Post by kaylyn on Aug 17, 2009 11:13:26 GMT -5
CHAPTER I
At the end of an era.
The beginning...
Aereth was the alpha male of the Corvus pack, a title and position of power he had inherited from his father, and his father before him, back through the generations unto the very foundations of this world. He was well-loved by all, but especially by Sari, his mate. The land upon which the Corvus pack had settled, untold eons ago, was wild, but the wolves were wilder. They had learned to tame the land, to reap the rewards of Mother Nature. Prey was plentiful, as long as they killed only what they needed to sustain themselves.
The famine...
But over the years, the pack had grown so large, that the foundations of the Earth upon which they lived began to groan and creak in response. The herds of elk and deer began to thin out, and those that were left, sickened and succumbed to death and disease as the tender shoots of grass withered or simply refused to grow where once they had blanketed the landscape. It was a painful existence for all, but especially for the wolves of Corvus.
The waning...
Something was wrong with them, something terrible. Perhaps it was Mother Nature’s curse upon them, her vengeance. There was no new life granted to wolves, there were no cubs to be born, no pregnancies. The Corvus wolves could not reproduce. Even worse than the famine, was the lack of new blood in the pack. They had become so weakened by the rapidly shrinking gene pool that soon there would be only skeletons of the formerly majestic creatures known as wolves. They were aging, but leaving no heirs to their empire behind. Soon they would all die out.
There is still hope...
But hope was to arise, to restore them all; the birth of Aereth and Sari’s four sons, the first pups born into Corvus in nearly a decade. One pup was pure white, like Sari, whom they called Erasmus. Two were mottled grey, like Aereth, whom they named Charon and Phirixus. And one, the largest of the four, was black as the empty night sky; this pup they dubbed Bacchus. Together, the four sons of Aereth and Sari made up the legacy of the fading Corvus pack.
Jealousy...
As the four pups grew, their personalities blossomed. Erasmus showed himself to be a carefree, overly rambunctious and foolish pup, though his intentions were usually pure. Bacchus was the strongest, the quickest of wit, he was the pup who showed the most authority over the others and appeared as the forerunner for natural leadership. But Bacchus was not unkind; he did not boast his victories, as Phirixus did. Phirixus, the second largest, could hardly keep hidden his envy for his favored brother, there was nearly always a snarl on his lips. Though he nearly evenly matched with Bacchus physically, his uncanny knack for cruelty and malice exceeded the others by tenfold. It was Charon, the wisest of the four, who would spend most of his young life trying to keep the two from ripping each other’s throats out.
Aereth's final decree...
Life in the Corvus pack was not as it had been in years before – the world was changing, and the wolves were forced to change with it. The entire pack had devoted all their time and energy to helping rear the four cubs, the last of their noble bloodline, but their time on this Earth was nearing its end. The poison of the Earth had finally reached them, and their doom was fast approaching. Days before his death, weakened beyond recognition by age and starvation, Aereth requested the presence of his four sons, to give them their final orders. They were to journey forth into the unknown world, past the boundaries of Corvus lands that their forefathers had claimed and guarded for hundreds of years, they were to find lands of their own, and with their lands, new blood to sustain their futures and create their own legacies.
One must be chosen...
For one of them, their journey would end back at the place it had begun, as they would be instated as the new guardian and alpha of Corvus lands. It was no surprise to any of them that Bacchus was chosen, as he humbly stepped forward to accept his father’s final gift. There was a wicked gleam to Phirixus’ eye as he watched the spectacle, racked with anger and hatred for his brother, the one who had always bested him. Someday, Phirixus vowed, he would have his revenge.
