Season I | Episode V | Chapter II

Tarrick awakes the next morning when Grandma opens the curtains wide. Sunlight floods in the bedroom. Tarrick covers his head with his pillow.

“Rise and shine, fluffy pie! We’re in a village, this is the best time to start searching for stories!”

“How early is it?”

“Not that much. Come on, breakfast is waiting for us.”

Word travels fast in Yeagsant. Early that morning, as she tells him on the way down the stairs to the main floor, Grandma went to the dining section and started chatting up with the guests while her grandson and his familiar were sleeping. Now that the sun is up and Tarrick and Prothea are also up, people are lining up at the door, waiting anxiously to tell their stories. After a good breakfast of bighorn-lizard eggs and fresh bread, Tarrick goes up to his room and gathers up his suitcase. His Chronicling equipment rests on the table. Tarrick sharpens his quill and sets out to write.

Truth be told, not all of Yeagsant’s stories are interesting. Some are even borderline insipid. Some fascinate him: tales of ancient families still living perched in this archway after centuries. Tales of feuds and betrayal. Others are… not. It’s just that Tarrick is rather uninterested by what the innkeeper’s son ate this morning. Or how two neighbours have gotten into a fight over a stolen biscuit. Tarrick is half-way to thinking he hates being a Chronicler when the twenty-seventh person shows up.

“Tarrick? Gran!”

He looks up. “Isolniel!”

There she is. Their climber friend, all fur and bone, safe and sound. She runs up to Tarrick and sits opposite him, barely letting the elderly Davrian with his many cat-owls get up and leave.

“When did you arrive?” she asks him. “I haven’t seen you in a while!”

“Last night,” answers Prothea, licking her paw. “What about you? When did you arrive?”

“Last week. I’ve been out a lot, so that’s probably why I didn’t see you last night. Or this morning. There’s a lot of amazing places to climb around here! I should show you.” She takes a deep breath, having not breathed since she started talking, and looks over her shoulder at the door. “Hey, I don’t mean to pry, but what’s with the line out there? People are lining up to see you now?”

Grandma shrugs. “There hasn’t been a Chronicler in many years. The cubs don’t remember, but grandparents do, and patriarchs and matriarchs tend to have a lot of influence on their families. So it seems everyone showed up to see us. It’s kind of them, really.”

“Ah… I see.” Isolniel’s head whips back on her neck so fast, Tarrick fears she gets whiplash. “Oh! Does that mean you’re looking for a good story?”

“Indeed I am,” says Tarrick, leaning forward. “Do you have one for me?”

Isolniel leans forward, too. “Indeed, I do!”

She reaches down into the pocket of her pants. A piece of paper, folded in four, sits neatly in the palm of her paw. Tarrick picks it up and reads Isolniel’s almost intelligible writing. He arches an eyebrow.

“Greglith, the masked one?”

Isolniel nods.

“People whisper about him on the streets. Greglith, the masked one. You can hear him at night, jumping from roof to roof. His laugh echoes in the dark. You wouldn’t have seen him; he rarely makes it to the top of the Web…” At the others’ visible confusion, Isolniel waves a paw. “That’s the name for the city structure.” Tarrick, Prothea and Grandma nod. Isolniel continues: “No one knows exactly what he’s doing, jumping from roof to roof in the dead of night. Or why he’s doing it. But he’s been terrifying everyone since last year. Some are scared to walk at night. Others don’t care. Most think he’s a superstition, but I don’t think superstitions are founded on nothing, you know?”

Tarrick exchanges a glance with Grandma and Prothea.

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

“You said he terrorizes people. Has he been caught attacking anyone? Stealing anything?”

Isolniel thinks for a moment, tapping her chin. “Nope. Not that I’ve heard of.”

“Then how can he terrify the townsfolk?” asks Prothea.

“Well, you see, he wears a rather scary mask. An eagle-coyote. With teeth in its beak and golden lines around the eyes that gleam in the dark. Speaking of his eyes, no one’s ever seen them. If you look at them, it’s like staring in twin voids. He probably also wears blues and greys, contrary to popular belief.” At their visible confusion, once again, Isolniel explains: “If you wear completely black, you can actually stand out in some situations. Climber’s tip.” Prothea, Grandma and Tarrick nod again. She continues: “But that’s not the point. It’s the mask everyone talks about. It’s old, a dull orange, cracked in places. Covered in feathers from the nose up and fur from the nose down.”

“That doesn’t sound that bad,” muses Grandma.

Isolniel’s eye twinkles. “There is blood on his cheeks.”

Everyone gulps.

Tarrick rubs his paws on his forearms. “Okay, I see how people can be scared of him.”

“Have you seen him before?” asks Prothea, head resting on her folded paws.

