1. Prologue
A lone wolf stood atop the mountains, silently watching the disturbance in the world. His eyes narrowed as he saw the dark smoke rising high over the mountain tops in the distance. This was no casual, small, contained fire, nor was it a forest fire. This fire was massive, stretching out countless miles of land. His claws unsheathed, tapping in a light rhythm on the stone of the mountains. He had heard the echoing, reverberating sonic booms from the confines of the mountains. At first, the wolf had feared that Fenrisúlfur had unleashed his wrath upon the world and released the power of the Ancients upon them, but this was no sonic boom of the Artifact; this was the sound of war.
He saw massive shapes moving through the smoke, odd lights flashing through the poisonous gases: humans. They moved south, away from the land beyond the mountains. The large plume of smoke rose into the sky as though a super volcano had erupted in the wake of the land. Knowing the destructive capabilities of the humans, they could have very well achieved its parallel brethren. The old wolf set off in the direction of the smoke, through the mountains. It took him many days and nights for him to reach his destination, but he knew the mountains well. After all, he'd lived in them for well over two millennia.
The creatures of the mountains stalked the darkness of the mountains, the lone wolf-much to their annoyance and disappointment-avoiding them stealthily. These creatures, however, were nowhere near as deadly as what would come if Fenrisúlfur decided to exact his rage upon the world. Perhaps, he already had, and the lone wolf was heading headlong into his unknowing demise as he journeyed to the south where the smoke and fire originated. He had incredibly keen eyes, able to spot the slightest details from hundreds to thousands of miles away in the ancient mountains.
Lithe as a young wolf, he calmly walked forward until he came across the burning plains of the south. The forest was still burning after many days of steady, knowing travel. Massive, abnormal canyons spurted molten lava from the earth, the ground beneath his paws hot with the intense heat and fury of the fires that burned with insatiable, red rage. He padded calmly through the destruction and looked down at the ground, looking at four corpses laid out together. The largest was nothing more than a blackened, smoldering corpse, smoke rising from a large gap where its stomach was cut open by some unknown source, steam emitting from its empty eye sockets and its open mouth. A dead flower hung from its burned fur.
The three bodies beside the first were of the same genetic wolf trait of the first, but significantly smaller. He realized that they were pups that had not survived. He bowed his head in respect and walked past them, continuing his search of the land. He peered down the magma-filled canyons with curiosity, wondering what could have possessed the humans to have ever wanted a power to cause this much death and destruction. He eventually found the remains of a human military convoy on an old, destroyed road. There was not a single human left alive, the few corpses still around nothing but blackened, burning skeletons.
He eventually came across a large hill with a massive gorge that cut down its side like a jagged scar. He looked down and saw the bodies of wolves and other animals that had fallen into its precarious clutches, dying upon impact on the stone. There were old bones within its dark depths, but he saw many more animals with bloodied fur at the bottom. They had fallen down recently, most likely trying to escape the humans' destructive rampage and, in a frenzied panic, plummeted over the edge. He padded carefully to the top of the hill, passing one tree that was not dead yet. Half of the bark was torn off; churned earth left in the ground as though someone or something had ridden the bark down the hill. He was perplexed by this, but found nothing important about it.
He reached the top of the hill and found a clearing lightly covered with soot. However, there were paw prints and signs that wolves had been on the hill days earlier, the indentations in the soot still well presented in the ash. Yet, there were no bodies. His eyes glimmered with interest and he walked ahead, following the paw prints. He noticed small prints in the clearing that indicated the presence of a pup amongst the rest of the wolves. The paw prints led away from the valley, slight drag marks indicating that they had dragged their tails through the ashes in defeat.
Considering that their paw prints were so clearly indented and contained little to no paw drag marks, he determined that the wolves had been traveling at a slow, walking pace. He watched as the prints faded into the less ash-covered land beyond, the general direction heading into the vast plains leading to the mountain pass. If they had a pup with them, he doubted that they had traveled far in the past few days, perhaps only just reaching the mountain pass if they were lucky. The pup needed to be fed and carefully tended for, something that they could not do on the move.
It would take the wolves many moons for them to reach his original position in the mountains, but that was assuming far too much. After all, the chances that they would survive in unfamiliar territory were slim on its own, but with the dangers of these particular mountains lurking about in the dark mists of the ancient lands, he doubted they'd survive much longer than a year in the mountains. That was if they were incredibly fortunate.
He smiled and began to run. He tirelessly ran through the mountains, evading the creatures with ease as he returned to the Mountain of the Watcher Spirit. He climbed the rocky slope effortlessly until he reached the peak. The sun's rays of light glared over the peak of the mountain as it set in the distance. This was his home and the home of many other wolves and creatures of legend and nightmare. It was a glorious place to live, but not for strangers. The wolves that had sought refuge in the mountain pass to the north beyond their home were destined to die there.
Suddenly, something incredible happened. The sun's rays reflected off the icy rock, rebounding across other such mountains across the range until three jagged marks formed in the mountains. It was the legendary mark of Fenrisúlfur. The wolf's eyes widened in awe, for in all of his long thousands of years of life, he'd never had the privilege of witnessing such a historic event. This was a sign, an omen. He whipped back to see the rock of the mountain peak part away an open into a deep tunnel that led into the core of the mountain. He approached carefully, looking down to see a rock ledge leading down to the bottom.
