I would like to say that when we, at last, neared this faraway land, this Serwich, that I was greeted with sweeping, exotic, breath-taking landscapes, the likes of which I had never seen before.  I would like to say that.  But the reality was, my arrival on this 'Dark Continent' lived up to its name.  Murky, dismal, a bit frightening. . . and very, very dark.
	The day Grayson's falcon returned with word that we were nearing the shores of the Colony, an acrid, choking fog was creeping over the tumultuous seas, blotting out even the sun from the sky.  I couldn't see any other ships in our fleet, even though my ears told me quite well that they were near.  And we'd had clear skies not a few hours earlier, as the sun rose over a cloudless sky.  
	The fog was not natural.  It was unlike any mist or obscurement I'd ever seen in the valley, or in any of my other travels.  It seemed almost black as it slithered in from the distance and enveloped us, and as soon as the man in the crow's nest gave warning of its approach, Grayson's men began donning cloth over their muzzles, wetting them and covering their noses and mouths, much as I'd once seen Grant's men do before we entered the first infected village Rourke had decimated.
	But when Grayson eventually explained the source of the choking fog, I was even more stunned than I had been upon seeing the wreckage of the village so long ago.
	“On the Dark Continent,” the wolf said, as he used unusual care to tie a moist handkerchief around my muzzle, “the mountains. . . burn.”
	“What?”  I asked, my eyes widening.  He couldn't mean literally.
	But the wolf nodded slowly.  “The earth itself.  It burns.  From deep within.  Like a fire has been lit in the depths of the mountains somewhere, and is seeking to vent its fury.  Some of the peaks are bereft of a. . . I suppose you'd call it a 'chimney', and when the fires build inside,” he gestured with his paws, spreading them wide, “the earth shakes, and bursts forth, and the fires of hell are unleashed.”
	“You've seen this?”  I demanded, shocked.
	The wolf chuckled.  “Only the remains.  There was a colony some ways down south from here, established twenty years ago.  It was something of the older sister to Serwich.  Nostafarath, I think it was called.  Kadrush and Amurescan settlers together.  They built it in the valley beneath an enormous mountain, far larger than the ones that preside over Serwich.  It's all part of one long ridge of mountains,” he gestured again, (the man gesticulated often), “the first settlers called 'The Dragon's Ridge'.  In any case, it was a successful colony for a time. . . the Cathazra, the native peoples, they hadn't settled near that area, which is why it seemed a good location, I suppose.  But, then. . . fortune like that often has its price.  The natives simply knew more than we did.”
	“Were you a part of this colony somehow?”  I asked, curiously.  The wolf seemed well-informed.
	Grayson laughed.  “I told you, no.  How old do you think I am?  I was a boy when this all happened.  No, it's just a great tale the people here tell, and a terrifying one, at that, so it made its way through the trade lines fast.”
	“You mentioned remains,” I murmured, looking to the distant, approaching fog.  It was coming in as fog did, first slowly obscuring our sister ships, then muddying the air in slowly increasing degrees aboard the Manoratha.  Except, unlike a fog I'd experience in the valley, I could feel more than just moisture.  It felt like the air was thick, like someone was kicking up dust.  I found myself blinking rapidly, and my eyes began to water.  An unsettling smell was permeating the winds, as well.  It reminded me of something I'd smelled in Otherwolf towns, but what in particular, I could not put my finger on.
	Grayson nodded.  “When we heard that the colony had been destroyed, it was nearly a decade after it had happened of course, but details were sparse, and we did as many did. . . stopped by to see what could be salvaged.  We were in the area as it was, and I was hoping the port would be a good place to wait out a troubling fleet in the area.  I expected a colony destroyed meant the Cathazra had come in and driven the colonists out, or simply killed them all.  But there are goods they don't seize, things their people have no use for I suppose, like spices and cloth, that are of great value if you can pick them from the wreckage.”
	I arched an eyebrow, and then blinked rapidly again, running my paw over my closed eyes.  The air was beginning to honestly burn them.  “So what happened?”  I asked impatiently.  “What did you find?”
	“Absolutely nothing,” the wolf said, in a strangely haunted, yet reverent tone, “it was like the earth itself had reclaimed the colony.  And the mountain that had once stood there. . . was no longer there.”
	I snorted, partially because the man was telling a tall tale, and partially because the fog was beginning to sting the inside of my nose, even with the handkerchief on.  “I thought you were being serious,” I muttered.
