Black Wolf Fever outbreak after the Falcon Hunt

The Black Wolf Fever outbreak after the Falcon Hunt is the crisis in which Hohsalle’s suspicion of the disease becomes a deadly test of observation and treatment. After Zolians are bitten during the hunt, the illness advances from nonspecific symptoms to rash, coma, and death; the contrasting outcomes among Zolian and Aquafaese patients, and the evidence of earlier isolated cases, deepen the mystery of how the disease spreads.

Background and Warning Signs

Hohsalle raises the possibility of Black Wolf Fever with Governor Ohan after the falcon hunt, recalling the earlier outbreak at the salt mine. His concern is conditional: if the attacking beasts were Ossam carrying the disease, precautions are needed even though the fear may prove groundless. He proposes two linked tasks—addressing the animals that may harbor infection and caring for people who may have been exposed. Simply killing beasts is not enough, he warns, because fleas or ticks on infected animals might move to human hosts.

The need for caution is informed by the salt-mine cases. There, symptoms appeared quickly after infection and almost everyone died, including both enslaved workers and their keepers. Yet people who had worked at the mine since the incident showed no signs of illness. Hohsalle and Yotalu therefore reason that infection appears to follow bites from a beast rather than ordinary person-to-person contact, airborne spread, or transmission by fleas and ticks. Hohsalle also resists indiscriminate hunting: if the animals that attacked sheep were carriers, shepherds who had been bitten should have fallen ill. The distinction between a possible animal source and a proven carrier becomes central to the precautions taken after the hunt.

The Illness Declares Itself

At first, the patients’ fever and lethargy seem consistent with infected dog bites. The pattern changes on the sixth day after the royal hunt, when Mana reports that the Zolian falconer has developed a rash. Hohsalle and Milalle had prepared for this possibility. Their response begins what the account describes as many sleepless days and nights: the rash marks a rapid turn in the illness, not a gradual recovery.

The falconer’s symptoms progress with alarming speed. He develops a high fever on the evening the rash appears, becomes stuporous, and dies during the night despite treatment. His wife and daughter have been watching from a distance; because of the danger of contagion, they cannot approach or touch him. After Milalle covers his face, she leads the bereaved women away to rest, while Mana introduces himself as a priest-doctor and attends to them. The outbreak is therefore shown not only through clinical signs but through the isolation imposed on families as care and caution pull in opposite directions.

Treatment and Unequal Outcomes

The falconer’s case convinces Hohsalle that the attacking beasts may have carried Black Wolf Fever. Milalle urges giving the new drugs to all the patients before any rash appears, emphasizing how quickly the illness becomes acute and worrying that treatment may already be too late. Hohsalle agrees to administer the weakened version and the anti-mittsual drug to everyone, but reserves the serum for Zolian patients. The decision reflects uncertainty as well as urgency: the treatment is being used while its effects remain difficult to separate from the disease’s natural course.

At dawn the next day, the other Zolian patients develop rashes. The medicine given before the rash appears seems to have prolonged their consciousness, but they subsequently fall into comas, suffer convulsions, and die despite the efforts to save them. Utalu and Olimu are the only Zolians left alive at that point. No Aquafaese patient develops a rash. The difference does not establish why some patients resist the disease, but it makes the contrast impossible to ignore.

Utalu later follows the same fatal pattern. His father calls on him to live, but Utalu falls into a coma and dies at midnight. His death carries particular weight because he had recently led men fearlessly in battle and taunted his younger brother; the abrupt reversal makes the disease’s power overtake the distinctions of status, temperament, and recent strength. The loss also leaves Yotalu dealing with the crisis while his father remains occupied by grief.

From Outbreak to Investigation

The patients’ differing outcomes become a research question rather than an answer. Hohsalle identifies the Zolian falconer, bitten near the chin, as the patient who showed the most dramatic and rapid severe symptoms. Sulumina showed the greatest resistance, followed by Mazai and Olimu. He argues that understanding such differences could support prevention, and specifically rejects politically motivated rumors about the Curse of Aquafa as a substitute for investigating causes. He also wonders why the sickness does not seem to have appeared in remote mountain regions where Black Wolves once lived in abundance, while acknowledging that a territory-wide survey and reliable information about nomadic clans would be difficult and time-consuming.

Later, a map assembled from reports gathered with Cheehana’s help shows that cases with mittsual-like symptoms had occurred across the former Kingdom of Aquafa before the salt-mine incident. The reports extend from the Yukata Plains in the south to the Oki forests in the north, and the oldest reported case dates back eight years. Yet these were separate attacks by wolves or Ossam, generally producing only one or two cases at a time, with no reported chain of human transmission.

That scattered history complicates the initial explanation. Hohsalle reasons that if infected wolf bites were driving the disease, packs could produce further cases; across several years, ticks and mosquitoes would also have had time to multiply. Instead, the cases remain sparse and widely distributed. The investigators consider whether infected host animals have moved too quickly for ticks to acquire the disease, but the wider question remains: how did the disease reach dogs and wolves across such a large area when northern and southern wolves could not have mingled? The outbreak after the hunt thus becomes both a medical emergency and a point of entry into a larger, unresolved inquiry about animal hosts, transmission, and the uneven history of infection.