Ellesar's thoughts turn to the days and weeks ahead. The practical part of him wants to consider provisioning. As an accomplish survivalist, Ellesar knows that making through winter in the mountains is challenging. Not impossible, but certainly not a task to be taken lightly. November is about a week old now but so far the dry weather has kept the snow at bay. Ellesar knows that won't last: the air against his face is freezing, as as soon as there's moisture there will be snow. Lots of it.

He does math in his head, adding together the calorie requirements of a dwarf (if that's what Ellie is), a human, an elf, an ork, a troll, a were-eagle, and a border collie. The last two are a bit of a guess, but the overall answer is still very high, especially when taking into account the additional calories a body needs when continually subjected to freezing temperatures. And there's the question of morale too. Ellesar learned a lot about Leadership from his time with the Ghosts, and it's still as true today as when Napeleon said it: an army marches on its stomach. Ellie bakes cookies, drinks tea, uses refined sugar, and all sorts of other things that aren't available in the winter woods. Will the Sisters be okay without those things? Or will the role of the mundanes be to provision the Sisters so that they can continue work on their magical magnum opus? Somebody's looking for the Sisters, that's for certain, but nobody's looking for Stogie, Smohalla, and Ellesar yet.

With that, Ellesar's head snaps to the north. Out of the corner of his eye, his peripheral vision catches the barest hint of movement in the distance. There's a tiny speck of light moving east-to-west passing over Old Desolate - the sharp, craggy mountain to the north. It's small and flying along at a modest pace, maybe 30 meters per second. Ellesar's elven vision catches the barest hint of moonlight reflecting off the metal exterior as it passes in and out of bobbing clouds. It's impossible to make out any detail, but given the speed and size Ellesar's tactical experience tells him that's it's almost certainly a surveillance drone.

Smohalla is everywhere and nowhere. Eagle sit at the top of a tree on the top of a mountain. He is and is not Eagle, just as he is and is not Human. To Eagle, all is visible below. Eagle's eye could count the trees, should he wish. The mountain falls away from him on every side, plunging into valleys below cut through by blue ribbons of water. The place is pure, and Eagle saw that it was good.

A haze on the horizon, visible only from this perch. A fuzzy grey shimmer, like a dirty mirage. A city of men, distant yet present. A flock of birds emerge from the city and extend out in an unholy halo. Pigeons and crows and starlings, fat with the excesses of men. They fly into the wilderness, settling into branches and trees, befouling them with their waste. One flies up the river valley, unaware of what circles above. Eagle will cleanse this place, and so he begins his dive.

Eagle smites the bird, but the bird dies not. It twitches and squirms within Eagle's clutch, but there is no escape. There is fear, existential fear. It is the feeling of Greenwater, of heart-stopping dread. Eagle punctures the bird with its talons, and the bird gasps as its life ebbs away around Eagle's claws. The heart flutters, panic flooding its final moments. Its heart rate hastens with its pain and oblivion, accelerates until it stops with a shock. The bird goes limp as Eagle carries the day.

Eagle lands and surveys his domain. The world is pure, except for the suffering that lingers around the kill.

A cloud of birds rise in the distance.

The eagle soars high in the sky, master of everything his piercing eyes can see. All is below him, landscape spread out like a topographic map teeming with life and motion. His recent confrontation with the pigeon has left him feeling happy. Yet a strange sensation of uneasiness pervades his being, as though his recent victory was somehow incomplete. This feeling spurs him on and he flaps his powerful wings - he must learn the reason for the uneasiness. He rises higher and higher, up into the wispy purple clouds that gather in this dreamscape like cotton candy floating in the breeze. Higher and higher until he fears that any further would render him incapable of breathing, incapable of sustaining the wind beneath his wings as the air thins in the upper atmosphere. But this is the dreamworld. He finds no such barrier as his flight brings him to a point where he can look down and see the whole of Mother Earth from his vantage point in the heavens.

A sudden movement causes him to turn his majestic head away from the vision below. Again movement, shooting past his head. Another zips cross-wise to his path. Another, and another, and another. Around him, surrounding him, are bright points of light in furious motion, spinning and flashing through the darkness of the void. He swerves in his flight, losing altitude to try to avoid a collision, banking to avoid another. But there are too many collisions to avoid. The lights start to make contact with his body as he continues his high-altitude journey. When a light touches his feathers, he feels a slight tingle and warmth spread throughout, but nothing more. He laughs silently in his mind and stops trying to avoid them. The lights seem to sense this acceptance, and more and more begin bombarding him. Dazzling brilliance assaults his eyes and innumerable sparks shoot down on him, into him, through him, filling him with more warmth and energy than he's ever felt before. THIS is what being truly alive feels like! He feels the power coursing through his frame, a power that could shake mountains and assault the heavens themselves.

