Bearclaw Valley cold between stars

he might not have known the land he forged towards was named after a bear's talon, but all the same, shardik plowed onwards. his flank was matted down by the blood drawn by a nameless sunspire dog - and his right hip hiked with protest in each stride.

the beast was not without his share of injuries: he had paid a price to eat so well.

dusk settled heavily as shardik entered the stone monoliths, not even sparing their stern faces a glance. the scent of dog, once populous, was sparse here -- and driven by some baser instinct, shardik knew this to be the place.

gods, the beast had gotten fat -- his last meal sat heavily in his stomach, which protruded in the same manner as a housecat's lowly-hanging paunch. all that seasonal gorging had done the brute well, last meal excluded -- armed with layer upon layer of condensed fat and muscle, the bear looked more monster than simple ursus arctos as he sauntered into bearclaw's depths.

his wounds would not be easily forgotten, but as all the old-timers in the world sagely murmured, time would heal -- the tincture of time (or in shardik's case, the tincture of deep sleep) would heal those raw wounds, close those ugly, fresh-laid splits of flesh and blood -- and come spring, the monster would be mended whole again.

he limped through the fir-studded copse, oblivious as cold white fog drifted around his ankles and slunk past. around him the valley closed in - an empire of hidden bosk and quiet, undisturbed dens. his piggish black eyes drank in this fishbowl, this lost haven -- and snuffling along the dirt with his immense and moistened nose, the beast drove onwards.

here, the broken remains of an old cache -- uninteresting to shardik, who had bullishly ate his fill a few hours prior: what remained of coelho sifted around in his stomach, a warm soup of bone-broth and blood-brine that would nourish him through the fitful and restless winter --


there, a den abandoned -- the stale scent of wolf clung obstinately to it, but shardik knew the signs of collapse, and knew this valley was unoccupied.

in front of him a black deer rose from from the misty grass and bolted through the fog -- shardik's void-like gaze watched it with primal focus, and then moved on.

he rested by a stump, overturned by some ancient bite of frost. picking at a long talon with an equally bladed nail the beast looked about him. here the forest had dipped into a low clearing, and innumerable conifers and oaks shot up in bold claim across the forest. their leaves held the last bit of abandoned fall to it; a dead brown that was both uninspiring and distinctly ugly. shardik eyed their shivering masses with a nonplussed gaze, knowing the next time he looked at them, those oaks would be verdant green with a fresh-leaf splendor.

it would be the height of spring before the conqueror looked on those dead trees again. his lips formed in a loose, pursing frown -- wondering if trees, like him, ever hibernated.

his eye was drawn then to what looked like a hollowed mound; the mouth was much too small for his great gut to fit through, but whatever cruel gods ruled nature had seen fit to arm him with rakes for claws, capable of gouging the earth in a way a rotor-tiller might be envious of. slinking towards the spot, shardik loosened the cold soil -- before long, the mouth was turned into an entrance, and in that damp tunnel there stirred a stagnant current that spoke of deeper realms.

the beast slipped through this blackened mouth, not unlike as if he were transcending through a voided portal: there was a flash of blonde fur, and then nothing but the insolent glare of a fresh dug and blackened hole stared back.

deep underneath the wakeful shift of terra-cotta, shardik curled round himself, wet nose to hind paw: here, in this interminable blackness, was perhaps the only time the monster appeared and looked harmless -- but there was no soul to witness his drift to slumber, or tell of the bizarre way the beast folded himself into that impossibly small crevice.

shardik drew a long sigh - his eyelids drooping.

at last, those hateful, impossibly black eyes closed -- at last, the harbinger of ruin slept.