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[Skoll]

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He nodded his head somberly as he pulled the human contraption along, listening to her words. It was good that she hadn't known any of those wolves well, Tymara especially. Grael has always been a somewhat morose individual, the twins always a little too energetic, but Tymara was liked by everyone. He was sure that she had been the greatest loss to most of those that heard of the tragedy at Bleeding Souls. Aivyr had befriended the twins, but he knew that he'd been attached to Tymara, perhaps even more deeply. Grael, who had been afflicted by the greatest suffering, had been the most alone of them all, and Skoll pitied him. As much as it hurt him to tell the tale, he would keep it with him always, and tell it until his dying day. "What makes me want to stay here?" he repeated, mulling over her question as he looked ahead and saw a road rendered impassable with debris. A human vehicle, which Skoll was unable to recognize as a pickup truck, lay upside-down thirty feet down the road, and had left a fender as well as a side-mirror and three planks of wood it had been carrying in the street. The curbs would make it difficult to get around, but now he knew that Matrix would run ahead to clear a path before he reached it. He wouldn't have minded a rest, they had been going for a long time already, and the warrior could feel the slight burn of his muscles beginning to complain about the continued load. He fully expected that he'd be doing most of the heavy-work, since he could probably keep up the pull longer than the much smaller Matrix, but he could tell by the design of the harness that she intended to shift down to pull at some point. "That's a difficult question," he said softly. "I suppose one would need to know the tale of HawkWind to fully understand. That's rather long, though, and I'm not sure you'd fancy it." He pondered a bit, before going on. The short of it is that eighteen years ago, a wolf was born, who resided within a pack in the far north. An accident in his life turned him to madness. He killed someone he loved, and fled his pack with what was left of his dwindling sanity. He was just a tale to me as a child...you may have snuck a peak at the battlefield once or twice, might have seen me in battle, but there is one thing that I've never done in front of anyone from the resistance. In my family, we possess a thing called "HawkWind's Gift"; the ability to descend into a rage of blood lust and fever, of hot and feral viciousness. When I was banished from my birthpack shortly after I turned a year old, I was afraid of the brutal northern winter, I didn't know how I would survive it alone. I recalled the story, and thought that HawkWind must have fled south to survive alone. I did the same, thinking that he was supposedly three generations before me, he might yet be alive, though it was unlikely." He paused for a few moments after that. "Once I escaped the northern reaches of this land, I decided I would try to track down my lost ancestor, my great great grandfather. His trail wasn't a hard one to follow. Everywhere he had been, terrifying tales of murder and a monster in the dark followed him. Each tale was years and years old, though...I rarely found anyone who had seen him themselves. He had fled our packlands and become a scourge to wolves everywhere, a wraith in the shadows. Following the stories, I eventually tracked him down to this place, where I finally met him in person. Ancient, ghastly in appearance, I could see that many of the stories had been accurate. He was dying, and when I told him who I was, he told me the truths that would connect every disjointed story I'd heard, the explanation for every terrifying action he had taken before and since he had left. Explanation, but not justification." He looked at her, his expression pensive. "I think I stayed here because I had attached my story onto his, and when his ended here, I didn't know where else to go, or even if I wanted to go anywhere else. I had followed him because my life needed direction, and I had followed his tale unto its ending, and that tale had landed me in Bleeding Souls. Maybe it was a belief in fate, I'm not sure. He asked me to stay in Storm and protect them in repayment for the solace they had provided, and I agreed. The debt is long repaid, and most of my friends are gone from that place or dead. I suppose I'm free, but I can't think of anywhere else I'd go. I can't see myself wandering without a goal or destination in mind." ~The lyrics are from the best song ever written.

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