James tried to sleep. He really did. But there were dreams. Bad dreams; and soon, they turned into nightmares.

He saw flashes, random and erratic. They were memory fragments, he realized; and they grew clearer and clearer. He heard a muffled scream as he tightened a garrote around a man's throat. He took a deep breath as he peered down the scope at his target a mile away, then he squeezed the trigger and the air was torn with a crackling sound. The skull exploded a moment after.

James was tiptoeing up the stairs of a manor to the second floor, a minute away from smothering the children to death. One of them had seen him take care of the husband and wife, and the mission called for absolutely no witnesses. Inexplicably, his chest tightened as he committed the inglorious deed.

James blocked a furious right jab and countered with a brutal punch to the chest. He heard an unmistakable crunching noise as one of the ribs folded under the immense pressure. His opponent hunched over, and James took full advantage: he drove his elbow into the man's cheek, dislocating his jaw and causing him to tilt to the right. With ferocity, he shoved his right foot into the man's shin, which snapped and distorted gruesomely, as though made of cardboard. The man toppled to the ground with a pitiful howl.

As the medical staff came in and loaded the man onto a stretcher, James walked away, ignoring the fear-laden looks of the other initiates. This was a warning- a wake-up call meant to frighten these green operatives into picking up the slack and keeping up with their rigorous training. Or else he was going to do to every other initiate what he had done to this man. It took more than false bravado and a death wish to qualify for Project Zephyr.

James was sitting in his cell in the Gulag, which was damp, dark and cramped. He hadn't grown used to the chains on his hands, even after all the time he had spent in this godforsaken place. He reminisced about the other memories, which hung obstinately in his head, all vivid and lifelike. He wasn't himself when he did these things, but he had felt them all the same. The murders, the deceit, the destruction- they were all wrought by his own hands. Zemo's words manifested unbidden in his troubled psyche. Did he truly deserve redemption after all the things he had done?

The dull metal door cranked loudly as it was slowly swung open. He thought that the men had come to take him to the next prison fight, but he was wrong. Jack Monroe stepped into his cell, and James rose to his feet in surprise. Monroe didn't speak, but the intent in those haunting eyes was clear. The man closed in, his hands raised. James didn't do anything to resist. This was the end, he told himself. Cold hands brushed inadvertently against his cheeks and then tightened around his throat.

It all made sense.

This was how it was supposed to end.

Chapter Two: Of Nightingales, Raiders and Fear Lords

James awoke with a start.

The dream had passed, and the unpleasant sensation of his larynx being crushed was already a distant memory. Now, it was a burning sensation in his right hand that overwhelmed his other senses. His gaze darted to the wound, and he saw that it was open once again. The flesh was dried and charred.

In the moment after, he noticed a slender, black gloved hand hovering above his arm. The fingers were glowing a soft yellow. James looked upwards; the figure attached to the hand was draped in a silky black cloak, which clung snugly to the body in the face of the morning wind. The hood attached to the cloak hung low, obscuring all facial details to the eye of the beholder.

Seeing his surprise, the figure made a move towards James, the hand now glowing with greater intensity. James reacted instinctively, seizing the mysterious individual by the throat and slamming him hard against the snow. The hood fell down as the stranger hit the ground, and James saw that it wasn't a he, but a she. Locks of dirty silver hair fell across her broad temple, just touching the outlines of her wide, doe-like azure eyes. A single streak of yellow face paint ran from her temple to the tip of her cheekbone; it was a curious contrast to the complexion of her skin, which was as pink as an infant's bottom. She was young, with a spark of unbridled terror in her petrified expression that suggested that she was even younger than she looked.

The strangeness of the woman perplexed James, if only momentarily. He pulled out his knife, pressing it close to her jugular.

"Easy there," she said.

James ignored her, holding her pinned to the ground as he looked around to observe his surroundings. About five feet away from him, the wolf stood still in the snow. Its head was lowered, level with its spine,the fur on its coat raised and sticking upwards. Its fangs were bared, but it was leaning on its hind legs even as it stood its ground, as though it was prepared to flee at any moment. In front of him, stood a boy, dressed in an army-green bomber jacket and brown cargo pants. The thin, curved hilt of a sword stuck out conspicuously from his back. He stared down the animal with a defiant confidence that made James uneasy. The sight reminded him of himself in his hale days during the war; but then he realised that it really shouldn't. He had been seventeen when he had donned the red and blues and joined the war effort; the boy was a good five years younger.

