It was difficult enough to navigate the dense maze of trees without the thick fog that settled in more and more the closer they got to the city. Asra had to slow to a trot to keep from crashing straight into a trunk.

She wondered why the foxes would choose such a thick forest to level and develop into a city, but then thought of the tactical advantage the trees could offer. She’d always heard that foxes were mistrustful of outsiders, like the wolves were, but for very different reasons. The wolves hid in their mountains because they thought they were above everyone else. The foxes hid because they were afraid they were beneath everyone else.

Of course that was only what she’d heard other gazehounds say. She didn’t know anyone who had ever met a fox or wolf, other than the couriers who delivered to her town, and they weren’t the chatty type.

Asra raised her nose to the sky, sniffing for the musk of fox or any scent of civilization. Margot’s blood emblem should grant her, Ciaran, and Bane access to this city, but she couldn’t smell any signs of foxes. The air was strangely sterile and thick, reminiscent of the stagnant air of the swamp, but cleaner, as if someone had sprayed bleach in it.

Bane sneezed beneath her. He looked up at her and whined softly.

“I don’t suppose you know how to track down a hidden city of people who can turn into giant foxes?” she asked the dog. He only whined again in response.

She had hoped he might help, but she didn’t know how to direct him onto a path that he didn’t know how to smell. Ciaran would know how to best utilize his dog, but his condition was rapidly deteriorating. He was barely even conscious now.

Asra moved her nose to the ground. She smelled damp dirt, fresh ferns, the ammonia of rat urine, the musk of a deer, and the fishy scent of a mountain lion carrying a trout, but no fox.

Finally, she spotted a large paw print, far larger than even a mountain lion, stamped into a freshly dug pile of earth. She sniffed, but smelled nothing. Hound’s woe, perhaps? Were they trying to cover their trails?

She followed the direction of the paw print until she saw the familiar flicker of the boundary of a concealment spell. Buildings shimmered in and out of focus beyond it, proving that Margot’s blood emblem would indeed let them pass through.

Asra’s back ached from Ciaran’s weight. “Can you walk?” she asked him, and he nodded against her fur.

She sat and eased him off her back, and he leaned against her shoulder as they stepped towards the boundary of the barrier.

Asra braced herself. What waited for them on the other side? How would the foxes greet them? With weapons? Magic? Bared fangs?

But as they stepped through the threshold, they were greeted by no one. Asra’s eyes flicked side to side, searching for any signs of people. Towering buildings of at least twenty stories—skyscrapers, as the humans called them—loomed over them, silent as the smokey fog that permeated the landscape. There were no lights on in the windows, no smoke billowing from any of the restaurant chimneys. The tapping of Asra’s claws on the cobblestones echoed through the cavernous streets.

“Hello?” she called into the void, her voice weak and impotent under the shadows of the buildings all around her. The fur along her back rose straight up, and she let out a nervous growl.

Bane whimpered, and when Asra turned to look at him, he was licking Ciaran’s hand as the man wobbled on his legs. The prince looked utterly exhausted.

“Stay here,” Asra said gently, and she eased away from him. He swayed without her support, but remained upright. Asra took a few steps forward and called into the streets again.

“My friend needs a doctor. Can anyone help us?”

She rounded the corner to see several more empty blocks. The thick fog cast everything in a dreary gray glow. She couldn’t smell anyone here. The sterile scent in the air was overpowering, and she coughed.

“He needs help. He won’t make it without help.” Asra swallowed the panic rising in her throat.

Bane’s whimpering became frantic. He yelped a couple times, and Asra turned just in time to see Ciaran go stiff as a board and collapse to the ground.

Asra changed into her skin as she rushed to his aid, ignoring the skin that scraped from her knees as she skidded to a halt next to him. She turned him onto his back and placed a hand on his sternum. His heart still beat, but he was not breathing, and his face was already an alarming shade of blue.

