be.

Then their hands touched. Or rather, they phased through and overlapped each other. Two physical entities sharing the same impossible space. The sensation was indescribable. It was profane. And yet, it was also the most sacred moment in Oriole's life.

It was in this state of superimposition that the full picture came to be. A fair maiden. The most beautiful creature he'd ever met. An image to warm the dreams of any hotblooded Tiryaga man.

But she wasn't a Tiryaga woman. At least not of a kind Oriole had ever known. Slender build. White-spotted coat. Serene doe eyes upon an elongated face. And all of it crowned by a pair of majestic antlers.

Is… is she a deer?

But as soon as Oriole gave thought to the impossibility, the vision broke. The deer woman melted back into the distorted air, then even the distortion itself stilled and faded into the unseen veil.

Yet her hand was the last thing to go. And before it did, Oriole felt a distinct shift. Something solid had lost one anchor before latching onto another. Earthy red upon unassuming copper.

Night marched toward Dawn, as it always did and always must. Oriole found himself alone again beneath the softening sky. Alone—and forever changed.

[PRIMAL transmutation complete]

[Designation: ORIOLE ere'QUINLAN]

[Wayfarer Race: TIRYAGA]

[Karmic Level: 1]

[Liminal Karma: 0 क]

[PRIMAL Instrument: THE PLEDGE]

[Oathborn: SHADOWSENT]

[OATHBIND activated]

[OATH registered: I will always follow my nose.]

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.