The boy noticed James' gaze upon him, and looked up. His eyes whitened and a strange purple aura streamed off them. James felt as though he had been hit by a sledgehammer- but the blow was not aimed at his body, but rather his mind. Fissures of a painful past opened up at once. Images and flashes popped up at random, much like the dream, except infinitely more relentless. The siege persisted only for a fleeting moment, but it was more than enough. The guilt and hopelessness overwhelmed his resolve, and he found himself reeling from the onslaught.

The restrained woman took her chance; she kneed him in the solar plexus and followed up with a swinging back hand that threw him off her and to the ground. She was quick to capitalise, pinning him to the ground with her knee. She drew her hands together and a diffuse beam of light poured outward from the palms, condensing into the form of a longsword with an intricately designed hilt. The middle of it was a hollow circular emblem with a cross passing through it. The woman drew the sharp edge appropriately close to his neck, repaying the favor from moments before.

The situation was reversed now, and James was not entirely bereft of his humor as not to appreciate the irony. He slowly raised his hands above his head, staring intently at the woman as he did so. Gone was the deer in the headlights: the woman was now all business, ready to do whatever it would take to ensure her survival.

"Well, you have my attention," James said, trying to affect a cheesy grin but not entirely pulling it off.

"We aren't looking for any trouble," the woman said.

"Lady, you have me convinced on that front," James grunted. The sword pricked uncomfortably against his exposed chin.

The woman smiled, and stepped back, unclasping her hands as the sword lost its coherence and dissolved into countless individual photons. She watched James scamper back to his feet- rubbing his throat reassuringly as he did so- with an amused expression. James was disconcerted by her stare: she was observing him with the sort of interest one would expect from a tourist gawking at an exotic animal in a zoo.

"I was trying to cauterise that wound in your hand," she pointed out, her tone now light-hearted and lined with relief, "No need to get so jumpy."

James glanced at the wound, and realised that it was indeed deadened from almost all sensations. Suddenly, he felt stupid for jumping to conclusions.

"Heh. You are a regular Florence Nightingale, aren't you?" James said, grinning sheepishly.

"I don't know what that is, but I will assume it's a compliment." the woman smiled impishly.

"Oh believe me, it is. So...introductions?" James asked.

"Right. I am Phyla. That's Alex," she pointed to the boy, who now stood by her side. The wolf circled his feet, not as alert as before, but still eyeing the boy with a wary curiosity. "And you are Captain America."

James shrugged. It had been a while since he had been called that. Not since the Trial, at least. For a moment, the gleaming impact-proof armor that doubled as his costume felt awfully constricting.

"James Barnes," he said, extending his hand. Phyla seemed to be aware enough of common customs that she took him up on the offer and shook his hand. "You can call me Jim, if you like."

"Where's your shield?" the lad that was Alex inquired bluntly.

"Well..." James hesitated. He wasn't sure where it was, himself. "Let's just say that it's a long story and keep it at that for the time being, shall we?"

"Fair enough," said Phyla. "He found you, you know. Alex, I mean. We were wandering, lost in that damned mist, and suddenly, he points his finger towards a random direction and says that we are supposed to go there. Precogs are annoying like that, you know. All cryptic and mysterious, that knowing smile always plastered on their faces..." Phyla frowned when she saw that Alex was indeed smiling crookedly, his eyes narrowed, a certain mischief dancing in his dimpled cheeks. "You are a nasty little schlag, aren't you?"

"What?" Alex moaned. "I can't help myself. That's just how it works."

"Anyways, we struck out in that direction and kept going until we found you," Phyla finished with a flourish.

"Just like that?" James asked, incredulous.

"Just like that," Phyla beamed.

James nodded quietly, internalising what he had just been told. It seemed too convenient. The chances of him running into stragglers in a place as desolate as this were slim to none. Yet the odds had tilted suspiciously in his favor; first it was the wolf, and now it were these two.

If things seem too good to be true, they usually are. He wasn't distracted by Phyla's quirky, friendly demeanor; the woman obviously knew how to handle herself, and those light powers of hers made her that much more difficult as an opponent. But it was the boy, Alex, who made him truly uneasy. The deluge of fears buried and forgotten was still vivid in his mind, and he was in no hurry to experience it again.

To James, Alex seemed to be even more of an anomaly than Phyla was. There was a deadness behind those young eyes, and James had to suppress an urge to shudder.

