“What have I done?” Albino laughed, shaking his head. Jerome’s expression was priceless. “I have been asking myself the same thing since you first locked me up in this room. Your hounds have been very kind, and I do not regret meeting them, but your behavior has to be a new low in common courtesy and guest treatment.”
“You are not guests,” Jerome growled. He threw a stack of letters to the ground and stomped on them, livid and on edge. How had the boy gotten access to the verseling tower? “You are our prisoner. Your girlfriend has locked herself in her room, and your bitch is getting along with the hounds. It is only a matter of time until she is bred by them.”
Albino looked to Fierawr. She squared up to another hound, flared her teeth, and circled the other female warily. Both were pregnant in their final trimester. ‘Do not mess with my pups.’ That was the meaning of this ritual. The males kept their distance because Fierawr had been claimed by someone they respected. In other words, this was normal behavior for them. She was no closer to being bred by a hound than when Fierawr arrived here. If anything, she was less eager to do so because the hounds didn’t meet the new standard Albino had set.
“If you say so. What happened?” Albino tilted his head, acting innocent and curious.
Jerome wanted to slug him, but a random thought stopped him. The boy’s bitch was pregnant. The reason for her disinterest in his hounds might even be the presence of another man’s pups in her womb. The hound breeder wouldn’t put it past a Howler’s inconsistent hormonal eruptions. She would give birth soon, too…
For a moment, Jerome showed a grin. Albino didn’t miss it, but perhaps he wasn’t supposed to. “I reconsidered. You will get the test you asked for. I don’t have high hopes, but struggle as best you can, peasant.”
“Thank you for your encouraging words, esteemed hound breeder of Verquuva Savante, fort of Lord Marciel.”
***
The date of the beast-keeper test was fast approaching. Nobles and other figures of note attended in droves, eager for some much-needed stimulation to their lives. Peasants did not travel to Verquuva Savante from far away, but even the poorer locals were allowed entry. Nobody expected the challenger to win. After all, none other than hound breeder Jerome will judge the results. He had a bit of a reputation in the Verquuva Voohrdom. Nobody wanted to pass up the chance to see another fool try to scale insurmountable odds.
“This is one full stadium,” Albino commented, using his farsight to explore the venture of the test… or rather, the first stage of it.
Attached to the Verquuva Savante fort was a spacious training field that went unused in the main force’s absence. Many unfavorable (and probably correct) rumors surrounded the man, but Lord Marciel rarely lorded over the battlefield from the back. He was always in the thick of battle, directing his troops from within their ranks. Albino admired that. Even now, Lord Marciel fought bravely against the Empire of Hooh, surrounded by troops who relied on his wisdom of war. This was a stroke of luck. Lord Marciel’s presence would have complicated things.
For the rest, a fence had been erected around the training field. The nobles would watch from the high windows of the fort while the peasants watched from behind the fences. Many other hounds already barked and howled from various cages within the barricade. A bit over an hour remained until the test began.
At last, Jerome saw it fit to free Albino from his constraints for good. “Feeling nervous, peasant boy?”
“Not really. Sore and in pain are more appropriate descriptors.”
“You don’t say? I don’t care. Let’s get you freshened up. Those nobles don’t like to watch filth. Don’t get me wrong. You are filth, but you won’t look it until they choose you to. The beast, too.” Albion rolled his eyes. This was a cakewalk compared to what the knights had put him through. Jerome led Fierawr and a stumbling Albino (he still had holes in his feet and left hand) to the bath, where he quickly undressed. “Don’t just gawk at me! Undress, the both of you!”
Jerome was barely more than skin and bones. Combined with his talk and spindly physique, he looked like a walking skeleton.
Fierawr refused to part with her mantle, but Albino’s insistence eventually convinced her. “Good girl,” he said, making the Howler excitedly wag her tail.
“Don’t go screwing her in there. Blood is a mess to clean up.”
“Blood would be the least of your problems,” Albino said. He poured a healthy amount of calming energy into Fierawr, counteracting her hormonal horny state somewhat. Completely eradicating it would be bad for her health. Albino took off his clothes after Fierawr was done. “I am surprised to see you personally attend our bath. A man in your position should rile up the crowd and prepare the venue, no?”
“There is nothing to prepare, and the crowd needs no riling up. You will fail like everyone else.”
“Same as when I fell to your torture like anyone else?” Jerome clicked his tongue. Albino chuckled and unclothed his upper body. The hound breeder gasped, and even Fierawr fell deathly quiet. Albino looked at his left shoulder. The scar from his first meeting with Fierawr had healed over somewhat, but it remained a nasty sight. “Oh, this? Want to guess who did this?”
