204. [SEGUE] Follow Your Nose

ToNight, like all Nights, Oriole ere'Quinlan heeded first and foremost—no, scratch that. ToNight, unlike many Nights, it took him a bit of convincing to follow his nose.

Having left the outrealmers in Gladiolus's care, Oriole was just about to leave the hospital altogether, accompanied of course by a slightly huffy Caraway. They'd both had a good day's sleep since their argument last Night, but the calico had a long memory and a short temper. It'd be a pain to dodge her interrogations for however longer it took for Oriole's pure fancy to bear something of substance.

All he could do for now was wait. The letter was in the Rakshasa's hands, and the Rakshasa herself was on the other side of the veils. There was no telling how many times the moon would turn before Oriole learned of any progress in the matter. Best to forget about it for now and concentrate on being a good, dependable Duskpooler. Maybe take things easy toNight. A lazy stroll back to the factory to catch up with friends. The Keeper knew he owed old girl Feverfew some words of thanks and commiseration.

Yet, as Oriole stepped soundlessly through the Infirmary's dilapidated first floor, he couldn't help but stop and sniff. A distinct scent floated above Caraway's marmalade breath. But he couldn't decide if he ought to 'follow' it.

"You smell that?"

"What?" the calico demanded with performative irritation, even as she surreptitiously sniffed the collar of her own cape.

"Has Loosestrife been through here recently?"

"Don't think so." Caraway frowned, then let out a small gasp of concern. "Don't tell me he was among the recent run of breaches?"

Oriole shook his head, himself starting to nurse an uneasy frown. "No. I saw him at the factory on my way here. He told me about the breaches. Hm, maybe it's nothing."

But it wasn't nothing. How could his nose ever pick up on nothing? Oriole slowed his steps as he continued down the hallway, until his night-attuned eyes alighted on something on the floor. A clump of familiar, cinnamon-colored fur. He picked it up, grime and all, and gave it a closer sniff.

"It's Loosestrife, alright," he murmured, growing uneasier still. "Didn't look sick to me just two Nights ago. Must've taken a drunken spill. But if he were here, how is it we didn't run into him?"

Oriole stood, turned, looked up the hallway—back toward the basement. He hesitated, suddenly anxious for reasons unknown to himself. So anxious, in fact, that he jumped at a light touch from Caraway.

"Let's just go, Ori," the calico pleaded, viridescent eyes tremulous with fear and a peculiar sort of longing. "I don't like this. I don't like this fer you."

What's that supposed to mean? Oriole's first instinct was to turn his nose up at Caraway's mothering of him—spite being stronger than sense of smell. But he stopped short of voicing an objection.

The truth was he too had been overcome by a sense of nameless foreboding. The Night, like most Nights, held some truth for him to chase, but he was far from sure he wanted to. He was just about to turn and leave, without considering how it might affect his [Oath], when he caught a whiff of something else.

This new scent was impossible to place. Because he'd never smelled it before. A confused mixture of dirt, fur, and blood. All mutated and wrung through an alien medium. To be then sloughed off a phantom not of this world.

Oriole's chest pounded with fear and urgency. He knew he was up against something far beyond his comprehension—beyond his ability to process and overcome. But that made it all the more imperative he follow it to the ends of the earth.

"No, Ori—"

Caraway's choked words fell on deaf ears. Oriole bounded back up the hallway, uncaring who might hear the scrapes of undisciplined claws. His calico friend had no choice but to follow.

The next quarter-hour was a feverish blur of horror and discovery.

The elevator had stopped working. The Tiryaga pair were forced to take the dusty stairs down to B2, where they found a large hole in one of the treatment rooms. Two holes and two more hidden floors later, they were confronted by a truly horrific find.

Oriole was no stranger to dead bodies. After all, every Tidereigner was only one breach away from Frenzy. But nothing had prepared him for the ghastly, clinically violent sight of Loosestrife, insides laid bare and stretched apart for all to see.

Caraway turned away, shaking badly and hugging her own chest as if to push something down. And as much as Oriole too wanted to run far away and never look back, he couldn't. Not when the alien, phantom scent from the beyond had grown stronger. Indeed, the whole room smelled of nothing but death and the malevolent presence that had caused it.