It was something that he knew all too well. He had seen it often enough when he had stared too long into the mirror.

Still, he knew better than to argue against cold, hard logic. Two swords were better than none. He would need their help if he ran into any further unpleasant surprises: namely, the nameless attackers who had fatally wounded Jon. And who knew what else was lurking behind the cover of the snow and the thrice-damned mist.

James fetched the map from his belt of pouches and unrolled it, holding it flat and above his waist so that the other two could see it.

"So...you have any idea about where you want to go?" James asked.

"Not really, no," Phyla replied. Her vigor drained slightly; she had realised the fact herself only after saying it out loud.

"I met a man yesterday. He spoke of a group. They are travelling across the valley." James decided to leave out the rest of the unpleasant details. He would fill them in later, if need be. "If they have any sense, they will camp out in the forest here," James pressed his finger against the scale drawing of the trees, "It's the only resting stop they will have before the mountains. We can catch up to them if we put in a good day's march. We will have to stick to the low lands here, near the glaciers," he traced his fingers back to the ridge formations, "Weather will only get worse the higher up we go. From there, we can head north-east and we will be seeing trees in no time. We can gather our wits after that, and maybe go our own separate ways if that's how it works sound about right?"

Phyla curled her lips and turned towards Alex, as if to seek his approval of the proposal. The teen stared at her with a queer, unreadable expression, and then smiled,his young features thawing into a more amicable mood. And it seemed to James, in that fleeting moment, that this was an ordinary teenager. If only that were true.

"See? I told you he would be useful," Alex said, patting the wolf softly on its head. Evidently, the animal had taken to the boy after the bout of initial apprehension.

"I appreciate the vote of confidence," James paused, scratching the stubble on his chin as he contemplated his present situation. These two would depend on him now. Well, these two and the dog. He hadn't held a lot of leadership positions in his lifetime, and the handful of occasions that were the exceptions didn't turn out exactly laudatory when all was said and done.

Still, the task had fallen on him, and he wasn't about to shirk away from it. Besides, he had seen the likes of Rogers, Stark, Cage and Barton lead from the front through all those years. He was bound to have picked up some pointers about it, he reckoned. And he would hardly be leading a team of elite superheroes on some insane quest to save the fabric of the universe, or anything like that.

He probably wouldn't be too shabby, if he put his mind to it.

"Alright, then," James said, a precarious smirk present on his face. "Let's get going."

An hour later, James could scarcely believe his luck.

After persisting for the entirety of the day and a half he had been in this wasteland, the mist had finally given way. The vista revealed as the curtain was lifted was nothing particularly breathtaking. On the ground, there was nothing of note but snow for as far as the eye could see. But James could spot the terrain gradually sloping downwards as they traveled north-east, and that meant that they were drawing ever closer to the glaciers.

The sky was a drab grey, and there were no clouds. The lack of fluidity made it seem artificial, as though it was painted on a giant, spherical canvas. Then again, there was nothing natural about the situation James now found himself in. James' mind drifted towards a common axiom. When life hands you lemons...

The mountain range dominated the horizon, with one particularly huge mass of rock and snow standing a good thousand feet above the others. It was tipped with ice, like silver, but its sides were naked, the bronze-red complexion of its body appearing rather dull with the absence of sunlight.

As James looked at it, he felt dread stir inside his gut. It grew and twisted and morphed; what was first intangible now became something more concrete, though still vague nonetheless. The sound of the wind grew conspicuously louder to his ears. He could swear that the wind spoke to him, in a language that was ancient and alien, beyond the grasp of a mortal from modern times such as he. Somehow, he knew that it spoke of fell things, of an incomprehensible power and the wrath it held for all walking things.

James ignored it and looked away, though the raw fear lingered on for several moments after. Frankly, he had more than enough of nigh-omnipotent entities for a lifetime. He couldn't care less if such a thing was, indeed, out there somewhere, lying in wait for unwary travelers. He would cross that bridge when he came to it.

He turned his gaze to nearer points of interest, taking a moment to observe Phyla more closely as she traveled beside him. The golden lined cloak billowed gently behind her, leaving her inner ensemble open for inspection. The fabric seemed to be a curious cross between latex and leather: it was black, but there was a different, duller sheen to it than the satiny black of the cloak. The golden cross design from the sword was present here as well- it ran vertically upwards from the tip of her ankle to her collarbone, with the central, circular piece looming large a little above her bosom. There were two golden bracelets on her wrists; the right bracelet was longer and of a more rounded shape, with dimple-less cardiod-like protrusions rising out of its body. The left one was less ornate; it was a simple, cylindrical band.