Fierawr’s ears fell, and she pulled her tail between her legs. “Rawr…”
“Come here, Fierawr. I told you I do not mind.” Albino kissed the tip of her twitching ears, wiped the tears from her face, and somberly kissed Fierawr on the mouth. Jerome couldn’t believe it. He had coated his body in an oil that slowly riled Howlers (and hounds) up beyond control. Why didn’t it have any effect? “It seems like Fierawr answered the riddle already. Let us bath, shall we?”
Jerome stopped at the edge of the bathtub. He didn’t want the oil to get washed off. “You two get in there. I will call some servants to- Whoa?” Albino pushed him in the middle of his speech. Jerome made a spectacular belly flop into the knee-deep bathtub. “What are you doing, you lousy, stinking, retching-“
“You will not do anything to me now,” Albino interrupted, calmly entering the water. He turned all the dirt and blood on his body into albiversal energy, which Albino cycled back to close the holes in his left hand and feet. “I am merely playing along with your values, hound keeper. We both know the current happenings should not have come to pass, but here we are. As long as Lord Marciel’s shadow looms over you, I will act out, be insolent, and inconvenience you all I want.” Albino shrugged. “Well, and the smell of your body oil is annoying.”
After a few minutes, there was a knock on the bathroom door. “The servants are here,” Jerome said.
True to his word, a group of beautiful women (similar in build and looks to Fierawr, only without the animal traits) and beautiful men (alike in build and looks to Albino) entered the bath naked. Jerome didn’t pay them any mind. His eyes were trained on Albino and Fierawr, waiting for their reactions. Disappointingly, Fierawr ignored the men and even hissed with her fangs bared whenever they got too close. Albino seemed pleased enough, which was a concern in and of itself. How could he move like that with holes in… his… Jerome gawked. The holes were gone. Only scars remained. What was going on?
The single knock also proved a problem. The servants had searched Albino’s bag for another letter and found one, but one knock meant they also found one in the Howler’s mantle.
“This is bad,” Albino said, confusing everyone. He was getting washed by the female servants, his eyes closed, and his mouth formed into a happy smile. “There was another letter in her mantle… Could it be that his cattle and girlfriend also have a copy? And what of this mysterious butterfly we failed to find… What would you say, Jerome, the hound breeder? Did I read your mind correctly?”
“…So? Will you send the letter now?”
Albino laughed. “Are you mental? I would only send this unfinished letter as a last resort. I need to add a paragraph about your crimes to make it whole. All the foul play brings some variety to the one-sided assaults the knights committed.”
The servants kept quiet. They didn’t want to be involved in such matters that could get them killed in a heartbeat.
Jerome squinted. “Good to know.”
After that, Albino was clothed in more appropriate garments for the occasion, as Jerome put it. Pure white and silky clean. Albino supposed that the dirt, which would quickly sully its purity, made an unfavorable impression on any onlookers. Fierawr should have worn something similar, but she resisted the idea so much that Jerome allowed her to wear her mantle.
The walk to the arena was awkward and quiet. On the rare occasions when Lord Marciel had allowed such a hound-breeder test in the past, the white garments hadn’t even survived this journey through the castle. Jerome had even prepared servants to stumble and spill various things on Albino, but he avoided them with graceful perfection. The garments shone as white as always when the group arrived at the gate to the training grounds… no, Jerome swore the white shirt and pants looked even whiter than before. How was that possible?
“May I ask something before we go out?” Albino asked.
“…What is it?”
“Sir Meriwether announced you as an artist painting with the misery of others, but you never tortured me yourself. You only overlooked the knights as they did things to me… What was that about? Where is the artistry I was promised?”
“…” Jerome shuddered. Albino weirded the man out.
“Here is my theory. Your creative streak starts during the hound-keeper test. Your domain lies beyond this gate, and you are about to unleash the full force of your artistic mind on the world.”
Jerome rolled his shoulders, cracked his neck, and opened the gates. “What if I am? You should look scared if you know all that.”
“Why would I be scared? I am about to become an art piece.”
***
The first thing the nobles did when Albino and Fierawr stepped outside was dunk a bucket of jelly on them. Albino had seen it coming, but he had to give them a bit of a show. Fierawr was quick to accept this excuse to lick her mate clean.
“Jeliq’ahr paste,” Quionne wind-spoke from above. “It contains alcohol, though it does not taste like it. It will have no effect on the child of an Albion, at least.”
“They sure like to paint with misery,” Albino joked, preparing to absorb the rest of the jelly through his skin. It always felt awkward to do so, like being stung by a thousand mosquitoes at once. The next part, he said out loud. “Thank you for the nourishment, dear Lords and Ladies! A mere peasant like me would have never tasted such gourmet food without your welcome assistance!”
“Oh, they are upset, they are upset!” Quionne was amused.
Albino led Fierawr to the center. “I honestly wondered if you would show up… or if Brenda would allow you to attend.”
