Between the Veil and Crown

Kylin 37

Kylin had intended on leaving later that day. However, given how hard Amelia had taken the news, he remained with her for the rest of the day and stayed another night. His plan to leave the next day when he could be sure of Amelia being alright, but the overcast skies indicated a storm brewing. Kylin let himself be convinced by the other Rangers and Amelia to stay another day.

It was a wise decision, as the storm was one of snow and provided terrible visibility. It lasted the afternoon and well into the evening. Kylin was rather grateful that he was not spending the night in forest after that kind of snow. Midmorning the next day, he readied Vicious and headed out. He made a promise to Amelia to pass on her apology to Selim for kidnapping him and making him do work under the influence; a request she had made with extreme sorrow and remorse.

At first, Vicious was quite upset with having to leave the comfort of the stable and paddock. She soon discovered, though, that Kylin encouraged a faster pace and the chance to canter her way down the path was too exciting of an opportunity to remain upset. Even with all of Vicious's flaws, after the steady plodding along of Calef, he found that he had rather missed Vicious.

Inadvisable as it was, he chose to ride through the night, attaching his ball of light to Vicious's breast strap to illuminate the path. The snow, particularly the snow that sat in the way of the sun, had melted away, leaving little hindrance to his path. By the time dawn was just started to wake up, he had arrived at the Ranger's headquarters. He settled vicious into the stable and headed to his room for a couple hours of sleep.

He had not received specifics instructions upon his return to headquarters. After he had slept some, he got himself quick breakfast of potatoes and eggs, seasoned with herbs from the forest, and headed in the direction of Rei's office.

He had not gotten far before he was joined by Shaelren. He heard him coming quickly up the hall and stopped for him, correctly assuming that Shaelren was looking to speak with him.

Without so much as a good morning, Shaelren started handing him papers. "I heard Vivienne's report," Shaelren said. "We think it will be critical for the records to be carefully reviewed for any pattern. The ankheg's behavior is too odd to dismiss, and we're near certain the attack on the village was planned. You were volunteered to review."

The first papers he was handed were maps. One was a copy of the ankheg tunnels, the next a map of the Veil with the ankheg tunnels marked out. Other documents Shaelren handed him included Kylin's own notes, as well as observations of various hunters regarding the entire situation.

"Am I the only one working on this?" Kylin asked.

"Right now," Shaelren said. "Copies have been made and some of the regulars will be reviewing as well. As soon as you suspect you have anything, send a bird to me, Vivienne, and Rei."

Kylin nodded, and the hunting master briskly walked off. Sighing as he looked at the stack of documents, Kylin changed course to the library.

When he arrived at the library, he wasn't surprised to find Marta there, sitting at one of the tables. Sitting in stacks around her and in front of her were journals, some opened and some closed. She ran her finger through the handwriting of the journal directly in front of her, head leaning close to it. What was surprising to find was Selim, sitting at the same table. He also had journals open in front of him, though not nearly as many and he was not reading them nearly as studiously.

Kylin had planned on joining Marta, but the sight of Selim made him pause. After having Amelia break down like she had back in Hallowhaven, Kylin was not sure how he felt about Selim. Amelia's distress was in part Selim's fault, as he did not come clean with her. In addition, he had deceived her and had no real plan of what he was going to do next. The thought made Kylin uncomfortable, and he wasn't particularly pleased with Amelia's distress. On the other hand, Selim had shown he was not exactly against Amelia and did the very thing many a Ranger had expressed a desire to do. As much as Kylin disliked Selim's deceit, it couldn't exactly be described as being done with malicious intent, and he had decided to side with a villager over his own plight.