The Chronicle of Rallan

Books VII, VIII IX:

Reunion

Love’s Journey

Nothing Left To Lose

By: Balto5670

All characters, settings, and events involved in this story including its corresponding plotline are © 2007 Balto5670. Any similarities between any other characters and such are entirely coincidental. Cover-art is © 2007 whitewolf(uk).

Lupus non mordet lupum.

All I can feel is the cold around me… It shrouds my body and my soul; my very being in its frosty cloak… The cold of scorn, of despise… Of hate. All I can feel is the cold around me… No more warmth of comfort, of joy… Of love. It’s all gone. It has been gone for so long now, I can’t even remember… Was I ever happy? Was I ever wanted? Was I ever loved? I don’t recall… I see their faces, scorning me for being me… For doing what I knew was right… All I can feel is the cold around me… The world’s no longer warm with glee, the waters no longer pure with liberty… They were tainted terribly when I was convicted wrongly… My life’s been cursed by her… My own family hunts me down like a murderer… I am a murderer… I regret nothing… All I can feel is the cold around me… All I can feel… Cold…

Chapter 1

            The warm wind blew gently through the trees of the forests, over the grasses of the plains, and over the waters of the rivers and lakes. Flowers swayed back and forth slowly, multicolored petals taking in the Sun’s light. Birds sang their songs with blissful ignorance as to what was going on down on the grounds beneath them…

Through the trees, four wolves ran as fast as they could. Two were light gray in color, the other two a shade of earthly brown. The group’s leader’s piercing ice-blue eyes shot through the trees until the familiar sound of rushing water was heard. They group jerked left and ran through more trees until they came to the bank of a large rushing river.

The leader ran right to the edge, nose sniffing about for one specific scent. One of the brown wolves sighed heavily and shook his head.

“Rayne, just give up sniffing the water… You wouldn’t find him even if he has been here… His scent would be hidden by the water…” Rayne’s vicious glare turned on the wolf and he recoiled slightly.

“Listen Drake, I don’t give a damn about what you have to say about this… You’ll follow my orders until we find him and tear him limb from limb, understood?” Rayne snapped back, looking back over the water, “He must have drifted farther downstream… We cannot lose him… He’s a wanted murderer and it’s our law-bound duty to hunt him down… Let’s keep moving!”

The other three wolves nodded and stood fully at attention as Rayne looked over the river one more time. She followed its bends with her eyes before turning swiftly and dashing off through the forest. Behind her, her group quickly caught up and followed her lead through the forest. You won’t get away again, Rallan… Rayne thought bitterly to herself, eyes burning with determination.

            “Tell me, Rayne, can you sniff out a wolf through water? You’d better hope you can, or else you’ll never see me again!”

That was the last thing Rallan remembered saying before he did it. He jumped; he jumped off the cliff and fell, fell down and down until he hit the water. It had felt like thousands of knifes had hit his body all at once. Almost immediately, he’d lost all the air in his lungs as the raging river rushed him downstream. Kicking and sputtering, Rallan had fought to stay above the surface before getting pulled under again, taking short breaths of air whenever he could to stay alive.

That had been nearly half an hour ago… Now the wolf that was Rallan drifted slowly beneath the water’s surface, his body limp and unmoving. His gold and brown eyes were glazed over, the sure-sign that he was dying. The river’s current had been much stronger than he had anticipated and he’d lost the battle with it a couple minutes ago, and now he floated underwater as he had been rushed along.

However, the current had died down now where he was, but he didn’t have enough energy or oxygen to swim back to the surface. His eyes looked up at the reflecting sunlight on the surface, his vision beginning to blur and his lungs burning from lack of air. This is it then… Rallan thought dimly, To die… like this… I’d never thought that…

But before Rallan could finish that thought, his body drifted onto a shallower part of the river. He could feel the gravelly rocks of the river’s bottom beneath his paws. A short burst of adrenaline shot through him at this feeling. Slowly, his paws gripped the rocky floor as he pushed himself upward; praying to God that he’d made the right move. Fortunately, he did…

Rallan’s head burst above the surface, gasping desperately as air began to rush into his lungs once again. He began coughing terribly, swimming weakly to the shore of the now-calm river. Even this seemed to be a challenge for him though, since he was still trying to regain his lost oxygen. A few moments later, Rallan’s paws touched the dry bank of the river, a feeling he first thought was a dream. He looked up, half expecting to see Heaven, but only saw the trees of the forest.

He panted heavily, golden eyes staring intently at the treeline of the large forest standing before him. Slowly, a weak, triumphant grin spread across his muzzle at the sight before him. To anyone it’d seem like a rather plain sight, but to Rallan at this moment it looked like the most brilliant thing he’d ever seen in his entire life. Rayne was nowhere to be seen and her scent wasn’t anywhere either. In fact, there were little to no scents around here, something the drenched wolf was very thankful for.

“So maybe… luck… didn’t abandon… me…” Rallan murmured frailly to himself, chuckling softly before sighing and falling to his side. He was utterly and completely spent from the struggle for his life with the river.

Rallan’s vision was beginning to blur and get darker once more. He knew that this time, however, he’d at least live once he blacked out. Yet despite his lack of strength and energy, Rallan kept that victorious smile on his muzzle, feeling like the luckiest wolf on the whole damn planet. With his final few seconds of consciousness, he laughed at the thought of Rayne’s stressed-out look once she’d have lost him. Then Rallan’s eyes slowly closed and his body relaxed as he passed out.

Rallan merely lay there like that for close to an hour, completely unconscious from his lack of energy. The river’s waters gently lapped at his tail and rear legs. The sounds of the gentle breeze and songbirds around him were drowned out and lost, as if they were never there to the wolf lying sprawled out on the shoreline of the brook. A few moments later, the birds stopped their singing as something below on the ground moved.

A gray-pelted wolf slowly made its way through the forest, a distressed look on its face. From a glance at the figure, one could easily tell it was female. Her gray and white coat looked nearly perfect to Rallan’s and they could probably have been mistaken for twins. As she walked on toward the river, she let out a soft sigh of discouragement. So far, her search had gone terribly. Rallan, where on Earth are you? she thought to herself.

As the female wolf approached the river, her gaze drifted up and saw something, or more accurately, someone lying out on the shore. It was another wolf… a wolf with a similar pelt to her. She gasped sharply as her amber eyes scanned the wolf’s body. It was indeed a male, and one that seemed like he’d seen his fair-share of battles. But he wasn’t the same… His body was more defined, as if he’d been trained specifically for battle… or leading a pack.

“No, it can’t be!” she said softly, trotting, and then running up to the unconscious wolf. Though he was completely soaked, his scent was clear and oh-so very familiar.

“It is… It has to be him! Please, tell me I’ve found you at long last…”