Blacktail Deer Plateau the ghosts were howlin' in the late afternoon

They searched the grounds for bodies and bones, but the only limbs Malachi saw were the fire-scorched branches of charcoaled trees. He let his eyes stray from the path scourged through the ash by his superiors to look again for life beyond. But the further they drew into the crumbling copse, the more the world that had just been filled with the greenness of growth shuddered in greyscale as pallid as Dante's coat.

The lack of trails and scent lines wrapped Malachi in an eerie sense of deja-vu, and his imagination filled the gap with the memory of Njal's retreating body when he stole after the lynx who had taken Larus from the den. The situations couldn't have been more different, but his ticking mind forged parallels between them, and the same anger he had felt that night stabbed his chest again. But overpowering this was a throbbing guilt, and a frustration aimed wholly at himself. When the greyscale had leapt toward the flames, at least Mordecai had tried to follow. What had he done but watched? They shouldn't have let Dante go alone - one of them should have followed. They might have been taken by the flames themselves, but what if their decision had changed the outcome? What if their choice had meant seeing Osprey and Dante alive today?

He wished he had followed into the thick of the smoke, but all the frustration and regret in the world couldn't change what had transpired last night. The future curved mercilessly with the choices they had made. It always had and it always would. And he could not blame Dante for his reckless abandon, because he knew if Osprey had been a wolf he'd loved, he would have done the same with no thought to the consequence to himself - and he wouldn't have wanted anyone else to put themselves in the way of danger for that.

Malachi looked ahead to Mordecai and Lasher, wondering their thoughts beyond their quiet exteriors. Did they struggle the same? They had come to search, and if that meant anything, then maybe they had hope. He didn't think he could say the same for himself; he had come with the desire to help, because they owed it to the missing to search, and perhaps that was why they searched, too.

With guided steps, Malachi turned to the right and cut a path away from his companions. They would cover more ground by fanning out, and with the trees spindly and stripped of their growth, he doubted they would lose sight of each other even if they walked distant paths in the burned down woods.