That was when a loud crash echoed from one end of the building.

The Tiryagas now followed their ears to yet more impossible sights. The wall at the end of the hallway wasn't a wall at all but a door. And the door too had been punched open to reveal the elevator shaft on the other side.

"Yer not going down there." Caraway said—question rather than statement—as she stumbled to a stop beside the tabbycat.

"I have to," Oriole replied—assertion rather than fact. "Whatever did that to Loosestrife is down there. I know it. My nose tells me so!"

"Sod yer nose!" Caraway all but screamed, viridescent eyes now shining with tears. She fell to her knees as she continued, "You might have to follow yer nose, Oriole ere'Quinlan, but I have to stop you from being a helpless idiot! Stop you sticking yer nose in something there's no coming back from. It's what I… it's my… Please, Ori. Don't do this to me. Don't go somewhere I can't follow."

Oriole was no stranger to Caraway's tantrums. Which was how he knew this wasn't one of them. He lowered himself and put his left hand on the calico's shaking shoulder. In the darkness, a jasper gemstone gave off an earthy-red gleam.

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"Well, then, you have nothing to worry about, Cara," he said with as much sincerity as he could muster. "You ain't getting rid of me that easy. I will come back. That's a promise."

Caraway let out a shuddering sob by way of reply. It was all she could manage. Oriole understood, gave her shoulder one more squeeze, then rose to face his own fears. What he planned to do next would 'expose' him as a Wayfarer in front of his closest Tiryaga neighbor. But this was as good an occasion as any to break his seal of secrecy.

He stood at the broken edge and peered down, seeing almost nothing despite his cat eyes. The elevator shaft was dark. Too dark, indeed, to cast any shadows.

Unless one came equipped with a convenient, arcane source of light. Oriole raised his left hand, bringing THE PLEDGE's signet above his head. The Keeper was good, and it kept a watchful, benevolent eye over the creatures of its Gloam. On this occasion, the Keeper lent its magic to one of its own, to cast an earthy-red glow upon a pitch-black shaft.

And as soon as Oriole saw his own feline shadow dancing atop grimy concrete, he also gained the means to catch it.

[Oathborn Technique: SHADOW TAG]

Oriole's physical body sublimated and joined the darkness all around. It then rematerialized some twenty feet away, right atop the dancing shadow on the wall. Immediately, he angled the light onto a new location lower down, a distance he closed with another shadow-guided teleport.

Just like that, Oriole [Tagged] his way down the secret elevator shaft, making short work of the next several floors. As he passed B10, however, he came face to face with a pair of outrealmers who'd been watching from an open doorframe.

The Yaksha—she of a peculiar 'sixth sense' of her own—merely observed with a serene if somewhat probing expression. The Manusya, on the other hand, looked up with slack-jawed surprise, before quickly putting on a one-eyebrowed grin. The man even managed to wave Oriole on… with his left hand to be specific, because his whole right arm was missing.

The shock encounter nearly threw Oriole off course. But he managed to regain his composure mid-[Tag], enough to finish the rest of the descent without incurring fall damage.

More strange discoveries awaited at the bottom.

Oriole first landed on the mangled wreckage of a steel cage. He'd half-expected to find… a corpse or carcass here, but there was nothing. Nor were there any footprints, blood spatter, tufts of fur.

There was, however, a scent for him to follow.

It was that phantom from the beyond he'd been chasing all Night. Except now, the scent had taken on substance. Whatever or whoever the phantom was, it was here with Oriole. Breathing the same, stale Night air.

Further in, the basement's lowest floor revealed itself in its bizarre entirety. A wide-open space with high ceilings, almost as spacious as a factory floor, and constructed from the same alien materials as B3 and B4. Desks in circular arrangements surrounded large signboards with illegible writing. The whole place had the look of a 'reception area', complete with chairs and couches of foreign design. And that was perhaps the least strange thing about it.

