An Overcoat, a Flask, and a Crossbow

The sidestreets of Vulane were a tangled web of alleys and forgotten passages, a perfect maze for those who thrived in the shadows. Here, amidst the flickering glow of lanterns and the distant hum of the city’s opulent districts, sat a modest office between a baker and below an apothecary. The worn wooden slab above the door simply read: 

“Uresh Greystone: Investigator.”

Being an investigator in the City of Lies was like being a captain on a ship that had already sunk three times. Uresh was busy relighting candles in his shop when he stopped and knelt.

Uresh was an arctic fox - barely larger than a rabbit - but he knew where his loyalties lay.

“Lord Reynard,” he said solemnly, invoking the God of foxes, compromise, and mischief - his pawhands clasped together in prayer. “Please give me a case that will make my name a little bigger...”

And with those words, somewhere - deep in the shadows of The World, snaking through the bones of dead Gods - the strings of fate snapped taut. 

It was rare that prayers were answered, and rarer still that they be answered in person and with clarity. At that moment, however, Uresh’ office flooded with golden light. The little vulpine turned, his eyes filled with divine light. He shaded with his little, white-furred arms.

“Be careful what you wish for,” a voice said, filling the room to the rafters. It took a second, but the light eventually coalesced into something Uresh could comprehend.

The little detective smirked as he beheld Reynard, his divine lute in hand, casually leaning against the doorframe.

“A God is looking for a detective,” the arctic fox said, relaxing when he saw. “I think I’ll tell my grandpups this one, if I live to have any. To what do I owe the illimitable honor, my lord?”

Reynard the Fox had the most clever smile that Uresh had ever seen - fangs visible on his pointy, fluffy, glowing muzzle. 

“Are you busy, Uresh?” The God of Mischief asked languidly.

“You heard my prayer, my lord: things have been slow,” Uresh said, picking up a stack of parchments from his desk. “I am only busy with trying to figure out how to pay my rent.”

“And Szal the Blue does not pay it for you?”

Uresh laughed and shook his head. Reynard was referring to Szal Veilwinter, the archbishop of the Temple of Veilwinter: a fox that Uresh had thought - until that moment - was part of Reynard’s flock, flying a darker banner.

 “Szal offered me a pretty sum to join his ‘temple’ my lord and investigate things on his behalf. I declined every time. He’s too slick, even for a fox. Too organized. Too rich.”

Reynard winked and smiled , strumming a lone note on his lute. “You are exactly the kind of investigator I have been searching for.”

Uresh leaned back. “So I’m investigating the most powerful temple in Vulane? ...Or the most powerful temple in the world?”

Reynard stepped into Uresh’ office, causing the candles to flicker back to full life.

“Clever as always, my arctic fox. No, not the most powerful in the world... although that’s debatable. The case I have for you is... delicate in nature,” the God of Foxes said, delicately strumming his lute.

“Delicate, eh?” Uresh said. “Coming from the God of Mischief...”

“...And compromise,” Reynard corrected.

“...and compromise, yes m’lord,” Uresh said, gulping, “the phrase ‘delicate in nature’ sounds like a riddle wrapped in a nightmare. Go ahead.”

Reynard’s smirk slowly cooled. “I have a name for you, Uresh: Chinon DeSade.”

Uresh shook his little, white, fluffy head. “Doesn’t ring a bell, my lord. Ah - aside from the ‘DeSade’ part. If you’re looking for the Sade Mountains they’re to the East a bit.”

Reynard’s smile came back. “Your jaded charm fades not, even in a God’s presence, Uresh. Of course that was the first place we looked for this... creature.” 

‘We?’ Uresh repeated to himself. Reynard continued.

“...For the time being, let me spin you a tale... and I hope you have enough wine to hear it... and bear it.”

“I’m a little short of wine my lord,” Uresh said.

“Allow me,” the God of foxes, mischief, and compromise said, snapping his fingers. Immediately a golden bottle appeared on a nearby table with two goblets next to it. Uresh toasted his new client and settled in to listen.

The night passed with drinks and hushed conversation. The morning - hidden by the ever-present rain and clouds of Vulane - came, and the revelations began to sink into Uresh’s fur. Reynard gave Uresh some time to digest his story - as well as some food that he had summoned - and then continued. By the end of it, twilight had spread her twinkling blanket over the city and Reynard gave his fond farewell, along a magic pouch of gold, leaving Uresh with a riddle that even the Gods had not solved... nor even been aware of before very recently.

Uresh collapsed on his bed and slept. When the arctic fox awoke, his entire soul was still tired. Vulane, luckily, was constantly overcast, and so his sharp vulpine eyes were not overwhelmed.

“A mortal who is a threat to the Gods themselves,” Uresh said, eyes blurry with wine, secrets, and puzzles buried thousands of years deep. He looked over his stack of notes once more and looked up from his below-street level office to the dark, continually-raining sky. While he was wrestling with the biggest case of his career - of anyone’s career - he watched as shadowy figures moved outside: heads filled with their own lives and their own problems.

It took Uresh a few moments to come up with a plan: he’d have to ask the oldest creature in town to pick up any thread that the very cautious creature he was hunting would have left behind.

Uresh needed a break. He needed a solid income. He needed a mansion. What he had instead was an overcoat, a flask, and a crossbow.

He stood up - full of whiskey and the secrets of the Gods - and left the office, his light paws skittering over the wet flagstones of the Vulane.

The “Fogs” - the Fog District - was not a place a creature wandered into unprepared. The only creatures who could wander the district without losing their minds were the “Silvermasks”: the already-brainwashed guards of the Veilwinter Temple. Uresh had a heavy bit of cloth over his little snoot to at least mitigate the effects of the ever-present fog in the ever-rainy City of Secrets.

