Silvertip Mountain chickity check yo self

dated July 30, high noon. will archive if no response in a few days.

He'd cleared out his nose as much as he could. However the fuck a wolf did that. He needed his nostrils as clear as possible and boy. . .when you really concentrated on scents, they hit you so much harder. Despite the newfound sensation, Verx forced himself to focus. There were only a couple of smells he needed to find and track -- no room for distractions, now.

He didn't say goodbye to his children, afraid that they'd see it as just another betrayal. And at any rate, he planned to come back, dragging along Dragomir's tormentors' heads like a kid with deflated balloons. He wouldn't settle for anything less.

Vercingetorix climbed the mountain, something like rage blooming in his stomach. There was a spring to his step that had been missing for some time, but it wasn't euphoria that drove him now but vengeance, hot and heavy. Revenge was a hell of a motivator, and damned if Verx wasn't the most motivated he'd ever been, right now. Up, up, up he went, face set sternly ahead, until he reached the mouth of the cave.

Don't look down, he told himself, speaking aloud -- for he knew if he looked down, he'd see his son, broken and bloody, all over again. . .and he couldn't afford any flashbacks right now.

Instead, he entered the cave, heedless even of the beauty of the crystals, winking merrily in the sunlight. He lowered his nose and began to sniff, sorting out the foreign scents from that of his son's, all of them growing stale -- but still there.