Porcupine Ridge [m] So light your matches, and I will rise

Akashingo;

Ptolemy only had a rough idea of where the mesa was located, passed down in his mother's own cryptic way. She had not been fond of the pack. Yet they had given her a servant, one whom she'd intended to use to bring new blood to the islands. Blackwater had fallen before they could see her plan to fruition.

And they had failed to pay their debt.

He hunted now for an offering, unwilling to give his own gilded trinket over. The whispers of spirits led him to a trail of spattered blood across the mountainside. It ended over a ledge. Ptolemy wondered at that. He strode to the stony edge of it and peered over in the dawning light, and his eyes lit upon a broken figure in the grass below. Her gilded fur seemed to gleam in the light; the scarlet of her blood glittered and called to him.

He might have thought her dead, had she not begun to stir.

Ptolemy chuckled under his breath, full of wonder again; this time, for his great fortune. Like a circling vulture, he began his careful descent.