The wind howled.
The wind always howls in Aulik, certainly - but this time it was something animal. Nothing like a wolf, more like an ape or a strange bird, the trees whooping and cackling between themselves at the sights below. A Wrongness was coming, and with it came an invisible audience.
No one really knew what lie in Aulik, not even those who lived there. Masked figures running like they were being chased - because they might have been - dragging a kicking, hooved young girl through the snow. No one came this far into Aulik - not even those who lived here. Not past the windchimes that rattled a warning many meters back. Not out past the woods to the tundra of Deryl Irtes. The figures gave the girl a great shove, and began to head back to the woods. No one made it out to Deryl Irtes.
Few of them glimpsed the mountainous creature before they escaped back to the cover of the trees. He rose up from the tundra itself, as if inside the earth all along; an absolutely gargantuan ursine, both tall as a mountain and fatter than any bear they'd ever seen. The great white beast lowered his mighty head to the little faun and smiled a smile of a million jagged teeth. The faun turned, and she had his eyes, and his smile, and his hunger, and his hate, and his war, and
And there was one more reason never to go back to Deryl Irtes.