Wolves and Men

“Every Sage in the City?” Katherine asked wide eyed.

“Yes.” Derceto responded coldly. “No one knew what happened only what the aftermath caused.”

“Who allowed that to happen at all, and what the hell happened? What did they do?” pushed William.

“No one knows for sure, young Enforcer,” Derceto answered quietly. “What we do know is that when the remaining Elders opened the chamber all they found were a few piles of clothes, a bloody wolf pelt, and the bloody pelts of the two wolf born Shape shifters. There was no trace of any of the Sages that went into the chamber except for their clothes and pelts and as for the wolf body there was no bones, or muscles, everything was gone except its bloody fur.”

“Sounds like a horror movie plot line to me,” remarked Nicolas.

Charles shot him a sideways warning glance. “I thought when one of our kind dies,” he said returning his attention to the Elder, “we revert back to our original natural born form. Why would there be werewolf pelts left if they died?”

“That was one of the things that disturbed the City Elders most, but they did not have the skill to ascertain those answers.” Derceto seemed to be unmoved by the story she had just told.

“There’s more you’re not telling us,” Aceso states.

The Elder stayed quiet for a few moments as she looked over the young pack. “The room was sealed, as it was.”

“Why even bother?” asked Nicolas.

“With all the sages gone,” replied Katherine, “it would be impossible for anyone to learn about what they might have been doing or what had happened in their final moments.”

“Correct,” Derceto said. “The remaining Elders knew that if they were ever going to find out what happened they would need gifted and trained Sages to try and recreate what happened there. The room was sealed to help protect and preserve the energies that were concentrated there so that others might be able to study it at a later time.

It took a few months. The Elders sent for the most gifted and powerful Sages from the City under the Rock and the City under the Ice. By that time, the Whyte Plain was used regularly by our people to speed up communication between the Cities. The troublesome thing was that it took months for Sages to start arriving from the other Cities.

No one could explain why and speculation was rampant. The City was steadily growing more tense and it was only a matter of time before full hysteria and panic gripped everyone. The stories and theories ranged from vampires having discovered the Whyte Plain and had begun to capture our kind even there. There were stories of this Sage or that one being overly confident and being caught by humans and killed. It was a time of chaos and uncertainty.”

“Where were the Elders when all this was happening?” Charles asked.

“They were trying to calm the population and give the newly arrived Sages all the help they could,” Derceto replied. “The city was still trying to get over the loss of all their Sages in a few moments.

The Elder Tracker, Yasir Fayad tried speaking with a few of the survivors. He used every technique that the Trackers know. But after a few weeks he gave up. The Sages that had survived that day had had their minds completely wiped clean. There was no memory; there were no higher brain functions at all. They were comatose with no memory of anything and no ability to process or learn anything. They were completely empty husks.

“That’s… terrible,” remarked Nicolas dryly. “Hey, just letting you guys know; if that ever happens to me, kill me. No questions, just kill me.”

“What did the Sages find?” asked Katherine ignoring Nicolas.

“The Elders did the best they could to calm the city and reassure them that there was no way the humans, or the vampires, had discovered them. It was almost a mile deep in the Earth, some of which was underneath mountains, and no human or vampire would be able to dig down that far to find them.

The Sages meanwhile, went into the chamber and studied the residual energies that were there and began to try to piece together what had happened. They studied the wolf pelt, the piles of clothes, and the werewolf skins. It was slow work but the City was desperate for answers. There was nothing to be done except let the Sages work. Through the long months they began to piece together what had happened.

The wolf pelt still had traces of whatever the vampires had done to it. The pelt itself felt slimly to the Sages, not physically but when they examined it with their own methods and energy the pelt sloughed off their attempts like oil repelling water.”

“Yeah and?” Nicolas finally said.

“If you don’t want to hear what the Elder has to say, you can leave any time,” Katherine spat.

“No, it’s not that, I just want to know when we are going to hear something worthwhile instead of all this bullshit tension building blah blah blah, Sage magic, blah blah blah.” quipped Nicolas.

Katherine shook her head in disgust, “You’re insufferable!” she spat.

“Are you two children done?” asked Derceto coldly.

Katherine’s cheeks reddened noticeably and nodded her head once. Nicolas shrugged his shoulders and made an off handed wave.

Derceto continued, “The hypothesis of what happened that day and corroborated with subsequent Whyte Plain attacks and disappearances is this; whatever the vampires had done to that wolf, the Sages tried to use their abilities to counter it. What actually happened in that chamber will never be known, but whatever they did seemed to settle for a few moments and then the vampire technique mixed with our own powers and energies exploded outward. The werewolf skins left behind suggests that when that happened their souls were ripped from their bodies and deposited into the Whyte Plain. They hadn’t been killed, just their souls had been transplanted into the only place for them to go.”

“And because of what had happened to the other Sages it is reasonable to suggest that the same thing happened to their souls and they became the Shadows of the Whyte Plain,” Aceso stated into the silence.