He took a tentative step forward, placing his paw carefully into the darkness of the vertical tunnel that led to the heart of the mountain. His eyes widened as he saw the ancient carvings on the stone walls. The marks were the written scripture of the Wolves of the Star Spirit. He could not understand the message inscribed in the stone for the language had been lost in the sands to time, but he knew the significance and meaning of the symbols. The tunnel led down and down until the darkness felt claustrophobic to him. A dark, red light glimmered in the bottom. Dark shadows swarmed around it, the dust and mist of demon spirits surrounding its entity.
The object was a massive stone obstruction that coiled around it, red marks and lines etched into its ancient surface. Whispers of the Ancients spoke silently in the chamber. Dust rose from the chamber floor, a small pile raised on the sides of it surrounding the large stone object itself. The floor had moved upward, the object beginning to make a steady ascent upward. The act of glorious reemergence had begun, and soon, the divine wolves would pass on into the light and mark themselves as the superior species in the world once more. They would find themselves invulnerable to anything save for the powers of the plague that affected the living. No doubt, the lone wolf had already been infected just by standing in the divine presence of the object. Two points jutted upward into the sky.
The wolf heard something above and rushed back to the surface to watch as four prongs of ice rose from the surface of the mountain. They were shaped like massive claws that had unsheathed from the earth. The four claws of ice pointed in towards the hole on the mountain. They were well over the size of three Kodiak bears standing on top of each other combined, and the ice would no doubt be nearly impossible to destroy.
A stone slab sealed the hole that led down to the divine object. He padded over and inspected the slab, reading the inscriptions of the Ancients. This, however, was a language that appeared to be more modern (at least for a wolf of his incredible age) and he could understand it to a certain extent. His eyes widened when he read what was carved into the stone; they had all heard of the legend of the Great Wolf that would save them from the darkness, but none had dared to believe it. To save them from the darkness, however, the Great Wolf would have to destroy the object of divinity. That was unacceptable, and they could not allow that to happen.
If the Great Wolf existed, then this stone slab meant that they he would come, and would arrive soon. He knew not when, but he knew that when he arrived, the measures of protecting the divine object would be enforced greatly. He looked out towards the dark smoke in the distance, the steadily rising cloud moving upward and polluting the air in the distant thousands of miles. The fires would burn for perhaps another week or two until it subsided and only ash remained, but he now knew that this was the omen.
To see the entire southern land before the mountains decimated, to see that wolves had survived, to see the object, and to read the legend of the Great Wolf within a matter of days was no coincidence. He had been far too attuned to the world around him to know that that was true. This was an urgent matter that required his attention and the attention of the others.
Looking around, he noticed more ancient inscriptions on the ice. The symbols were written in crimson blood that had dried many millennia prior, the writing showing up clearly upon the blue-white surface of the ice. It depicted exactly what had happened the first time the object had been put into effect by Fenrisúlfur, and just how it had nearly wiped out all life on the world and spread the divinity of the object until the first Great Wolf had arrived and stopped its power, banishing the black object to the depths of the far oceans in the south, ending the plague and tearing away any possible chance for divinity. Now…now this object had been recovered and its glorious divinity would spread. The humans' ignorance would keep them from being able to stop it, much less find the source. However, if the Great Wolf was to stop it again…no, that could not happen. It would not happen. It could not be allowed. Glory and divinity must be spread into the world shrouded by darkness, and they could not allow the Great Wolf to do his evil deeds again. Perhaps, he thought. If the wolves that had survived their home's destruction were to reach this place, they could help us eradicate the evil threat of the Great Wolf.
To spread the divinity, the blood of the Great Wolf had to be given to the object and then all species' in the world would be saved and delivered to the caring paws of Fenrisúlfur. It was imperative that they stop the evil from destroying the object again…or all would be lost.
He walked back away from the Mountain of the Watcher Spirit and back into the valley beyond it. There was a crucial encryption that he had missed, however. It told of the Legend of the Grey, the one that would bring peace and life to his pack. The legend had faded away over the millennia until it was forgotten, but the blood glowed just as the Legend of the Great Wolf had, for both of the legends were about to be foreseen. Destinies would be realized soon enough, and if the Legendary Grey was able to help them against the Great Wolf of evil…then perhaps there was condolence and hope for the wolves of the mountains after all.
A/N: Please read the A/N at the beginning of the first story! EVEN IF YOU ALREADY READ IT, I updated the first story and the A/N!
**A/N: Yeah, I decided that I couldn't just leave you guys hanging for weeks and my mind was burning with ideas to get out as soon as possible, so I just decided to start up the new story now. This, my friends, is Book Two of the Darkness Trilogy. This is going to be exciting to write for me and I hope it'll be just as exciting for you all to read! So, what's the object? How does it spread divinity and hope across the world? Why and how did the Great Wolf of evil banish the first object to the ocean depths in the south? What is the Legend of the Grey? Where are the survivors of Jasper? How's Humphrey doing? How's Kala, Winston, Lily, Garth, and everyone else doing? What about Scourge and Sam? When will I stop asking all of these horribly predictable rhetorical questions that you're probably already asking yourselves? Well, I guess we're about to find out! Thanks for reading my first story Into the Darkness, and I hope that this story will be just as much (if not more) of a success as my first Alpha and Omega Fan Fiction story! Until next time!**
**-The Dishonored Wolf**