Overture Downs long live the king

the blacktail dogs had seen fit to eradicate shardik's presence. he cursed them, and more importantly, cursed the teeth that had gone singingly through him. 

in the weeks that followed he nursed his wounds and tempered his pride. like all beasts shardik felt the keen absence of summer, and felt the cold chill of winter's firsts breaths along his backside.

he was compelled to eat - and eat - and eat. berries, fox, crow, carrion. it all was stuffed down his maw in gluttonous fervor, a bloody sup of twig and bone. a few weeks of such ravenous appetite and the leviathan's form was restored; shardik was no longer the haggard, gaunt beast to plague borders, but a massive, roiling creature in which no mortal could contend. he moved with his old confidence, regarded the world with his old disdainful hate, and prowled without heed to dogs or their realms.

this world was his, and he basked in it. fearless, shardik climbed the stony summit - his paws grappling stone and hauling his body in mighty heaves. he had chosen the sunspire for its remoteness - and its stony keep would be his winter-home, dogs be damned.

eat.

and then soon, sleep.