This wasn't right, this wasn't right at all! Hadn't it been clear? Go towards the mountains, that's what the boy had garnered from his orders, even though he had been forced to make sense of them without knowing the language. Cause havoc. It had been days since he had seen hide nor hair of his dark accomplice - even his scent had waned, vanishing as Tiarnan's route took him east instead of west. He had bedded down for the night beneath the stars, hoping that the sparse canopy of a few trees would protect him; and then in the morning, he had tried to worm his way in the correct direction.
That had been days ago.
A hunger plagued him now, the same kind that had driven him towards Silvertip in the first place; desperate and deep, churning his stomach and making his knees want to buckle. The cliffs above showed signs of animal life: worn paths, dried piles of dung, even a few patches of grass that were bitten to the root. There was something here that could be hunted, but the problem persisted—Tiarnan was too exhausted to do anything but lay low and moan pathetically to himself, surrounded by strange stone formations. He was a pitiful and useless creature, and he knew it.