Chapter 2:

I hesitantly unfolded the piece of paper. The wolf glared at me with his golden eyes, looking down at the piece of paper every now and then with a worried expression.

"Noah Azrael Brimstone"

I recognised this as my name.

"Ash, Daliah, Oak, Snow, Night."

These words had no meaning to me at this time but I had a feeling they were important. The wolf jammed his head between me and the piece of paper, staring intently at it.

"Ash" I said softly, thinking it was the first thing to look for. Maybe this was a map and I had to find a burned out fire.

As soon as I said it though, the wolf ahead turned towards my face, looking at my face with recognition of the word. His ears were up and looked straight into my eyes.

"Ash? That's your name? Huh okay. Are the rest of these words names?"

The wolf huffed and lay his head back on my lap.

I opened up the main compartment of the backpack and put the piece of paper in there. In this compartment I found a large metal bottle that was filled with water and some remnants of food in a clear plastic tub. Ash started to sniff the tub and saliva fell from his mouth onto my bare leg. "That's kinda gross bud."

I opened the tub and gave Ash the remainders of what was in it and wiped the saliva off of my leg. There was also a book in this compartment . It was leather bound and it's pages were all blank. I felt sentimental about this book for some reason. The book came with a pencil. I decided to put these items back in the compartment.

I figured that the smaller pockets on the side weren't hiding much but I opened the smaller front compartment and found a raincoat.

"I wish I'd known this was in here earlier."

I pulled it out and put it on. It was a black raincoat with a fleecy lining. It had two inside pockets and four pockets on the outside. Within the left zipped up inside pocket was a handful of money. There was 5 gold coins and about 10 silver coins. They all had a crown of Laurel leaves on one face and on the other, a stag. In the right pocket I found a dice. It was a green colour, almost looked like it was an emerald carved into a six sided dice. The numbers were painted in silver. Out of curiosity I rolled it across the floor of the cave. As it came to a halt it began to vibrate and morphed into a dagger. The dagger had a silver blade and the hilt was jet black with uncut emeralds crawling from the top of the hilt up onto the bottom of the blade. I picked up the dagger skittishly and inspected it. It was incredible, the hilt was practically moulded to my hand. I was fascinated.

Ash and I must have stayed in that shallow cave for about two hours before the rain eased up a little. We decided that it was best to explore and find some sort of civilisation instead of staying in, what seemed to be, the middle of no where. I pulled my hood over my head and put the dagger back into the right inside pocket. As soon as it touched the lining of the pocket, it reverted back to the emerald dice. With the backpack on my shoulders and Ash close to my side, I stepped out of the cavern and headed into the woods.