The Sunspire and you will witness what the fire can undo

AW!
70F, early afternoon, partly cloudy

even from the base of the canyon, the sunspire was always visible in the distance. when renard had thought ravensblood forest was what they were meant to defend, they hadn’t paid it much mind, though they knew better than to think of a mountain range as a wall. a temporary hindrance, maybe.

now that they had moved, and now that the sunspire mountains rose up all around them, what they held became a question about survival more than curiosity. whether they were missing the shade of trees and the cool that came with not living in the bottom of a canyon was irrelevant. obviously.

their path took them out of the depths of redsand, and the first saints conflict they’d had the pleasure to spectate, and up into the cliffs. the sunspire was kinder around its base than they’d thought; the sheer stone outcrops were fewer and farther between, their space given to a gentle slope upwards cloaked with aspen and pine that dappled sun along their fur and masked the tread of their steps. birds sang and wheeled overhead; insects buzzed. nothing like the baked earth and sandstone where even flowers struggled to cling.

it would be a long climb, but the summit was bare and snowcapped. if the weather held, it would offer an unmatched view of the rest of the peaks and the valley floors to either side; one free of pack squabbles.

leaving redsand now wasn’t entirely to their benefit – there was a wealth of information, not to mention entertainment, to be found in who snapped at each other, who was kind to each other, who stood away and watched it play out. simple pleasures. the tension was palpable even within the canyon, to say nothing of the world they had by all accounts thrown into uproar. the saints were a fire, even as people hurried to halt their spread, and as with all fires, they would be put out at the source, or they would grow until they ran out of chaff to consume.