She screamed for help, and when no one answered she screamed again, and again, until she thought her throat would bleed. Bane circled them, tail between his legs, unsure of how to help his human. A drizzle painted black dots on the gray cobblestone around them. Ciaran’s face went purple.

Asra pressed both palms to his chest, willing her magic to make him breathe again. Her limbs were heavy and sluggish, and the magic that came was too weak to loosen the constricted muscles in his diaphragm. Her eyes burned with tears, but she blinked them away. Ciaran’s fingers turned blue as well.

Ciaran was going to die, and Asra was helpless to do anything but watch. She’d watched too many people die. She couldn’t lose him, too.

She screamed for help again, but nothing answered her except the wind and the falling rain.

Something rasped beneath her, and Ciaran’s lungs expanded for two rattling breaths. His face turned red, and then his limbs shook.

A seizure.

Asra almost cried with relief, but crying would have zapped what little strength she had left, and Ciaran still needed her help. She tried to run through the list of what to do to assist someone in a seizure, but she could only remember what not to do. Don’t hold him down. Don’t put anything in his mouth. She had to turn him on his side to keep him from swallowing his tongue, right? Or was that just a myth, too?

She took the chance and turned him onto his side, and to her horror, his head began to bounce off the rough stones. She lifted his head and called Bane as she pointed to the ground beneath it. Bane rushed to lay down there, and when Asra released Ciaran’s head, the dog’s ribs protected it from injury.

Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

The seizure couldn’t have lasted for more than a minute, but it felt like an eternity. Asra started to wonder if he was going to die here after all. But the convulsions eventually ceased, and Ciaran began to snore. Bane craned his neck to lick every square inch of his human’s face.

Asra sighed. Her muscles quivered from the adrenals, but the danger was far from over yet. She forced herself to her feet and smelled the air for hospital scents. It was difficult with how unnaturally clean the city smelled.

She finally caught the sweet scents of ether and morphine, no more than a quarter mile away. She scooped Ciaran up in her arms and started towards it.

Her exhaustion became even more apparent as she struggled to carry him. He seemed to get heavier with each step, and by the time she stepped into the hospital lobby she was panting.

She hoped there may have been some sign of people in the hospital, but it was just as eerily empty as the rest of the city. Client files lay open on the receptionists’ desks next to moldy half-eaten lunch boxes. An unfinished drink sat on an end table next to an open newspaper in the waiting area. Asra turned and walked around a corner to the patient rooms. The first bed was unmade, a sun hat left on the side table. She stepped into the second room and found it pristine and untouched.

She dropped Ciaran onto the bed as gently as her aching muscles could manage and stripped his vomit-encrusted shirt. She pulled the covers up over him and tried to prioritize what he needed.

The first thing was to get his vomiting under control and keep him from becoming any more dehydrated than he doubtless already was. She wasn’t sure where foxes lay on the magic-to-medicine spectrum as far as their healing techniques went, but she was confident they would at least have antiemetics and normal saline. Managing dehydration was crucial for distemper treatment.

She invited Bane onto the bed and told him, “Don’t let him leave that bed.”

Bane promptly jumped up and laid gently across Ciaran’s legs. Ciaran still hadn’t woken up; Asra hoped that wasn’t a bad sign.

She smelled saline in a locked cabinet near the door. The lock had a stale, metallic scent that she followed to a set of keys on the receptionists’ desk. She grabbed a white doctor’s coat from a set of hooks on her way back, hastily buttoning it at the waist. Ciaran was beginning to rouse when she slid back into the room.

“Hey, take it easy,” Asra said as she unlocked the medicine cabinet and browsed the contents for the saline vials. She was relieved to find a small vial of ginger extract as well.

“What happened?” Ciaran rasped.

“You had a seizure.” She scavenged a drinking glass from the cabinet and filled it with water from the faucet, then added a small amount of ginger extract. She held it to his lips and said, “Can you drink some of this for me?”

Ciaran creased his brow as he took a few sips.

“What happened?” he repeated.

“You had a seizure.” She drew some of the saline solution from the vial into a syringe and wondered if he understood what a seizure was in his half-conscious state.