Dozens—perhaps even hundreds—of bodies milled about the place, lifelike despite their utter stillness. Some stood in orderly queues. Some sat staring at strange objects in their hands. Still others looked a good deal 'busier', moving from point A to point B.

Some of the figures were Tiryagas like Oriole or Caraway, except dressed in clothes that were anything but Duskpooler in fashion. Some had antlers and elongated faces, marking them out as the deer-people from beyond the veils. The two races mingled with each other in the same queues and sofas, as if sharing the same space was the most natural thing in the world. Their frozen bodies all gave off an unnatural, umber gleam—lifeless yet somehow abuzz with nothing but life.

The sight was so strange—so wonderful—that it nearly distracted Oriole from his quest. But he'd followed a scent here, and he meant to find the source. And for better or worse, he didn't have to search much further. Sitting in one of the lobby chairs, prominent for his size and the very fact of being alive, was:

[Designation: GLADIOLUS ere'BRANAGH—Straddler of Worlds]

[Aberrant Race: Paradox Incarnate]

[Aberrant Class: Dungeon Boss]

[PRIMAL Instrument: SCALPEL]

[Beast of Calling: DREAMPROWLER]

The signs—the scent—had all been there. Oriole simply didn't want to believe it. Well, he had no choice but to believe it now. But whether he could comprehend it—process and overcome—was an entirely different matter.

Health bar half-empty. Breaths ragged and even a little wheezy. Clothes torn in parts to reveal singed fur and the raw skin underneath. The tiger—the best doctor and Wayfarer around—looked to be in rough shape. But that didn't stop him from letting out a harsh, guttural laugh as Oriole approached.

"Mr Quinlan!" Gladiolus roared, ever polite to friends and patients. "Aren't you a sight for sore eyes? A friendly face in a sea of strangers. Ah, but you've been keeping a secret from me, haven't you? If I'd known sooner, I would've chosen you as my assistant!"

"Assist you with what?"

It took everything Oriole had to keep the tremor out of his voice. Gladiolus laughed again.

"What else? You and I are of a kind, are we not? Cursed though we are with the impenetrable quagmire that is Tidereign at Night, we must yet Wayfare. Prove to the Keeper that we, along with our shadow selves, are worthy of ascension."

"Worthy?" Oriole spat, anger fueling courage. "You think what you did to Loosestrife is worthy? And only the Keeper knows what you've been up to on the other side!"

The truth found Oriole's tongue even as he reached for it. The phantom from the beyond. The inexplicable malevolence. That had all been Gladiolus. How long had this been going on? How could he have been blind to it all the while?

But he knew why. Caraway was right. All this time, his head had been in the wrong place. His eyes had failed to watch out for his neighbors. And his nose had chased fancies that led him astray.

"You wound me with your accusations, my boy," Gladiolus answered good-naturedly, even as his tiger eyes flashed with menace. Paradox incarnate. "If the Keeper saw fit to smother us Night-siders in favor of our Day-side siblings, then it falls to us to prove the error of its ways. We're only taking back what's been stolen from us. It's the principle of things, don't you see?"

"No, I don't see!" Oriole shouted down his own fears. "And I wager Loosestrife ain't see it neither. Nor the deer-folk you cut down with yer tainted blade."

At this, Gladiolus chuckled in genuine amusement.

"Cut down?" he mocked. "You think I merely 'cut down' my subjects? Oh, you do me injustice with your words, boy. So be it. You'll need a proper education to be of any use to me. Let this be your first lesson."

With that, Gladiolus stood to his full height, easily dwarfing a ginger tabby. In his hand glinted SCALPEL, eternally sharp despite all the flesh, soul, and sky it'd cut through.

Oriole spread his arms wide and lowered himself into a slouch, ready to strike the enemy even if he couldn't comprehend it. He wasn't stupid. He knew he stood no chance against a being of Gladiolus's power and experience, but the Keeper damn him to oblivion if he backed down now!

Yet, unbeknownst even to Oriole's nose, the Night held one more surprise in store. For a third entity now joined the fray, first as a voice that called from the beyond.

"Well said, tabbycat! Now, let's give this doctor a taste of his own medicine."

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