The sight of it, however, stirred something deep inside James' mind. He realised that he had seen bracelets identical to the latter, albeit silver ones, worn by the Protector, an alien by the name of Noh-Varr.

The young man, though an Avenger like James himself, was an enigma: he barely talked and kept to himself, and was only seen in the company of Stark, helping the latter in matters of engineering that were several degrees above James' own rudimentary understanding of the field. He had energy powers as well, James recalled. That meant the bands were the sources of power. He noted this down in his mind; he might have some use for it in the near future if things ever went wrong.

"Gods!" Alex grumbled, furiously rubbing his palms as he tried to keep up with the other two. "Don't you get bothered by the cold? It pokes at your skin like a thousand tiny needles. I never had to deal with an environment where the temperature was lower than ten degrees Celsius and I sure as hell hope that I won't have to again. This absolutely sucks."

"Easy there with the potty mouth, kid," James cautioned.

"For the record, I am eleven. And you aren't my dad." Alex stared levelly at James. This was a kid who didn't take well to being bossed around.

James grinned nervously. "I am glad I ain't your dad."

"Whatever."

The boy didn't grumble after that.

"And what about you, Lady?" James began, in an earnest attempt to make conversation. "Does the cold get to your bones as well?"

"Not really," Phyla replied after a moment of deliberation. "I am used to travelling through the vacuum of space. This feels like a gentle breeze compared to what it's like out there. You know, near absolute zero levels and what-not."

"Uh huh. Lady, can I ask you a question?"

"Lady has a name." She winked sideways at him.

"Well, it's a bit of a mouthful."

"It's only two syllables. I mean, I have met people with seventeen syllable pet names. Don't ask me how long their formal names were."

"Look, can I just call you Phy?" James asked, chuckling.

"You can," Phyla drawled, "but only if you don't insist on calling me that all the time."

"Right," There was that cheesy grin on his face again. One day, it would be the death of him. Thus, it was fortunate that he was already dead. "You aren't human, are you, Phy?"

"Kree, born and raised. Well, born in a vat of genetic material stolen from the universe's greatest protector and raised by a virtual reality construct which fed me with memories of an artificial childhood, but you get the point," Phyla laughed.

"Actually, you lost me at universe."

"Let me guess, you hate cosmic stuff?"

"Yeah! How did you know?"

"There was this other Earther I met a while back. Jack guy. How could a guy who had dyed his hair red, white and blue be anything else? And his only other defining characteristic was that he hated- I mean, absolutely loathed- cosmic stuff. He wouldn't stop harping about it every five seconds."

"I can relate with the guy. I didn't really get neck deep in the space stuff like a lot of other Avengers probably do, but there are two missions I can remember off the top of my head. Absolute chaos. One time, Thor was swinging his hammer like hell at this giant purple guy with this elaborately designed bucket on his head-"

"I think you mean Galactus," Phyla suggested.

"Probably. I am not so good with these sort of names. Anyways, so Thor is giving all he has at this freak and then some, but he is just standing there, like he could take that all day. And all the while, this strange Conan-looking guy is yelling nonsense, and dinosaurs are running wild over Manhattan. Dinosaurs!"

"Are these...dinosaurs supposed to be a big thing back on Earth?" Phyla asked.

"Yeah. Big and scaly and all lizard-like. But more importantly, they are supposed to be extinct. It's almost as bad as dragons coming back to life and going all medieval on our sorry behinds."

Phyla nodded, her facial features contorted as though frozen in mid-frown. She inhaled deeply and then exhaled, the lingering trace of unpleasant remembrance evident in her eyes. "Well, if you put it like that, then it must have been bad."

"It was. Not just the bit with the dinosaurs, but the entire thing. These other people I was with, they were no slouches, I can tell you that much. But we were all over our heads with that mess. Things were spinning out of control and it was all we could do to just hang on and not get swept away in this swirling spiral. We had no idea about what the hell we were supposed to do and somehow, we still came out on top in the end. It was a bad hair day, all things in consideration."

"Well, the folks I used to run around with, they would have called that a quiet day."

James furrowed his brows. "Is that so?"

