When the wind started to blow the temperature dropped like a dead body. The caravan had already lost five wagons, it couldn’t lose another and hope to stay profitable. They’d lost three wagons to bandits, the other two to wolves. In every case, the wind had started to blow before the attack occurred. Magic was definitely involved in the hard fortunes on the road to the capital.
They’d just come around a blind corner when caravan leader Monsono called a halt. In the middle of the road was a dead dear, mutilated as if it had been beaten with a sledge hammer. “Burn it, ” Monsono barked at his subordinates. A call for oil was made and in short order the corpse was burning furiously. The light from the fire lit up the forest, but it felt as though the flames gave off no heat. Monsono’s second in command muttered under his breath, “Cursed, I say, the caravan is cursed.”
“Watch your tongue ,” Monsono rebuked, “don’t spook the men, we’ll end up being the only ones left to bring the caravan home.” At that a wolf howled just out of the range of the light from the fire, and growling could be heard from the blackness of the forest As the growling intensified, the caravan horses began to prance in fear.
Then a voice spoke out of nowhere. “You’ll have no trouble with our wolves, if you just leave us your wagons. Don’t test us… you’ve seen what the wolves can do.”
Monsono stared as the voice stepped from out of the shadow. “You,” Monsono accused, “I should of known. Only you would torture an animal like you did to make a point. Damn you, Falcao, you’re suppose to be dead.”
“Not yet,” Falcao said. “At least not until I stand over your cooling carcass.”
Monsono stared at the man and new he was about to die at the hand of The Mystic Of Cascadia, a fate all feared.