	“I am,” the wolf replied, and he sounded it.
	“Mountains don't disappear,” I insisted, although even as I said it, I knew I was refuting one of my people's own myths.  Did the legends not say the great mountains that surrounded our valley had once been gods that walked the earth, before settling down to protect and enclose us?  Perhaps if mountains could walk, they could disappear.
	Or burn.
	But I'd always thought these sorts of myths were just metaphors, meant to stand for concepts, not meant to be taken entirely literally.  They seemed, even to me, to be unrealistic.  Impossible to prove, or defend to a non-believer.  The sorts of things that had likely made men like Puquanah doubt his faith, eventually.  
	But could they be real?
	“The mountain. . . erupted,” the wolf said with another explosive hand gesture, his eyes sparkling despite the clogging fog in the air.  I noticed now that several of his men around us on deck were listening to him, as if he were a storyteller.  Well. . . that's essentially what he was doing, if in a different fashion and a different setting than I was accustomed to.  But it was no less fascinating.
	“They heard it as far as Serwich,” he said with a toothy grin.  “Like thunder that shook the earth.  I heard that at least five other colonies felt the tremor beneath their feet.  No one from Nostafarath survived, so it's impossible to say exactly what happened there, of course.  But when the first ships arrived, all they found was what we found.  A mountain turned crater in the earth, an entire forest knocked down, as though some great god had blown it all over, and what had once been a colony with several thousand souls living within it reduced to ash and rock.  They say not a single structure could be found.  We certainly never found any.”
	“Aye,” the black rat with the chipped ear chimed in from where he leaned on the railing nearby, “I was there.  You wouldn't have ever known people lived there.  It was like someone cut a swath outta' the earth an' wiped it clean.”
	“The mountains near here belch smoke and this. . . acrid fog, from time to time,” the wolf said with a slight cough, which I could only sympathetically mimic.  Even with the wrapping, the 'fog' had settled entirely over us now, and it was getting increasingly hard to breathe.  “But this is nothing, compared to the fury they could one day unleash, if Nostafarath is any indication.”
	“It feels like ash,” I said with another cough, wrinkling my nose beneath the wrapping.  It didn't really smell like any fire I'd ever smelled on a mountain before.  But then, I'd never smelled the earth burning, only trees and brush.  I blinked blearily up at the canine.  “Can stone and earth really burn?  I've never seen a fire that hot.”
	“I'm certain you've seen at least one forge by now,” the wolf countered.
	I blinked.  That's right.  That's sort of what this smelled like.  With something additional, something awfully close to the smell of thundering weapons.
	“If we weren't being constantly beset upon by those blasted beasts,” the wolf sighed, “I'd take you by the islands along the coast.  There are places the stone bubbles up from the earth, red hot like the hearth of a fire, but pours like water into the seas.  It is a sight to behold.”
	I stared at him, in part in wonder, in part in disbelief.  I watched him stare out over the fog-choked waters, and wondered at the strange man. . . at the things he must have seen, in his travels.  The incredible places he must have been, and the very real wonders he spoke of.  In my little world within the valley, I'd only dreamed of chasing butterflies. . . of pursuing the unknown and the beautiful things our legends spoke of.  Things I'd literally thought up until just this past year our people could only see in dreams.  
	But this man, and his crew, had truly done it.  They'd seen the earth burn.  They'd seen mountains move.  Things even the sages could only tell tales of.  
	Honestly, it made me envious.  And regretful.  I'd had the chance already to see and experience so many new places, to find wonders like these men spoke of, and I'd been too singularly focused on my past to simply. . . look around.  See what there was to be seen.
	The world hadn't stopped being incredible, just because my loves ones had left it.  Life may have stopped for me, but it had continued churning about, all around me.  Things were happening everywhere.  Things I could never imagine.  And my little life did not compare to earth tremblings, or mountains moving.
	It made me feel small, but it also made my pain feel small.  It was a hard feeling to describe.  I knew one thing for certain in that moment, though.
	I needed to see the earth burn.  I could feel Crow inside me still. . . his own fires burning, subdued but simmering like coals.  He was coming apart, and I had promised him we could make it through this together, if we took the leap to continue living together.  I had brought us this far, to this foreign land.  This foreign land, where even the mountains burned.