“What happened?” Ciaran asked again, and this time the frustration in his voice was apparent.

“Ciaran, I don’t know what you’re asking me. I’m sorry. It’s going to take some time for your mind to return to normal.” She pulled Ciaran’s arm toward her. His veins were a bright blue against his deathly pale skin. “Quick pinch, okay?”

He seemed to snap back to reality somewhat as the needle pierced his skin. His eyes searched frantically around him, but he wasn’t coordinated enough to lift his head yet.

“Where’s my dog?”

“He’s right here, on your legs.”

Bane took that as an invitation to lick Ciaran’s hands. Ciaran stroked the dog’s brown head and eased back into the pillow.

Asra pulled a chair up next to his bed. She covered her mouth for a short coughing fit, then she slouched down into the chair. Her eyes drooped, but she fought to keep them open.

The saline and ginger extract would help, but they would need to be administered continually throughout his withdrawals, and she wasn’t sure if they would be enough. Seizures were already a serious complication of alcohol withdrawal, and it could still go downhill further from there.

At least he hadn’t had any hallucinations, as far as Asra knew. It had been bad enough experiencing them herself. She didn’t want to watch Ciaran go through them, too. Thank the gift Margot had been there to help for her own medical ordeal.

Margot!

Her eyes shot open. Margot might know how to help, and she would want to know about the state of the city regardless. Margot had given her half of a communication lodestone, and a hospital would surely have a speaking mirror somewhere.

She darted out of the room, sniffing for the acrid scent of magic. Her nose led her to a cubby beneath the receptionists’ desk. She pulled the mirror out of the leather case and slammed her lodestone into the slot.

As she waited for Margot’s face to appear in the mirror, Asra considered her long list of questions and concerns: Ciaran’s dying. From alcohol withdrawals. I didn’t even realize he was an alcoholic. I mean, it’s obvious in hindsight. Probably should have figured it out sooner. I guess you knew, huh? I mean, you gave him that booze at your camp. Not that I’m blaming you or anything. Also, the city’s empty. No clue where anyone is. So, uh, what should I do about Ciaran?

She took a deep breath. She couldn’t assault Margot with that barrage of questions right off the rip. But how would she start that conversation? She certainly couldn’t start it with idle small talk. Ciaran was dying.

She chewed her lip, waiting for Margot’s face to materialize in the mirror and for her worries to vanish. Her heart pounded as she carried the mirror back to Ciaran’s room and sank back into the chair by his bed.

Thirty seconds passed. Then a minute. Five minutes. Her eyelids grew heavy. She glanced up at Ciaran. He and Bane had fallen asleep, the dog snoring across his human’s legs. Maybe she could close her eyes for just five minutes …

The sound of Bane’s panicked whimpering woke Asra from her dead sleep. He stood over Ciaran, licking his hand like it was made of peanut butter. He looked to Asra and let out a desperate, high-pitched bark.

Asra scrambled to her feet, terrified that Ciaran’s heart had stopped. She placed a hand on his bare chest. His pulse was still strong, perhaps even too strong. She would need to check his blood pressure. As she ran to grab the sphygmomanometer, Ciaran exhaled sharply, and she turned to see him rigid and pale—the start of another seizure.

His breathing returned much more quickly this time. Asra turned him onto his side and placed a comforting hand on his arm as the convulsions eventually ceased and he slowly came to. When she heard him snoring again, Asra headed back to her chair, slumping down and hanging her head over the back.

It was a good thing Bane woke her up, or she may not even have realized Ciaran was having another seizure.

Her head shot up. She looked at Bane, who circled the foot of the bed for a comfortable sleeping position, and said, “You clever little shit. You can tell when he’s about to have another one, can’t you?”

Bane flopped down with a heavy sigh, his hind legs and tail tucked up to his nose.

“I don’t suppose you could teach me how to do that?”

Bane’s tail flopped a few times, and then the dog closed his eyes and drifted off to sleep.