Great gray king of forests

Great gray king of forests
He feels his pack draw near
The air is tinged with tension and their quivering scents of fear

Since time immemorial
His brothers have hunted this land
Their packs have roamed the loamy earth and never knew the curse of man

But now the world does change
And the forest with it too
For the hooded one with lifeless eyes stalks the shadow of the wolf

His pack lopes up the hill
He turns to face his friends
He doesn't need to see their yellow eyes to know they fear the end

For Shadow Stalker hunts them
Stealing members of his pack
He hunts them not to kill but to turn their true hearts black

For the wolf does not fear death
The wolf does not fear carnage
The only way to break the wolf is to turn his soul to darkness

Their grizzled leader howls
His thoughts are read by all
They know they must defeat the Shadow Stalker or the wolf will fall

Wolf dreams find the packs
They travel from distant lands
Their leaders hunt together as they formulate their plan

Now every pack has gathered
An army massed of wolves
They know their brothers turned to shadow are amassing for a battle too

The sun is beating overhead
Wolves stretched across a plain
The time has come to kill their former friends and they are wracked with pain

Shadow Stalker leads them
His sword gleams in his hand
His army of corrupted wolves begins to move across the land

Tooth meets stringy tendon
Bones snap like beating drums
Brothers and sisters howl with feral fury to the molten sun

Blackness takes the sky
One grizzled leader stalks a man
Shadow Stalker's throat explodes in blood, his sword slips from his hands

With their leader fallen
Shadowed wolves melt to the earth
Their weary brothers pierce the night with howls for their rebirth

Broken packs of wolves
Many leaders in the ranks of dead
Slink home to cleaner forests where no canis lupus blood was shed

One wolf sits on tired haunches
For here his pack will stay
He lifts his graying muzzle to the night, as predator, not prey