“She is a worrywart, but… she might be less selfish than I thought.”
Albino whistled. “High praise, coming from you.”
Before they could get too comfortable, the test began. There were physical tasks to see if Fierawr was in good health (usually, a pregnant Howler would have problems with this, but Fierawr was no longer an ordinary Howler, so she passed with ease), mental tasks to see if she could follow orders (which Fierawr obviously could), tasks that tested her loyalty to Albino (she had no problem with this), and tasks that put her in severe danger. That last group was for the audience’s sake, as the rest was boring to watch. Jumping through fire, defending Albino from various crossbow shots (the tips were dull, but they would still hurt), defeating a knight in battle (the poor man was selected from the decent folk among the knights, and he was so scared after what he had been told about Fierawr that the duel ended in a single strike), and many other things. Despite the alcohol, Albino’s constant use of his energy transfer kept her calm and functional, if barely.
The nobles had some power over the difficulty levels. They could pay for other hounds to be freed and distract the pair, more knights to battle Fierawr at once, more crossbow bolts to be shot, for harsher conditions to pass the physical tests… Some splurged quite a bit on this, leading Albino to believe that Fierawr might have failed some of the tasks as the requirements had become impossible.
After Fierawr proved she could coexist peacefully with humans (several orphans had been shoved towards her, and she obviously didn’t hurt them), the Howler dove in for a kiss with her mate. While most men looked disgusted at their public affection, some women, even among nobles, swooned at the sight.
Jerome sweated. Technically speaking, this event had already proven successful, but Lord Marciel would never forgive him if such a prime specimen of a Howler slipped through his gasp. The hound breeder coughed, stood up, and raised his voice. “Indeed, the Howler and the village boy are in a relationship! Some of you might have noticed her big belly… Yes, indeed! That is the boy’s child!”
“No way!” a noble woman exclaimed, growing giddy. To think love could blossom even between such unlikely lovers!
“Pregnancies put Howlers into a heated state! She has only been able to function normally because of the calming incense we spread over the field since morning (they hadn’t), but it should run dry soon. (It hadn’t run dry. They only started spreading more alcoholic gas for a while now.) Why don’t we end today’s part of the examination with this: Has she learned enough discipline to keep calm even when in heat?”
The audience roared. The local folk still remembered when a Howler had broken one of the cages and mounted the hound inside before the owner’s eyes, as did the nobles. The story continued to be a hit at tea parties and social gatherings.
Albino smiled, bowed, thanked Quionne for using her air elementalism to blow the gas away, sat in the field, and tapped his lap. Fierawr’s tail stiffened. Fierawr knew what Albino wanted to do, and she didn’t hesitate to dive into his lap. Slowly, magically, phenomenally, Albino massaged her ears while pouring sleepy energy into his mate. Fierawr snored before long, a content smile on her face.
Albino sang to make sure the nobles didn’t interfere. Quionne had taught him some local music, and he had the wind carry his voice over the assembled crowd. Nobody moved a muscle. Nobody made a sound. If it wasn’t necessary for survival, they might have stopped breathing as well. Albino’s voice was the most refined thing they had ever heard. They just wanted to listen to him sing forever. Even the knights and nobles and Jerome forgot that they were supposed to root against Albino for a short while.
The nobles were so confounded that one family lost sight of their daughter, who soon emerged from the gate, running towards Albino and Fierawr. “Your singing was great! Are you a famous bard? A minstrel? A musician? I have never heard anything like it!”
Albino chuckled, shaking his head. “I am but a villager.”
The girl smiled. Her bangs covered her eyes, and her skin was a strange, greenish color. She curtsied. “My name is Glugloom Chesterfield. What is yours?”
“Albino. Albino of Verq Bavas, and this is Fierawr.”
“Rawr.” The Howler had woken up from the girl’s loud voice. She blinked at the noble girl, found no hostility, and licked her hand.
“Wha-?”
“She likes you. Impressive, Lady Chesterfield.”
The young lady swallowed her spit and reached out a shaky hand. Her parents gasped at their window, hugging each other… but Fierawr allowed it to happen without protest. “Why do you fight for this Howler? I heard this test is impossible to pass.”
“I could never abandon my family,” Albino said. At the girl’s complicated expression, he laughed and ruffled her hair.
As he turned to leave, the girl blushed. “You treat me normal. Everyone always calls me hideous… Is that true?”
“You are not hideous, Lady Chesterfield,” Albino said. The girl didn’t look convinced, so he scooped her up in a second-long, gentle hug. “Your soul shines bright and beautiful, my cute little Lady.”
Greetings and salutations! You have earned my eternal gratitude for reading this humble mortal’s story. If you enjoyed yourself, I will have done my job well. If not… well, there is always room for improvement.
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