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[Skoll]

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Pulling has begun! "Ah." He saw why she had left. She had adventure in her blood, if her parents were any indication, and puppy-sitting was something he could not see her taking interest in. Niyol, on the other hand, had always seemed a little more hesitant than his sister, it might be that the insulation of a family would do him some good. Having younger siblings looking up to him would help him grow, Skoll imagined, he would have to be the big brother, rather than the little one that he had been around Matrix, despite their being the same age. Twilight had raised her daughter to be able to take care of herself, which was good, because he couldn't see the mother pulling her hair out in worry. Just didn't fit Twilight's personality. "That's good, about being on the move. I know your parents don't like to be anchored in any one place. I might have traveled with them in a different chapter in my life, but my days as a vagabond ended some time ago." He was happy that the two of them were happy together, exploring the world as one, and passing themselves into the next generation, in heart and mind and blood. He would hate to see a world without them in it, and through their children like Matrix and Niyol, they would survive well after their mortal days had ended. HawkWind had carried on the same way, bearing new and varying monsters into the world over the generations from the one child he had sired...almost all of his kin still had the rage lurking in their minds, HawkWind's 'gift', and the potential for the re-emergence of the great monster who had slaughtered hundreds of wolves--maybe more--through solitary murder and illiciting war. None since had been near so terrible, all of his descendants had kept their inner-demon in check since his fall into madness, most of the time. Skoll himself had struggled with it, even recently. Still, despite the continuance of Twilight and Apache's rogue spirits, of the hint of madness that was HawkWind's legacy, of the various lines that endured through the history of Bleeding Souls in the forms of Sadiras and de le Poers, Skoll himself would not live past his own days. Nearing seven, having never taken a mate, his visage ruined and his name soiled by the slander of his foes, there was no reason to deny that his blood, his spirit, would end with him. His siblings Skirnir and SnowOwl would doubtless continue the line of HawkWind, but the line of Skoll would die with him. It was...a melancholic thought. "Yes," he said, his voice trailing as he began to pull the dolley. She had been young, most of the wolves in their force were better known to her mother, but Matrix had known a few. "Graelthrim took Tymara and the twins and went after a fleeing detachment of cultists. They were headed here, trying to draw some forces away from the cultist lands and toward Bleeding Souls, where our resistance had gotten its start. The ploy didn't work, most of us stayed where we were to finish the job, but they got as far as the Concrete Jungle before Grael and others caught up to them. Our friends did well," he offered her a weak smile. "The scent of the battle was old, but undisturbed. I think Tymara put her axe-training to good use, put away one or two of them, Grael handled himself just fine. The twins met with a male whose smell...well, I remember seeing him before they fled, he was bigger than the alpha of Storm, if you've ever met him. The two of them died there. He killed Tymara too." Skoll's words slowed down there. The memories of smelling all this were painful. "I...have no idea how he did it, but Grael killed the bastard. He really did love Tymara...I don't know if you knew that, you were pretty young to have understood such things. There was old blood on the concrete, and I could follow hairs and scents to where he had piled all the bodies of the cultists, into an old human house. They're just bones by now. Our friends were buried under a cairn deep in the Concrete Jungle, in an alley where they'd be hard to find by anyone who didn't know where to look." Even though he wasn't the best hunter in the world, Skoll had been gifted with fantastic tracking abilities. Fighting had been learned, but he had a natural gift to thank for being able to piece together all that had happened that day. "Grael died on the Storm border, driven mad by something he'd seen with that crazy sixth sense of his. I arrived just a few hours too late. I buried him under the supervision of the Storm Gamma, who had been forced to kill him in his delirium." Of all the tales that he collected about the various people he'd fought alongside, against, or even just heard about, this one--short as it was--was probably his least favorite. He had passed the information along to Aivyr long ago, and most of the old war party knew, though he had never had the chance to tell Twilight or her family. ~The lyrics are from the best song ever written.

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