Animal bones littered the ground, caked in a thin film of frost and snow. In the waning daylight it shimmered softly, making a macabre mockery of the grave-yard. A lone figure prowled through the grave-yard among the bones. Tye. He padded quietly, carefully his paws pressing into the dirt with nothing but a mere whisper. Tye had headed out earlier in the morning from his den, taking note of the border lands and the perimeters and the surrounding nooks and crannies. He had discovered an abandoned burrow in the earth that could fit a family of foxes and a patch of poison ivy near the clearing. The poison ivy could be useful as well as the burrow to hide the pups. Tye remembered the Alphess' words. If a civil war was brewing he needed to know every nook and cranny of the land in order to ambush, confuse and attack the enemy. Tye had seen something in the forest earlier, a strange bird with angular wings that he had not seen before. Not an eagle or a hawk. Not a robin. Curious, he had tracked the creature all the way out of the forest all the way to this grave-yard. It had moved fast and not stopped flying so he couldn't observe it properly. It was now sailing over the grave-yard smoothly and dipped one wing, veering to the left to land on a rib-cage.

Only then did Tye stop, staying among broken leg bones and bits of rib bones watching the creature silently. It was black and medium-sized, with a V-Shaped body and a thin prong-shaped tail and tiny head and beak. Tye took a step forwards, his paws brushing against a spine and stepped on something that had been buried underneath the dirt, crushing it with an audible crack. And only then he heard the cackles in the air, the frenzied pattering of frantic paws scurrying over bones. Invisible predators lurked here. Tye stood still, listening, waiting, watching. And as he did, he felt heavy breathing on his back-legs. He spun around, twisting out of the way to avoid the hyena that had tried to lunge at him and leaped, locking his jaws around the hyena's throat. Bones flew everywhere. Blood gushed down, spilling onto the bones and making them red. The hyena was dead before it hit the ground, its wind-pipe crushed. Tye let go, turning to face the other two that were now circling him. One of them attacked. He rammed into it, using his weight to knock the creature to the ground. The other one faltered. Tye tackled it, fore-paws pressing hard onto its chest and snarled, lips pulling back to reveal bloody fangs. The hyena squealed in fear, squirming. Tye let go and it scrambled to its paws, speeding away. The remaining hyena did the same thing, bones zooming everywhere. Tye looked back at the bird only to see that it was gone, probably frightened away. Disappointed, he turned only to hear and smell something else. A wolf?