Ravensblood Forest from silence rose a symphony

The pallid stranger wove a tale—this tone not lost on Solpallur—but he did not fully understand it. He picked out choice words to piece it together crudely, summarizing it in his head a sob story that once upon a time, had been all too common in one part of the world they had existed in.

Fire, or as he knew it, eldur, was a very bad thing. It was all consuming when the time was right, the smoke it threw thick and choking. One could have presumed easily that Solpallur was a survivor of such a thing with the way his own voice sounded in those raspy, harsh intonations but he had been more fortunate than this wolf.

He had seen fire, he had felt its heat in the air and he had smelled the smoke before. But he and Stjornuati had always been smart enough to move on before it followed and consumed them too. And to save a child from its clutches, to steal such from the very gaping jaws of death itself? That made this fellow almost of a higher tier than the lowly hellions they were. He was hreystimaðr of the meek.

Intrigue was enough for him to reveal himself then, his emergence no doubt seeming to materialize him from dim features as his gaze did not waver from the sight of their pale companion. The ravens called to one another—on the ground below, in the canopies above—and his voice rumbled to grate against them.

“Hann er hreint,” he told Stjornuati.

Not tainted, not like them who still searched for their hringja.

This one had answered a call from the grave and won.