Altar of Twilight —in his right hand was the key to the bottomless pit.

Raimo had charged south down the mountain, with @Sialuk at his heels. He came to a valley there. His breath was hitching in his chest but other than that, the man felt very much alive and thrilled by the run! Even though his neck felt bruised from where she had grabbed him, and his pride was a touch wounded, he did not mind to be roughly handled.

It wasn't until after, when he'd spent some time trawling the valley for a taste of water or some back alley with which to sneak back to the mountain, that he found himself facing an imperious wall of stone. The high walls were not things a canine could scale; there were signs of mountain sheep of some variety (the smallest eaves to the stone where their cloven feet could catch), however it became clear by the time the sun began to set that Raimo had somehow trapped himself.

If he wished to escape down the range he would have to cross close to the spear again, and to the angry girl — a fate he did not wish to tempt.

Could you forward date to Feb 3rd? :D That way Njord and Meerkat have had a couple of days rest.

The Sveijarn-Cortens took shelter on Sialuk’s Moonspear in a makeshift Ulak, as the white wolf called it. The trio rested their weary bones, drank water from the mountain’s frozen creeks, and ate the meals their new steward provided. It was generous, Njord knew, to give so selflessly. Their bond – Sialuk’s and Meerkat’s – must be old and strong.

The man found himself quiet. Turned inwards. He still processed it all… and had not even spoken of Sobo to his wife, yet. He prayed that, somewhere out there, Swordfish was safe. Quennell too.

Njord left the den, and snoring Stingray, behind as he began to scout this new land. He felt uneasy. An outlander. He was a hale man of the sea and its sandy cliffs. The coastal pines and their glens were familiar. There, the horizon stretched forever and all water flowed to the ocean. Even the Taiga was like a brother to Njord. The Ravine, the Tangle, and Nova peak…

But here, the conifers were so dense that they made him claustrophobic. The ground felt like cold steel. The mountain winds whistled and howled. There was no seal, crab, kelp, or urchin… Had Meerkat felt this way when she had moved to Sapphique? Njord felt he must hunt. Protect. Yet, how could he do that if he was not fluent in the way of this wilderness?

He walked and smelled Sialuk’s marks on the borders (and added his own for good measure). Smelled the trails of prey. The new and different flora.

And then something different. He had not smelled it before. It was an animal. Not coyote. Not bear. Not fox. The man followed it towards an amphitheater of flat rock. Wolf’s blood! Not fresh, but not too old either. He looked up…

…and just beyond was a man cloaked in black. For a brief moment, he thought of wild Exousia. Was this man looking for a claim to stake? Or a fellowship to join? Did he know Sialuk? In any case, Njord possessed little trust and patience. They had lost so much, had so little left to their name… he would fiercely protect it.

His teeth flashed without a growl, posture defensive. It demanded, who are you?

Yep!

The ridge he now found himself lurking upon was high, and far, and there was no way down except the way he had initially travelled; it took Raimo a few hours of toiling to realize this, and by then the light had dimmed and come again. If he doubled back too far he'd encounter Sialuk's scent, and was wary of her anger — but playful also, as a boy might toy with a cute girl — until another scent crossed his attention.

This one was of blood, and a masculine musk, but also a sour kind of note that Raimo had never tasted before. There was at least one wolf-scent, maybe others — but it was that sour note that wound the strongest for a while, and he stalked carefully along, until the ground was painted with tufts of white fur and red flesh.

Beyond the mess was a red-tailed stranger. The two men looked at one-another with a similar thought in mind: what has happened here, and what have you done? Raimo was the more curious of the two, evidently, and he relented in his stare long enough to lower his tail.

A bad hunt? He ventured slyly, motioning with a tip of his chin towards the defilement of the path.

The swarthy man acted cool under Njord’s skeptical glare, but it did little to smooth the hair which prickled along the seafarer’s spine. A lick of the chops and a snort telegraphed Njord’s wariness.

Still, he moved closer to inspect the scene when the stranger suggested a hypothesis. Njord’s blue gaze was like a gimbal and it never left the other man’s figure through his nose sniffed and flared. A wide pool of dried blood was left where the wolf had surely died. But where was the body?

Njord thought of Sobo’s half-eaten body. The way his skull looked like an empty punch bowl.

He was on edge.

“T’was a wolf who was hunted,” Njord determined by the sheer mess of it all.

Sorry for the wait & short length of this, blehhh.

The man cleared the air in his own way, stating the truth as he knew it. Raimo snickered without meaning to make light of the death of their own kind - but it aligned with what he had said. So I was right in some manner. He liked to be right about things, even such morbid situations. The mirth left him after that though as he feigned interest in a smear of blood, huffing over it, then recoiling.

Friend of yours? The man smelled strongly of Sialuk, which put him among the mountain people; perhaps the blood was from a scout, or some foolish child trying to climb the walls.

I love short posts :D

“Nay,” Njord answered gravely, the word drawn out in a pensive way. The wolfscent was not familiar and, as far as Njord knew, Moonspear’s numbers hadn’t expanded beyond the four of them. He knew nothing of Moonglow’s connection to the Spear.

“An’ I take it they werenae kin tae you either,” he wagered by the way the man placed bets.

“Are you a traveler? You wander close to our claim,” he said pointedly. The seafarer’s muscles had not relaxed. Instinct instructed the man to be on guard. Danger was afoot.