"Oh, yeah. We got into all kinds of insane things. And none of us had half an idea about what we were trying to do. Then again, saving the galaxy doesn't exactly come with a rigid job description, does it?"

"You have got a point. So...how did that work out for you?"

Phyla stopped short, the pink of her face now an ashen pale. The natural mirth had drained from her, dragging the veneer of cautious optimism down with it as it had gone. She turned and looked right at him.

"Long story short, I died."

"...I am sorry." James really didn't know what else to say. "I shouldn't have brought that up."

"It's not your fault. You couldn't have known. And you shouldn't be sorry. You aren't the d'ast afterbirth who did that to me. He's supposed to be dead, himself. Flarker just won't stay that way, is all."

"Yeah, that seems to be the case for a helluva lot of people..." James trailed off, lost in thought. Death wasn't what it used to be. Some people were just rubber and it was glue. James knew better than to expect himself to be one of those lucky ones.

James thought about picking up the conversation where it left off, but decided against it. Phyla was in a dark state, and he figured she probably had a lot of pent-up frustrations that bubbled to the fore thanks to his insensitive prodding. He was more than happy to give her the space to sort the emotional baggage out and regain her composure.

The only other therapeutic approach he could possibly think of recommending to her would be to seek out a group of unassuming goons and whack them to her heart's content. It always worked for him whenever his mind was hung up on the bitter past.

Then again, that wasn't an option anymore.

It was night. But it was difficult to tell, for the grey sky had dimmed only a little. Neither the stars nor the Moon was anywhere to be seen, although the ethereal glow characteristic of the latter radiated through the landscape.

James was indifferent to this paradox. It was just another quirk in a laundry list of oddities.

James was sitting, his back propped up a boulder. It was his turn to do guard duty for the next few hours. Phyla had just gone to sleep minutes prior.

James felt oddly alert. His mind was calm and collected, clear from the usual haze left in the aftermath of a hasty forty winks. It was not as though he felt full of energy; rather, he simply didn't require any energy. Comparisons to Frankenstein's monster and Dracula flitted awkwardly through his mind. Although patently ridiculous, they felt apt, in a strange, roundabout way.

Despite his hyperawareness, James didn't notice the wolf as it slipped quietly into his field of vision. Its coat blended too well into the background, and its paws were placed with deliberate purpose, nary a sound emanating as they touched the ground. It was only when its jaw unclenched, causing the prize captured within to fall to the ground with a soft thud, that James saw its eyes, and mistaking those for signs of some ghostly presence, immediately started for his gun. Reason replaced irrational fear in the moment after, and James squinted hard at the unknown figure slumped against the wolf's front legs.

It was a mountain goat of some kind. Long, silvery sideburns flowed from its cheeks, and the goatee off its chin was a dark brown, reaching down to its hooves. Its shoulders were swollen, like cannonballs. The creature's facial hair was worthy of an Ubermensche created out of an unholy union between Abe Lincoln and Fu Manchu. Its huge horns, V-shaped and corkscrewed like giant drill bits, formed as good a crown as any.

It was remarkable that the goat retained its impressive dignity in death. That was quite the feat, considering that most cadavers required taxidermists and morticians to achieve that sort of splendor.

Curious, James rose to his feet and approached the wolf, who had dug into its meal with feverish aplomb. He peered at the corpse below the predator's hulking form. His earlier admiration for the animal was brutally deconstructed from this closer perspective. In the end, a cadaver was just that: a cadaver. There was no reconciling anything else, no matter how one looked at it.

A large portion of the goat's hind quarters, legs and all, had been torn off. The flesh around the tear was blackened and uneven, probably picked clean by carrions taking opportunistic stabs while the larger predators were too busy with squabbling between themselves. The waft of pungent smell, a musty miasma of roses and mustard gas, was instantly recognisable.

It was telling that he was such a connoisseur of decomposing flesh. There were days when he couldn't tell apart one brand of cologne from another.

"That's rotten, you know," James said to the wolf, which continued on undeterred with its meal. "You lazy bum, you just picked that off the ground, didn't you? Look at you, stuffing your face with it. Well, don't come running to me with your tail between legs if you catch the plague or something..."

The wolf paused, its ears flattened. It averted its gaze from the goat with a certain reluctance, its tail wagging harmonically as it stared quizzically at James. Then it scrounged the carcass up by its neck, dropped it in front of his feet and backed away hastily.

James frowned.

