Blackfoot Forest A flock of metal creatures fleeing the onslaught of rust

He had found his calling, and within the embrace of Jinx's recently claimed packlands, Lecter thrived. The nights belonged to the pale madman; he prowled the ethereal wood alone, or perhaps alongside the glossy form of his harried daughter, or perhaps with Jinx herself. It had taken several days, but the shaman had brought up all that he had gathered from his hut along the creek, and made his home deep within the shadows of the trees.

Thus entombed, in the braw split bole of a forest giant, Lecter carved out his niches, lying to ferment and dry various herbs and countless unidentifiable gris-gris. He lived very much like a hare, albeit a large, bloodstained one, in the recesses of the shattered tree, and the air there was close, and dusty, so that Lecter after a short time came to smell of greenery and dried bone.

But this he did not mind; the madman was content with his lot. On such a night as this, the gathering dark found the spirit-man traipsing through the woodland in search of rotted acorns and owl-pellets, for a spell only half-devised in his mind. The dirge of the foxes he pushed to the back of his mind, though a prickle of superstition haunted him each time they shrieked out from the darkness.

His eyes lit upon a pale shape that swam before his vision; through the gloom, it was not apparent what it was at first. Lifting his muzzle, the shaman, stained with a dripping-fresh coat of deer's-blood, scented the air. It was a wolf, and she was young, yet overlaid lightly yet with the fragrance of Bon Dye. "Why do you lie in the dirt" Lecter demanded of her, drawing close to appraise her situation. "Are you so foolish that you have not found a den yet?"