There is a brief rumble, both heard and felt by the assembled riders. Each of them instinctively recognize the sensation as the equivalent of a soft chuckle.
”The heart is not here. The beast, the wendigo took it down from the mountain after he discovered it. He caged it and keeps it near, so that the source of his power will always be close.”
Another tremor, this one violent and powerful, overtakes the mountainside, the trees swaying and loose stones rising in the air. With a sudden surge, the black smoke rushes outward in every direction, a circular wave that envelops all that can be seen.
Color inverts. The sky becomes black as midnight, the trees white as bone; barren, skeletal ghosts.
The cairns, wagons, and raised monuments that comprise the graveyard have become spectral, their forms hazy, like illusions formed of a mirage that will vanish when approached.
Gathered at the cemetery are a host of the dead. Each figure is black as coal, skeletal limbs and unnaturally bent postures affirming that none of them belong to the living. Some hold weapons wielded by the natives of the territory, those here long before the coming of immigrants from other continents. A few are clad in the ragged dress of frontier settlers. Their numbers are great. Perhaps thirty. Perhaps more. All appear to immediately focus on the gathered riders, hateful, airless hisses rising from their ranks.
”The wendigo wished for you to believe that the heart remained here. That you could destroy him by coming to this place.”
“He sent you here to join us. He sent you here to die.”
OOC: If anyone neglected to make a fresh initiative draw during the last round of the wolves’ attack, please make one now.
Anyone that wants to take a move action prior to beginning of combat may do so.