War Looms

In the camp of renegades it was a seething bag, and through the air hung the smell of steel and sweat as wolves honed iron and built up barricades under a bruised, gray sky. The rumble of distant thunder served as a cappella warning of the coming storm, though not the one stirring in the heavens, but rather that between the Silverclaws and the Blackfangs. I have been standing on one of the ridges that looked down on the pavement spread before us, with the wind whipping around the hem of my long leather coat, and the crescent mark that had appeared on my wrist yesterday throbbing with a silver light that hadn't dimmed since it first flared to life. Its newfound strength still sung in the veins, a tetchy strength that made me itch all over, but I was weighed down with what weighed to come, anchored here, gazing into the forest where war was building up behind branches.