Chapter Eighteen
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SnowflakeI smelled the blood in the air, an alluring intoxicant. That odour of a forgotten past drew me to the chaos that was the monks long before I saw them. When I walked into the clearing they occupied it was as if a war had taken place. The Sunyins had lost more of their kind in the violence, too many. I felt their pain like walking into a wall, an almost tangible solidity in the rising dawn. Those that remained bore the blooded signs of struggle; lacerations and worse covered each of them. Their leaking life essences overpowered my senses, the beast within straining at its leash.
The monks were not alone in their suffering. The mangled carcasses of half a dozen great, grey wolves lay in various states of contorted death. Those beasts had died badly.
Aurora sa
