A loud -TWANG- reverberated through the woods, followed two hard beats later by a second one and the tree the brothers occupied lurched like it had been shaken by a giant. More than a thousand pounds of tension was unleashed in an instant and the sound of crashing filled the air as a battering ram swung through the forest, aimed not at the invaders but at the dam that formed the central pond in the Heartwood clan's village.
When Cellach Lothian burned Mist City to the ground and scattered the original inhabitants of the Vale of Mists, many members of the Heartwood clan had sought out a place they could shape to their liking, deep enough in the wilderness to escape the attention of even the most expansionist humans.
