Blacktail Deer Plateau I will remember your face

No doubt like others along the breadth of the storm, they had seen how quickly it had engulfed the sun and swallowed it whole.  No doubt to those well outside of the purview of such a storm they would have seen the towering monolith of clouds reaching towards the sky, perhaps even heard or felt the percussion of what would be oncoming.  This storm was one of many that had come across the wilderness in recent days, pushed ashore from lands unexplored and told in the west.  Some had come barreling angrily, others had been no more than all bark and no bite.

But there had been something in the air on that day that told Mordecai that this was no ordinary storm, that it possessed the spark of something more.  Perhaps it was the hue that the sky took on as the sun became blanketed, or perhaps it was simply the ever distant rumble of thunder come close.  The songbirds had ceased, the chattering wildlife in the undergrowth found their voices muffled.  He hadn't paid it much heed at all, hadn't even paid any mind to the deafening crackle and strike of lightning.  It was an awful din, but not uncommon.  Yet there were the core fundamental things that could not be shook from the wolf's memory; among these first and foremost, was the smell of woodsmoke.

And then he too, heard the strangled cries of those who realized what it was.

As Mordecai crossed the distance of the plateau with ease, he felt the first few drops of stinging cold rain meet his muzzle.  The smoke rose thick and dark, blacker than the clouds themselves it would have seemed.  The lightning turned the usually idyllic countryside of what had been his home since the turn of winter into a nightmarish landscape — the trees were gaunt and old, riddled and raised like gaping maws and reaching arms.  Wisps of flickering flame glowed now as he found Dante and another, though he did not register whether or not they were someone he would have known.

A solitary draw of breath turned into a stifled cough; the burn in his lungs from the run now turned into the burn from smoke alone.  Though he was one from a much warmer climate, the heat here was climbing to the point of little tolerance.  The fire was spreading fire and with fury, pushed by the winds and far from doused in the rain.  The worst of the storm hadn't even come close to them.  "We need to find somewhere upwind of this," Mordecai concluded with another cough.  "The fire's spreading towards us!"