“No, unfortunately.” Isolniel sits back in her chair and props up her legs on the table. “But I’ve seen the feathers. They’re scattered around the city like hints in an enormous scavenger hunt.”

Grandma pushes herself to her feet.

“I want to find him!”

“Me too!”

Tarrick stares at Grandma and Prothea. “Are you sure? It’s the middle of the day, what if…”

“He leaves feathers, like hints in a scavenger hunt. So that’s what we have to do. Follow the trail of feathers, you find him. That’s what she just said, right?”

Isolniel raises both paws. “I mean, I did, but I’ve never seen Greglith before. No one’s caught him yet.”

“Yet,” points out Grandma.

“Right. Yet.”

Prothea pouts. “Come on, Tarrick! Let’s at least try!”

Tarrick opens his mouth to protest. Prothea pouts. Grandma pouts. He huffs, shoulders sinking down. He can’t refuse Prothea. Or Grandma, for that matter. Not when they look at him like that. Tarrick looks at the clock ticking on the wall. “It’s midday already. I... presume… we can go find him now.”

“Yes!”

A sigh of content reaches Tarrick’s ears. “Ahhhh! It’s been a while since I’ve slept past eleven o’clock!” says a voice he’s familiar with now.

Heavy footsteps finish their decent down the stairs. Rycrofth is an inch away from hitting his head against the ceiling. He yawns; growls, more appropriately. It sounds like the rumble of the Hollow Earthians digging underground. Rycrofth bends backwards, head turned ceilingward, and stretches, paws on his lower back. For a ninety-year-old Davrian shaped like a volcano, he’s still very flexible, Tarrick realizes.

Isolniel jumps to her feet and points. “What is that?!”

Grandma turns to her and whispers:

“Don’t worry. He’s our friend. Isolniel, meet Rycrofth.”

“Rycrofth,” says Tarrick, “meet Isolniel. We met her when she was trying to climb the Growing Rock.”

Rycrofth finishes his stretch and, sitting on his knees, he leans down with both elbows against the table - a good idea, too. The chairs would’ve probably given out under the virtual weight of a boulder.

“Ooh! You’re the climber, huh? I’m always impressed by someone who cares about rocks as much as I do,” says Rycrofth with a wink and a wiggling finger. “How was it, climbing the Growing Rock? I’ve heard that mountain scorlion’s nothing to trifle with. But you made it, huh?”

“Thanks to Tarrick.”

“All right, can we go back to the matter at paw?” asks Prothea.

“What matter?” asks Rycrofth.

Tarrick grins. “We found a story to tell.”

They all move as one outside the inn. The line is still waiting outside. Tarrick explains they’ll have to catch up later. Some go home with barely an inch of disappointment, but others don’t want to budge. With Rycrofth’s help though, it’s easy to dissipate a crowd.

Rycrofth takes a deep breath. Then, he roars: “GOOOOOOO. AWAAAAAAAAAAAAYYYYYY!”

The crowd scatters.

Good. Now, they’re free to find Greglith, the masked one.

“We did all this for nothing!”

Tarrick can’t help but agree to Isolniel’s grumbles. It doesn’t take long until Tarrick’s tiny glimmer of hope vanishes. They’re never going to find Greglith. The trail of feathers leads nowhere, most of the time. Other times, it leads somewhere… until they reach a house’s high wall and can’t go any further. It feels like walking in a labyrinth suspended on a string. Without a map. Lost in the light of day. And while trying to find nothing but a shadow. The only things they get for their troubles are aching feet and frustrated huffs. Tarrick’s feet are killing him when he drops down on his bed in Zelenyphe’s tavern that night. Grandma immediately starts to snore. Prothea curls up next to Grandma and falls asleep too. Tarrick can’t find sleep just yet - it’s like he’s too tired to sleep. So he lights a candle, picks up his quill, grabs his Chronicling journal, and starts to write about this failure of a day.

… And that is why, Dear Journal, I fear we may never see Gregl…

Tarrick looks up. He rubs at his eye. It’s midnight on his bedside table clock. His ear perks up. He’s heard something. Surely he has’t imagined it. Right? Tarrick puts down his quill and closes up his inkpot to prevent any spills. He grabs his candle and looks out through the window. The flickering light of the candle reflects his face in the glass. Tarrick blows out the candle. The flame dissipates in a string of smoke. Then, Tarrick looks back up at the window. He stares at someone else’s face. An eagle-coyote’s mischievous grin.

Tarrick doesn’t know he’s screaming until someone shakes him out of his trance.

Prothea and Grandma.

“What is it? What is it, Tarrick? Are you okay?”

A feather flutters in the wind. He’s gone.

“I… I saw Greglith. The masked one.”