Time passes. How long, who can say? This is the metaplane of the unconscious mind, where the unhindered imagination frolicks with reckless abandon.

The eagle is found luxuriating in the star-bath, his eyes closed as he gives a contented mental sigh. It feels as if he is swimming in a gentle river of warmth, his body sumberged and navigating the river as easily as breathing. He is one with everything, and everything is one with him. Gradually though, oh so gradually, after what seems like eternity he notices that the warmth is fading and the collisions lessening. Then they cease altogether. He opens his eyes slowly, and all around him is darkness. Void. He shifts his gaze downward, and the light from the world below him is blinding in it's splendor. It is beautiful, this world. He sees the light from the heavens now in the world below him, filling it with a vitality and inner light that he can't look away from. Love swells his eagle-heart for this world, this living collection of energy and light that he is a part of now more than ever. Silent thanks fill his mind, prayers to Mother Earth and Father Sun and Eagle. He slows his flight and descends back down to this world. His world.

As he descends, he begins to again pick out landmarks in the topographic map below him. There is the lake where his people live, continuing their peaceful co-existence with Mother Earth. There is the mountain, great Talol in his power filling his mind to brimming with the light of life. All is light, all is life...yet some places are brighter than others....and THERE is a darkness, a spot marked by one of the pigeons seen earlier. And there is another. And another. Suddenly, so close to the ground, he can see the patches of darkness that mar this beautiful living world. No, that's not quite correct. He can FEEL them. Feel them down in the depths of his core, feel the lack of light. The not-light. The eagle burns to bring light to these places, to chase this not-light back into the void where it belongs. This burning fills his heart, a fiery inferno of heat that can melt the shadow of darkness itself into nothingness.

It's a aerial recon and resupply drone. Ellesar doesn't know the exact make and model but he does recognize it as something the Ghosts would use in wilderness settings. Not only does this model have sensors to observe the terrain, but it also carries small small containers under its wings that may be airdropped for resupply purposes. This one isn't equipped with any containers now.

Ellesar doesn't know a ton about technology but he does know that wireless signals don't carry more than a few kilometers, and probably less than that in the mountains. If there's a rigger controlling this drone, then he or she would have to be relatively close and have a good line-of-sight for their signal to reach the drone. (Ellesar has already watched the drone fly a kilometer.) Alternatively, the drone could be running on an autopilot program. In that case, it would only be limited by its range. The range for this model is pretty significant. It could have come from Greenwater or even the outskirts of Seattle.

The drone travels due north. After twenty minutes it passes about five kilometers to the west of Greenwater, for which Smohalla is grateful. The forested mountains are alive and beautiful in the astral world, even in the middle of the night, but the cloud of despair surrounding Greenwater rises up from it like the ash cloud of a volcano.

Another twenty minutes later and the drone begins to descend toward North Bend. The drone lands in a field, received by a smug-looking dwarf. He is significantly cybered, as are the two humans with him. There's a fourth, an elf, with substantial Talent. The elf keeps and eye open on the astral but does not appear to notice Smohalla for the moment. Or perhaps he sees the eagle but has not returned his vision to the mundane world to realize their is no physical bird flying there.

Smohalla does not recognize any of their auras. The dwarf is not Jeff, the humans and elf are not any of the punks from Greenwater. These individuals all appear to be more experienced. Their auras are confident. The dwarf looks especially satisfied with the return of the drone, which he pats and strokes as if it were a pet.

Satisfied that his eyes remain in the physical world, Stogie closes them to see what he can feel around him. There's a thrum of energy from beneath his feet, the ley line that runs through the campsite straight up to Mt. Rainier. Behind him, Rainier reverberates with frightening, ominous energy. The peak of the mountain is six kilometers due south, but Stogie can feel it pulsing behind him, like hot breath on the back of his neck. It's overbearing and pleasant and alarming and comforting. It's like a sugar rush that's about to turn into a headache, or that already did. Stogie doesn't fight the feeling as it slips away, his senses returning to the physical world. The feeling that he's sitting on a ton of dynamite disappears with it, but he can't forget that it was there just a second ago.