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@anne_the_noob14 Haha! Okay. She’ll probably react the same way. Hopefully they realize each other is not an enemy before they kill each other. 😉

Oh! Yes, I guess I should have mentioned that. She’s a good guy.

@evelyn You finished your WIP? CONGRATULATIONS!!

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Runawin yawned as she trotted into the Writings chamber, blinking away the last of the sleepiness from her nap. She frowned. Dagwir and Iwik should’ve been studying right now, but no fire burned by the door and the room was silent.

She sniffed the air. A fresh, sweet smell of mystery tingled her nose instead of the familiar scent of dusty writing-leaf and tart fermented berries. Beneath her paws, her reflection blinked at her on smooth wood where packed dirt and stone should’ve been.

What…why…?

She crouched low, scanning the room and pricking her ears. Had she somehow wandered down the wrong tunnel and discovered a new chamber? But surely she or Dagwir would have found it by now, if there had been.

A round slab like Iwik used to write on sat on top of four legs in the center of the room. Strange…who’d ever heard of a rock with legs? She crept towards it, and as she grew closer, the legs seemed to shorten and shrink down to her height. A writing-leaf sat on top, but instead of words, it had triangles, lines, and circles drawn all over it. Peering closer, she could make out words that labeled some of the figures. She squinted at the largest word in the bottom right corner. “Ee—no, eh—k-wuh…wee…” She frowned, then nodded. “Ah. Ehk-wee-ehl. Ekwiel.” What the wolves and dragons of old used to call the world.

How had this piece of the Writings gotten here? She should show it to Iwik so he could put it with the rest. Runawin turned around, searching for the tunnel she’d come out of.

Nothing. Just smooth wall. She shivered and her heart thumped. Where had it…where had it gone? Swallowing hard, she backed away from the slab and studied the rest of the room. She’d make sense of this. These were the mountains—her home.

The walls were made of stone, not dirt, and the roof was several bounds high. Every bound or so, there was an indentation in the wall with a wooden slab of some color—green, blue, red, black. Halfway up each wooden slab was a round lump. What strangeness was this?

To her right there was a brown slab, but it didn’t fit into the wall like the rest. It sat crooked, and she could see into a dark tunnel through the crack. Was that where she’d come from? She shook her head. It was the wrong direction, but as strange as this was, as disoriented as she was, she could’ve come from anywhere. She flicked her ears and approached the slab. When she pressed her nose against it, it swung inward easily, leaving more room for her to squeeze through. She stretched her neck into the darkness and sniffed the air. Her ears snapped forward at the sound of voices. Dagwir? Her mother? Or maybe even—she shuddered—a group of Bandless?

Silly. Of course it would be Dagwir. These were their own tunnels…weren’t they?

She shrugged and trotted down the tunnel at a brisk pace.

Soon Runawin came around a bend and light shone at what must have been the end of the tunnel. Another slab, also brown, hung slightly open. She crouched behind it and bent her ears towards the voices.

“…the second, wouldn’t you eavesdrop if you arrived in a foreign place and heard two people talking?” It was a she-wolf’s voice, but definitely not her mother’s. Her spine tingled again. Bandless?

“Probably,” said a he-wolf. “So, do you have any theory of how you got here?”

…Got here?

The she-wolf spoke again. “No idea. I was out picking berries in the woods, and the next thing I know I’m here, my head hurting from falling.”

Runawin frowned. There were no woods anywhere near her here. Had these wolves been brought here…by magic? Not that magic was really a thing anymore, but…

The voice continued. “But I do know that we first need to figure out where we are, and to do that we need to find a way to get out of this castle. We’ll have to work as a team.”

So they didn’t know where they were, either. And what was a castle?

“Is everyone okay with that?”

Everyone? So there were more than just she and the he-wolf who had spoken. There was a pause. The he-wolf and whoever else was in there must have nodded, because the she-wolf spoke again. “Alright. First, we might as well introduce ourselves. I’m Vladlena.”

“Lucas,” said the he-wolf.

A different he-wolf spoke. “Thaddeus.”

“And you already know my name,” said a third, younger he-wolf.

“Great!” said the she-wolf. “Let’s start brainstorming!”

Runawin squirmed. Who did these voices belong to? It was time to find out. Easing to her paws, she crept around the door and peered into the room. Blinking in the bright light, she scanned the room for the wolves who had spoken. But there were no wolves. Splayed out on strangely shaped stumps arranged around a fire were four pale creatures. They were furless except for the tops of their heads, and more colored, furless skins hung loosely around their bodies.

A yelp escaped her throat, and she jerked back into the shadows.