The years had been longer than the wolf that lived in the mountains had kept track of. First he had lost his friends. Then he had lost his family. And, in time, the last of the other wolves had died as well.

He did not keep track of time but he was aware that even the faces of the mountains he hunted on had changed since then. And far below and far away, a city had grown up.

Cloud ignored the city and he ignored the people that came from it. No one was every brave or determined enough to climb into his mountains anyway. Sometimes at night though, driven and unable to fight it anymore, the wolf would climb to the highest peak in his mountains, where a rust old sword no one remembered rested in the rocky ground, and he would howl his eerie howl, his nose never pointed at the moon but always on the lights of that distant and barren city so far below.