Other than Szal the Blue, Azheretitierehtiazr was Uresh’s second least favorite resident of Vulane. The smoke from the great black dragon’s opium pipe that filled the entire district with mind altering fog was as thick as butter.

Uresh pulled his coat over himself as he heard the rapturous laughter of wine-soaked, fog-sick creatures in the streets. Some residents seemed normal even without masks to ward off the fog, which bothered Uresh even more.

The arctic fox looked over his notes again. He’d worked for Azheretiti before - tracking down creatures who had dared to move into her drug business with something called ‘caffeine’. After the case was ‘finished’ and filed away, Uresh was invited to a private party in her “little palace,” as she called it. 

He just hoped she’d remember him. 

The Fogs was not just full of fog and rain, but shadows, laughter, and creatures who - even in the City of Secrets - wanted to hide. The tight alleyways that the great dragon had been pushed into hid a lot of anger and madness: and not just the dragon’s.

Uresh appeared through a small alleyway onto what looked like a stage, next to a male weasel in a white robe and silver mask while creatures skittered nearby.

“Excuse me,” Uresh said, jumping down and continuing on. In the audience was a large badger male, laughing hysterically at nothing.

“My play is about life!” The actor yelled at Uresh. The arctic fox turned back.

“All right,” Uresh said simply, part of him wishing he understood.

Up ahead was the bath house: Azheretiti’s palace of delusion. Silvermask platoons marched around the area looking for anyone on Szal’s various wanted lists... or anyone who seemed like they didn’t belong.

Uresh smirked.

Someone who doesn’t belong in the Fogs? Tyrian saints, perhaps? Nuns? But it was a passing thought. He straightened his suit and mask and marched confidently to the entrance where there was already a long line of various creatures who - not mixed up enough by the dragon’s second-hand smoke - wanted to get closer to the source of madness.

Uresh concentrated and took a deep breath, lowering his own cloth mask so as not to offend the guards.

“Uresh Greystone,” he said confidently to a large guardrat at the entrance, his eyes red with haze. “I wish to speak to the Mistress of this establishment.”

Without a word, the rat turned and snapped his fingers to a creature in an upper balcony. Uresh saw the shadow, whose pinprick violet eyes stared directly at him... after a few seconds - a few very long seconds - the shadow lifted its robed hand and snapped back.

Uresh exhaled, and already he could feel that the world had shifted.

“All right,” the rat said slowly, opening the heavy wooden door.

Immediately, the wave of fog - the fog that made the Fogs the Fogs - crashed over the arctic fox’s delicate snoot like a wave of cold lava.

The inside of the palace was larger than he remembered: far, far larger. Creatures lounging against each other, whispering their secrets, switching roles, abandoning expectations on giant pillows in the foggy darkness. Huge statues with water pouring out of them seemed to sprout out of the fog like trees. Creatures laughed and touched him and he couldn’t fight them.

“Hey fox,” a male rabbit said. “Follow me!”

“Oh... all right...” Uresh said, unable to resist, following the rabbit down a marble staircase until a large male red fox appeared out of the mist. He was so beautiful - almost glowing. He was leaning against the bannister, lute in hand, darkness yawning on the staircase underneath him.

“Uresh,” the figure said with a pitying glare. “Don’t follow strange rabbits... I gave you a task.”

Sobriety visited Uresh for a brief moment as he saw his rabbit companion disappear into the dark fog on the staircase.

“Y-yes, my lord.”

Uresh gulped and made his way back up the staircase where fog was dripping down the spiralled steps like a mysterious waterfall. As he travelled upwards, he noticed more guards - mostly rats, when they weren’t silvermasks - and fewer guests. Uresh noted the silvermasks as he ascended.

More of ‘em around now than before, if I recall... maybe Veilwinter has penetrated even THIS place... 

At the top of the long spiral, Uresh gave his fluffy white tail and headfur final brushes with his paw as he addressed the two guards in front of the huge ebony door at the very top of the huge bathhouse: one a rat, the other a badger in a silver mask - both of them with halberds twice as tall as Uresh himself.

“Let him in,” came a booming voice before Uresh could say anything. With a push from the two guards, the huge doors opened, unleashing a huge purple cloud that crashed on Uresh like a sailor on the railing of an old ship in the Surryean sea.

“Ureeeshhh...” came a smooth, sly, gigantic voice. Uresh pushed through the cloud and entered the gigantic, black marble-lined room of the Smoking Lady of Vulane. “I do wish you visited more often...”

The little arctic fox’s eyes had trouble adjusting to the darkness, even though there was a huge fireplace lit and roaring. Uresh tried to steady himself.

“My l-lady,” Uresh began. “Unfortunately this is not... entirely... a social call.”

“Always business, my little fox.”

Uresh tried to keep the room from spinning by planting down his little feet, but it didn’t work very well. The purple mist was swirling around him like a tornado as a huge presence moved silently in the room.

“I h-have a name for you,” he said to the voice, taking out his notebook. “Chinon DeSade.”

There was a momentary pause. “And what care you for a failed, First Age archaeomancer?”

The First Age, huh? A mortal who is thousands of years old. And he was an archaeomancer... whatever that was. Chinon wrote it all down as fast as he could before the mind-bending power of Azheretiti’s pipe sent him over the edge and into the abyss.

“Oh... just a name I heard in the mirror one day.”

A chuckle, deep and pervasive.

“Any other questions for me...” Azheretiti said, her scaly black body slithering silently around the little fox, causing the purple clouds to curl menacingly in the dark, “...detective?”

“Th-that’s all for now, My Lady.”

“Gooood... And now, I insist you stay... for awhiiiile...”