Chapter 1
The delicious night. Sanguine sweet, invigorated by the pulse of electric moonlight through the blurring trees. The fantastic, incredible night! Surrounded by knotted trees of untold ages singing songs of the wind in scratchy whispers, the beast bounded in great strides like the slosh of liquid metal. Waves of fur the color of crystal sky bristled in the succulent air.
The werewolf savored one thing above all, above the splendor of a full moon or the giddy thrill of a blood-chilling howl; he savored the hunt. The wet sweetness of a wild-maned boar's blood dripping from his chops, which he supped with glee.
It was one such muscled morsel he pursued through the dark woodland of Garen Forest under the cloak of night. While the wild mushroom men of the wilderness had pulled their caps down tight, the lycan was awake and alive…and hungry.
But something was not right in the woods that night. There was an odd feeling about them. At least, about odd as woods full of slime monsters could be.
Movement to the right, the crack of dry twigs. Vigor drove his powerful paws into the dirt and kicked off, altering his course with ease. It was too late he realized that it was not his dinner that had given away its position, but a foe. A dark shadow blurred from the brush and hit him full force in the side, forcing him to skid across the ground snout over tail until he smashed with bone-jarring force against the trunk of a massive oak.
"Scoundrel!" he snarled, rising quickly. "Witch or warrior, whomever you may be. I have been blindsided by a coward! You must think quite highly of your skill to be in my forest…at…night…"
His words trailed off into the dark as the target of his taunts strode casually from the dark cover into the moonlit clearing. Vigor's next words caught in his throat as he gazed at a face not unlike his own. This was not, however, one of the red wolves of the ruins of Vrofagus. This creature was of an emanating, ominous purple and bore armor that shined like onyx in the nightly glow. Massive black pauldrons framed its whiskers, which stuck like antenna from a grinning snout.
"Suddenly speechless?" It said with amusement. "A pity. You began with such conviction. What a miserable whelp you are."
"What—who are you?" Vigor finally stuttered. "I—"
"Do I look unfamiliar to you?" the purple wolf asked, and reared back in hearty laughter. "Clueless, as well. Pathetic."
Vigor raised his unsheathed claws, allowing them to gleam before the moon. "Listen here, cur. I care not who you are. I hope you've come prepared to bleed."
There was one thing not thought that was perhaps an even greater love than the hunt. The thing that tested the mettle of even the most ferocious wolf.
Battle.
Vigor attacked in a flash, but was immediately outclassed by his dark doppelganger, who spun like a hawk in a tailspin and sent a back paw at fearful speed into Vigor's ribs. The blue wolf flew, his body grinding a rut into the soft earth until he came to rest in agony, gasping for breath. "What…what do you want? Kill me quickly, if that's your wish. I've no fear of death."
"Death? Something much greater is coming to this world. Perhaps you may yet life to see it. Or not. Tonight, I shall take your meal. Should we meet again, perhaps I will make an entrée of you!"
With that, the dark wolf laughed again and bounded off into the night, no doubt to chase down the boar that had escaped Vigor's jaw.
"Damn," the blue wolf said, the edges of his vision blurring. The last thing he saw, high up above, was what remained of the sky island—a nearly forgotten revenant of the long ago Summoners War—floating like a cloud across the face of the pale moon.