	I think, even as far as we were from home, and as mad as this whole journey felt, that we were finally nearing what would be the end of our time together.  What would happen when it ended, I couldn't be certain.  But staring out into the black, ash-choked sky, I knew we had been drawn here, as an ember on the wind, towards a great inferno.

	When we at last made landfall, some of the new continent began to reveal itself to us, cascades of dense forest disappearing in gradients into a haze of fog and ash.  Here, rain was falling, or was at least threatening to.  The air was so thick with moisture, and the spray crashing up from the beach so ever-present, it was honestly hard to tell.  I felt somewhat choked by the sheer amount of water in this place. . . like I was very slowly drowning.  
	We disembarked alongside the Admiral and his bodyguards.  That, I was realizing, was what they truly were.  Ariel, the lion, and another cat I'd seen working amongst the A.B.'s until now, a small leopard with an unusual pelt and a very foreign dialect.  I could barely understand him, but Grayson had told me that since Ransom, Magpie and I had agreed to be part of what he called his 'trackers', the group of people he apparently kept at his side and sent out into the brush the most when his crew made landfall, we were going to get to know the two other cats a lot better in the future.
	I didn't mind the concept of getting to traverse this new, foreign countryside, but if what I'd heard amongst the crew was any indication, it was not an enviable position.  Ariel was the only man who'd been amongst Grayson's 'trackers' for terribly long and survived, the strange, tiny leopard was  a new hire like us.  It was generally a position given to cats, Ariel had told me, Grayson trusted them the most as scouts and for their subtlety and acute senses while we were on guard duty for the wolf.  Ariel was our senior officer in the odd 'squad', and he'd been dubious of Grayson's decision to include my companions. Ransom and Magpie didn't fit into the mold as well, but I'd assured the lion they had their own skills in the brush, and Ransom in particular couldn't be beat for intimidation factor.  That much, at least, had gotten a rumbled agreement from the lion.
	It was by no means an appointment where any of us were comfortable yet, but all we had to do was wait it out while Puck did his research here, and then we could be on our way home.  Chasing down the shadowy vixen seemed a goal so far removed from reality, here on the other side of the world, that I was barely considering it any longer.  And that may have been for the best.
	We'd heard at least that the ship she may have come here on. . . and I say may, because we weren't even certain of that, hadn't made it to port.  In fact, we'd run into the bobbing wreckage of one of its sister frigates an hour or so out at sea.  The Admiral here assured us that if we searched enough, we'd find the debris field of what had once been the massive trade vessel.  Even Grayson had been horrified at the news.  She'd been a large, well-armed ship, and she'd been bombed and destroyed not an hour from the port at Serwich, most of the souls on-board and the supplies she'd been carrying sent to the bottom of the sea in a flaming wreck.  It was easy to see why the Admiral here had been so desperate to escort us to safety, personally.  
	If Shadow had been on-board that ship, it was highly likely she was dead, now.  Apparently some survivors had made it to shore in boats, or been picked up by the Admiral's fleets, floating on ashen wreckage, but it had been a very small portion of the people who'd been with the fleet to begin with.
	The chance was still there, of course, but I was trying not to think about it.  I knew what lay down that road, and I'd made a promise to Crow that we were going to live a different life, now.  A life not consumed by vengeance.
	It was hard not to remember the hate and the anger, unfortunately.  I still dreamt of Grant dying in my arms every single night.  More than once, I know Grayson had seen me choke back a sob, or pretend I hadn't woken with tears in my eyes.  Every night, I had to contend with that anger again. . . fight the fires inside me threatening to well up, and the fierce indignation and fury that accompanied them.  I wasn't certain if I was fighting Crow, or myself in those arguments. . . but it hardly mattered.  I'd accepted by this point that we were all but one.  And I had to redeem him to redeem myself.  Or this thing, this sickness of hate, would burn us both alive.
	So I couldn't think about Shadow, now.  I had to remind myself that not that long ago, I had pursued Methoa'nuk just as I wished to pursue her, to avenge the deaths he had caused. . . and it had accomplished nothing.  It hadn't quieted the fires, nor had it prevented future pain.  Almost immediately after killing him, I had lost Grant.  Wiping my husband's existence from the world had not made the world a kinder place.  Pursuing a more peaceful life may have, and Grant may still have been with me now.  Or perhaps, he was fated to die fighting the demons he himself pursued.  It was impossible to say.  But, one thing at least was certain.  
