Redsand Canyon that’ll teach you to be born

The shadow before him shifted. Stag felt his eyes close briefly, as his senses warred within. This is it, he thought to himself, pulling deep for the ironbound grittiness that lurked somewhere in his body, his spine, his mind: if you are to go, go out swinging.

Images of his mother and father swam in the forefront of his mind as he gathered his will and rose, limbs shaky at first. The shadow moved again, falling back and setting his heart aflutter. Deep breaths, deep breaths, the boy reminded himself. Steady. Steady now.

He charged, a bloodcurdling scream loosed into the sky. "EEUAAAAAAGH!!!!" Round the open den mouth, round the precipice, round the little bend he went, charging like a horse of war until his charge was arrested by the sight of not a bear or lion, but a wolf.

"Wha---" The boy never finished his words; the shock of seeing a wolf before him had caused him to mismanage a step -- where he had thought rock had been, there was only air. His eyes widened and met the would-be-terror's with a look of sheer shock, and slow dawning horror.

Suddenly, Stag's form disappeared over the cliff's edge, as if sucked under a gathering and all-consuming tide of brackish blackwater.