William Watson

Section 40743

The Song of Rage and Sorrow

The elk stood alone, blissfully unaware of the threat my brothers and I posed. In

the snowy climate of the north, only the supernaturally observant can detect the presence

of the warriors of the woods, the dire wolves. Rising to my full five feet of height, my

legs, powerful as a horse’s, tensed up, and I charged to meet my prey. Always having

been the fastest of my siblings, I was in front of the elk before it had time to react. The

beast was slow, and not worthy of the effort of the whole pack, and pleasure ran through

me as I felt my jaws fasten on the muscular neck of the animal. Jerking my head, I

slammed the beast head first into the ground, and neck muscles straining, I ripped out its

throat, blood gushing onto the ground before the animal’s thought process could

acknowledge its demise. The pleasure of the kill filled me with ecstasy as I threw back

my head and let loose a howl that could be heard for miles.

The remaining members of my pack began to emerge from the surrounding wood:

Ghost and Shaggydog, my brothers, and Lady and Nimura, my sisters. Lady is the

prettiest, and Nimura, the most dangerous fighter. Shaggydog, the youngest, is the most

wolf-like out of all of us, bearing an animalistic ferocity and invaluable instincts. Ghost is

the first born, part of the snow he walks upon, even sharing its same white color, the

winter is more his brother than we are. I am Grey Wind, the alpha male, and leader of the

pack.

We finished feeding and I turned my bloody muzzle to the south, the smell still

drifted on the breeze. Fire, still clear as it had been earlier in the month. The elk had been

fleeing from it and my pack was being drawn to it. We were on a different sort of hunt,
 William Watson
Section 40743
one for the source of this fire, a thing that incited both sorrow and rage in every one of us.

I bared my bloody teeth with an unearthly growl and we began to move.

Days later, I stood on a threshold between my world and that of the fire. The trees

were a wall behind me, and before me the land underwent a vast change, the ground

malformed from the familiar white to a grey and brown waste of shrubbery and dust. My

brothers and I began to descend into the unfamiliar world, drawn by an inexorable song

voiced by the harps of destruction, the song of rage and sorrow, singing through our

minds.

They fled before my pack to no avail; we had found them, the beings responsible

for the destruction. Running them down and tearing apart their flesh proved an easy

enough task, distracted as they were. Two groups of them, one garbed in grey and the

other in blue, facing each other from afar, pointing metal sticks spewing fire and noise.

Shaggydog charged without warning and I and my dear sisters, panting with the

excitement, followed suit. A bloodlust was in my siblings’ eyes, bearing all the rage that

the destruction of these lands inspired. Ghost appeared in the middle of the creatures as

we fell upon them, a hurricane of black, grey, and white, destruction.

The battle was over and the two groups of creatures lay dead, the blue ones and

the grey ones, and my brothers and sisters fed. The two-legged beings had tried to fight,

bits of metal and noise flying violently from their stick weapons, but I felt the impacts

bounce off my fur, far weaker then the bites of my own kind. My weapons were far more

effective, for when my teeth took a hold of their flesh, they died like rabbits. Lady was

licking her lips, clean as ever, and looked at me with an approving gaze. I turned my eyes

to my younger brother. Shaggydog was growling, gleefully tearing limbs off a corpse and
 William Watson
Section 40743
tossing them to Nimura as she caught them with her teeth. Even Ghost looked content,

out of place as his white fur was.

This is what our calling had been for; there was an evil here that we were being

compelled to cleanse. The sadness, inspired by fire, affecting all of the North, would in

turn be brought to these creatures. I inhaled a deep breath, full of blood and flames,

pointing my nose at the sky and releasing an echoing howl, a melody for all the creatures

of this desolate land. Beware, foul beings of destruction, my pack is here, and we come

singing the Song of Rage and Sorrow.