	Vengeance had not given me peace.  Hard though it was, that was a fact I would have to learn to accept.  I could only hope it got easier with time.
	The docks were a noisy, bustling place just as they'd been in Arbordale, but that was primarily due to our own men beginning to offload our supplies and the chaos that came with making port.  The ports themselves were. . . nothing like what I'd seen in Arbordale.  
	Were it not for us, this whole place would have been eerily quiet, as compared to any Otherwolf settlement I'd seen in the past.  The docks here were visibly newer, or at least the wood was, and lead to newly-paved roads and the first hints of wooden structures beyond, jutting out through the thick fog, hinting at the small city beyond.  Everything I could see looked less worn, less moldering and battered down by decades of use, at least as compared to the older settlement that had been Arbordale. . . .
	. . . but if this settlement was a child, it was a beaten child.  There were scores of blackened earth across the paved roadways that lead from the docks up towards the settlement beyond, the remnants of what must have once been the original dock, now shattered beyond recognition, lying further down along the coast, and several collapsed wooden structures once built into the rocky, forested hills  beyond that the forest seemed to be hurriedly reclaiming, already.  They may have been watch-posts or battlements once, but they were nothing but wreckage now.  Two skeletons of new structures were clearly in mid-construction further up the twin hills that flanked the docks, but they were far from complete.
	It was easy to imagine that if one had wings, the small stretch of beach along the inlet that made up this colony's port must have been pockmarked with these black scars, testament to the devastation that had been visited upon this one contested piece of territory.
	“Bombers,” I heard the rasp of the coyote behind me before I turned to see him.  He snuffed, finally tugging the soaked bandana down from over his muzzle, and fishing about in his pocket for a cigarette.  I didn't want to point out to the canine how difficult it would be to light it in this weather.  He looked as frayed as I felt.
	I nodded, pawing softly at the blackened earth along the roadway we were walking, following in Grayson's wake as we slowly made our way towards the settlement itself.  Offloading would be up to the men from our crew, and the dock workers from Serwich.  I was thankful I'd at least grown enough in the Admiral's estimation that I wouldn't be carrying crates again.
	The buildings I'd seen in the distance, as it turned out, were just warehouses for the docks, and there weren't many of them.  What's more, they seemed abandoned.  Likely because, as we soon saw, most of them had sustained similar damage from above, and were no longer useful.  One that had seemed sound proved in fact to have a gaping hole through the roof and a collapsed wall in the back.  
	“Looks like they pulled back from the shore awhile back,” Ransom noted, as we passed another caved-in building.  “Boys are gonna have to haul that shit all the way up t'the settlement?  Hope they've got wagons.”
	“I think I saw some,” I said, trying not to show how much this place put my nerves on edge.  Just seeing an Otherwolf settlement at all had been new to me not a year ago.  Seeing a town bereft of people had been eerie, when I'd first witnessed what became of the towns Rourke hit.
	But this was more than just the result of a twenty-man raiding band.  This was devastation on a scale that I hadn't imagined existed.  To destroy a tribe, or a settlement, was a daunting enough prospect for most of my people.  To level what had once likely been a thriving port, built by the Otherwolves, who were nothing if not industrious. . . .
	This was war.  I hadn't really comprehended the sort of concern Grayson had, coming into all of this, until right now.  I'd registered that a warzone was bad, and not somewhere we wanted to be. . . but to see it. . . .
	Ransom cursed, apparently having given up lighting his cigarette, and shoved it back into his pocket.  “Rutting soaked,” he growled.  “Everything I own is moldering.  Fuck that boat.  I swear to god, if I didn't have to get back on it to get home, I'd never step foot on one ever again.”
	I saw Ariel glare over his shoulder at us, but if Grayson took any insult to his beloved ship from Ransom's comment, he didn't speak up.  The wolf seemed intense, gaze focused down the road, towards the settlement coming into view.  And I soon saw why.
	“Hell,” the wolf stopped in his tracks, and we all did the same, forming up at his sides and following his eyes as they swept up the towering structure before us.  Well. . . I say structure, but in reality, what it truly appeared to be was a wall.  Or a fort.  It was hard to tell, because it seemed to go as far as my eye could follow towards the sides of the steep mountain ravine the colony was built into.  The towering mountains rose on either side of us, sharply, the fog blocking what looked to be unnaturally jagged peaks from view.  The mountains here were nothing like back home.  The rock was dagger sharp and black, the dense forests breaking away as the stone rose up from their clutches to impossible heights beyond.  Nothing like the soft, tree-covered, sweeping curves of the beautiful mountains I knew back home.  No gods had laid down here.  It seemed more like they'd erupted from beneath the very earth itself, and brought the mountains up with them in their fury.