"Geez, girl," James shook his head as he touched the corpse with the tip of his boot and nudged it towards the cautious canine. Now the animal regarded it with certain dread, as though it was indeed infected with the plague. "what we've got here is failure to communicate..."

"Pity," a familiar voice echoed from behind. James turned around to see a nonchalant Alex, smiling blithely and leaning against the singular boulder. A leather scabbard, the sleeveless, curved hilt poking out of it, was lying beside the rock as well. "That looked quite inviting."

"Aren't you supposed to be sleeping?" James inquired, as he walked over to the lad and took a seat beside him.

"I tried that. It doesn't work so well, after the first twenty minutes or so. Not that much difference between sleeping and not sleeping...at least, not in this place," He frowned darkly. "Sleepwalking through a lucid dream, is what it feels like."

"Yeah, I know the feeling. Not that I could have put it as eloquently, though, "James glanced at the carcass. Having overcome its earlier aversion, the wolf was tearing through its scavenge with new-found enthusiasm. "You really feeling hungry, kid?"

"Literally? No."

"Then why would you want to eat...you know, that?"

"I don't want to eat that in particular," Alex clarified with an exasperated snort. "I was thinking more along the lines of eating in general."

James stared at the teenager, his impassive features not giving away his piqued curiosity. Food had never been anything more than a necessity. He didn't see that much of a distinction between hot dogs and fine dining, despite Natasha's many attempts to housebreak him in that regards.

Now a beer...he could see the point in craving for that. But he wasn't going to tell that to an underage kid. If the sword and attitude was anything to go by, this one was rowdy enough as it was. He certainly didn't need the prospect of alcohol muddling his brains.

"Well, as you can obviously see," James spoke, a little too forcefully; the resulting hoarseness made his throat ache. "food...edible food, anyways, is pretty scarce to come by. We have to make do with what we got."

"I know," Alex stated dryly. Clearly, he wasn't fond of being on the receiving end of clichés. "Just thinking out loud, is all."

"I sort of see your logic there, though. A little wishful thinking never hurt anyone. Hell, it can be pretty useful if you know how to use it."
"How's that, now?"

James chuckled.

"Back when I was your age, the best I had was a government-issue bunk and a bowl of gruel from the mess hall. And when I say the best, I mean it. Had to camp on terrain that would make this look like the Hilton's presidential suite. Survived on a diet of bugs and leaves for weeks at a stretch. Let me tell ya, it gets darn difficult to focus on your current objective when your body's preoccupied with having an allergic reaction to ladybugs.

"But that's the catch: you got to turn your weaknesses into strengths. What we have got in front of us here...it doesn't have the best of prospects, but if you keep at it long enough- if you stick to the beaten path, you are bound to get somewhere sooner or later. And who knows, eventually that bunk might turn into a soft, comfy bed, and that gruel might turn into homemade apple-pie."

"Actually, I prefer takeout, myself."

James shook his head in pity.

Alex shrugged and continued. "I could murder for a cup of coffee right now, though..." the lad rubbed his arms furiously, shivering involuntarily as he did so.

"Good luck with that. Nothing short of deicide is going to get you that in here."

Alex stared at James, lips curled in knee-jerk contemplation. His facial expression was quite peculiar; it was two parts aggravation and three parts amusement.

James wondered what could have been so funny about what he had said. Like any other blue-blooded seventeen year old in ridiculous tights, he had made his fair share of quips back in the day, but he sure was no Abbott or Costello. Hell, nowadays he wasn't even a Tony Stark in that department.

"What was that?" Alex asked suddenly, his voice cracking with the influx of abrupt alertness.

James sat upright, eyes, ears and nose searching for signs of any disturbance. The wolf had stopped eating; it was staring intently at the sky, ears erect and tilting forward, lips puckered to reveal clasped canines.

And then James heard it: a faint, but definite strain of shrill, ululating cries, a principle voice providing an unwavering, low-key undertone of bass with a stress on 'O', with several louder voices joining in for brief additions, some adding to the familiar brass and others tempering it with hoarse baritones that focused instead on 'U'. This persisted for several seconds; and then the rough-hewn symphony turned into a cacophony of squabbling actors, the random, short bursts distantly reminiscent of Native American war chants. The chaos escalated, with one voice rising on top of all the others and whining louder and louder in quickly repeating syllables. Defeated, the other voices eventually died down in deference to the dominant one, which let out one final cry of satisfaction, its echoes spreading out like ripples on a pond, before silence reigned supreme once again.

