01.21.2016
The wolf found shelter in a shattered, narrow canyon that lay before the knuckles. The peak of the hottest days of the summer were upon the far finger, and the city of Bansuth was quieter than normal as people tried to pass the day in the shade.
The evening and a thunderstorm which dissipated the heat brought the town back to bustling. The town was a hub of activity in its unique location. Not so large as some towns on the other side of the Knuckles, but large enough for a frontier town. It connected the rough but resource-rich Finger, and other towns who were growing faster than their local resources would allow.
Trade and entrepreneurialism were capital here. The town was well lit and humming along as night approached and fell. The wolf left the steep-walled canyon which still radiated the day’s heat. Streaks appeared in the sky, which lit up Bansuth for brief instants, before pitching it back into twilight.
A meteor shower played out overhead, but the wolf paid it little attention. He sat along the foothills and watched the town bustle. To the poor observer, the wolf would appear as just another hill leading up to the mountains, so large had he grown after his Harsenth feast.
The refugees had been waylaid in Bansuth by sickness and a lame horse on their cart. They kept an ear out for stories about people fleeing from the West, but none came. The wolf’s howl soon did, however. And before the howl had finished reverberating in chests and off the mountain sides, the wolf was amidst the town, scattering brick and bone alike.
The center erupted into flame and muskets from the outskirts discharged, but the wolf-mountain did not yield like the people he devoured. The thousands and thousands of screams and lives that ended that night pierced the night more sharply than all the meteoric activity overhead.
Drunken on blood fever, the wolf paced around the lifeless town, deciding what next. The streaks in the sky overhead caught his attention. Humans were now such boring prey. Slow, gristly, and not even fun sport. But the meteors were fast, large, and would be a challenge. The wolf leapt into the night sky, leaving the Far Finger empty.
Observers of the meteor shower saw the huge bulk of the wolf blaze across the sky, but they knew not of the omen before them. The refugees had perished by the same hound’s tooth they so desperately fled, so their warning died upon the peaks of the knuckles, just as did their last, lamenting cries. The wolf had left the earth, but more would soon know his deeds.