	The wall we were facing was enormously tall, made from the trunks of trees that must have been great giants in life.  It looked to have walkways at the top, if the distant, silhouetted figures walking along it were any indication.  The fog obscured much of it from view, but I could only guess the wall reached as far as the mountains that encased this. . . I hesitated to call it a valley, because it was so unlike my home, but that seemed to be what it was.  I suppose you could call it a basin.  The inlet the port was set into seemed to be part of it, and I'd been told there was a river that flowed through it, which meant somewhere at least, the wall had to break.  But it wouldn't have been a very effective wall unless it either encircled the colony beyond, or went as far as the mountains.  
	I was again amazed by the ingenuity and sheer industriousness of the Otherwolf people.  And apparently, so was Grayson.  Or at the very least, he was shocked.
	“Was this here before?”  Ariel said aloud, the lion staring gape-jawed at the massive gates.
	“No,” Grayson murmured, then shook his head.  “This is desperate,” he sighed.  “And Denholme never gets desperate.  Things must be worse than he let on.”
	“REED!” a voice called down from the ramparts above, and we all looked up, towards a slender, tall figure standing above the gate.  He looked to be wearing a coat much like the Admiral's, but so far as I knew, the Fenrir was still patrolling the port, while we offloaded.  I couldn't make out much about the man except that he was likely a canine, but Grayson squinted for a moment, before shouting back.
	“That you, old man?!”  he called up with a mirthful chuckle.  “Never thought I'd see the day you'd be rolling out the welcome mat for me.  How much did he lean on you to make this happen, this time?”
	“I've stopped being choosy, these last few years,” the canine called back down, and I heard the first creak of the enormous wooden gates beginning to open.  “I've learned to trust in his decisions.  They've kept us alive this long.”
	“Oh, now that's disappointing,” the wolf snarled back.  “That boys needs a leash, Knight.  Even I can see that.  He's one hair from being a worse man than me, if he thinks it's worth his while.  I can see why he pulled this shite now. . . if even you aren't reigning him in. . . .”
	There was a long pause from the top of the gate, before the canine finally replied.  “Never assume I've lost my bite, Reed, or I'll show you I haven't.  But it was never my job to morally police him. . . especially not where sell-swords are concerned.  You know if I'd had my way a decade ago, you and all of your men would have hanged on the beaches of Grenadd.  Before you complain about my deferring to his judgment in the future, I'd suggest you remember that.”
	The wolf gave a 'tch' in the back of his throat, and resisted a low growl, but I wasn't certain if he was honestly angry, or just annoyed.  What's more, I had no reference for the conversation, or the man he was having it with, to know how much of this was serious, or playful taunting like he'd shared with the Denholme man.
	That was settled in a moment, however.
	“We have a job to do here, Reed,” the man stated.  “All of our past squabbles aside, I don't care what we have to do, or whom we have to do it with, to see our task here done.  If you're here to aid us, I'm glad to have you.”
	Grayson gave a fierce smirk.  “I brought your powder, Johannes.”
	I could see the man on the wall put a hand to his brow, even from where we were.  “. . . god be praised,” he said, so quietly I almost missed it.  Then, far louder, he shouted, “Keep the gates open!  Harpoons to the skies!  They'll target the wagons first!”
	“I ain't seen any of them flyin' critters yet,” Ransom said a bit nervously, his own eyes on the murky, grey skies.
	“The fog is our ally today,” I heard Ariel murmur from beside us, and looked to him.  His eyes flicked towards mine when he noticed me looking at him quizzically, before he explained, “The drakes.  They need the sun to fly.  They are weak and slow without it.  As it is, they cannot fly for long burdened down with a cauldron of burning pitch.  I doubt they could manage it today, at all.”
	I filed that away in my mind for future reference, but kept my eyes peeled on the sky, nonetheless.  We all did, choosing to remain outside the gates as the first of the wagons arrived.  Grayson himself had made no move to go inside yet, and I respected his conviction.  He wanted to see to it that his goods made it safely inside, and I shared that sentiment.  We hadn't come this far to fail now.