James shifted his gaze from the vacant sky to Alex beside him, who was still utterly transfixed by what he had just heard. James couldn't blame him; his hands were starting to itch, as was the back of his neck. His mind, understanding the phenomenon at once, was rational and calm, but his body still retained the primal fear that had been passed down to him from his earliest ancestors.

"So..." Alex spoke, a little too softly. He paused, deliberately speaking louder from there onwards. "You seem to know what that was."

"Of course I do. And frankly, so should you. Seeing how most kids your age seem to be hogging the television 24/7..."Alex mumbled 'Xbox' under his breath. To James, that may as well have been Hebrew, so he ignored that and answered the boy's query. "That was wolves, howling."

The boy nodded quietly, hand instinctively edging towards the nearby scabbard. James noticed the reflex.

"Relax. That wouldn't do you much good at this range."

"I know," Alex said, dimpling. "Stupid reaction. So since you seem to be the one with the nature channel experience..."

James snickered. The experience was a bit more up front and personal than that.

"...what were they howling about?"

"Regrouping, at first. Either right before or after a hunt. Then it turned into a good old-fashioned disagreement for one reason or another. Probably about food. Maybe territory, even. Whatever it was, an Alpha stepped in and reminded everyone who's the pack leader...and that was the end of it."

Alex absorbed the news in silence, staring intently at the gigantic form of the resident wolf, sleeping soundly after a meal that had barely satisfied its voracious appetite. The leftovers were practically nonexistent: a meaty ribcage and a smashed skull were all that remained.

In such a peaceful state, the creature's innocuousness temporarily dispelled Alex's lingering alertness, but the boy knew better. Then a novel idea took root in his fertile mind, and Alex smiled, a hawkish glint in his eyes, "You know, I was just wondering what wolf meat tastes like..."

"Hah! Don't even think about it. The beasts are canny folk, and notoriously hard to hunt. In spacious, lightly populated terrain like this, pack territories can stretch to hundreds of square miles, if not thousands. Plus, wolves are generally wary of people. Our scents are already up in the air, and they will know well enough to stay clear of wherever we go."

"What if this particular group is the exception to that rule, though?"

James grunted disapprovingly. "We will cross that bridge when we come to it."

Alex turned his gaze to the slumbering animal once again. "Say, how did you come upon that big lug in the first place?"

"Well, it's a bit of a yarn, that. Can scarcely believe it myself..." James gave him a brief summary of the encounter, leaving all the pertinent details intact as he did so. When he had finished, Alex scrutinised him, eyebrows raised and lips crooked. As any other purveyor of modern mass entertainment would have done in his particular situation, the lad couldn't help but ask, "You know, that sounds awfully like-"

James wasn't entirely pop-illiterate, either. "Yeah, I do know what that sounds like. It sounds absolutely ridiculous. But that's just how it is."It wasn't even the most absurd thing he had seen in his life, not by a long shot.

"Right..."Alex slumped his shoulders; there was an exasperation in that gesture that suggested he had exausted the entirety of his attention span for the reached for his sword, this time with deliberation and ran his hands over the scabbard, up and down.

"Umm, no offense," the boy said hurriedly, not bothering to make eye-contact with the bemused James,"but could we have a timeout? Most conversations I have end in 140 characters or less..."

"Hah! That's efficient."

Inwardly, James acquiesced to the boy's proposition. His sore throat was becoming harder to ignore with each spoken word. With a final shrug, he got to his feet. "Alright, I get the memo. I will leave you to your watch and try to get some sleep..."

"Yeah, good luck with that," Alex yelled after James, who was already in the process of slipping off his cowl. James flashed a knowing grin at the lad.

He liked the kid. Needed a little work on his social skills, but he figured that was the case for a lot of teens these days. What he couldn't figure out, though, were the sword on poking out of the kid's back and the (occasionally) glowing eyes, but he reckoned there would be time for that later.

"We leave at dawn, latest," James instructed. Upon further thought, he added, "Or whatever substitutes for that here. Wake us up if we are not already awake by then."

"Well, how I am going to know the time?" Alex asked, pulling back his sleeve and waving his bare wrist.

"Use your biological clock! It will never let you down. Now hush."

James laid down, his head resting on his hands. The snow made for a very uneven (and delicate) bed, but it was something he had grown used to by now. He closed his eyes, and his consciousness gave way soon after.