I continued to look for a moment at the city before me in the gathering gloom of early night. Sure, it looked ominous enough, as any deserted and mostly destroyed city would, but there were intact dwellings that would likely still have furniture of some kind that I could break up and use to make a fire.
Despite all my reasoning for going into the city, I turned my back to it and made my way up the dune to my left, whose sands would most likely still be the warmest from the day. Reaching the top of the dune I began to dig into it.
I felt a bit like a venomous sand viper as I worked my way beneath the loose sand of the dunes outer surface. It was admittedly a lot warmer beneath the sand of the dune.
It got a lot darker then and the wind began to pick up. My eyes started to close as my body fell into a fatigued slumber, when a bloodcurdling howl ripped through the night air.
My eyes wide open I managed to turn my half buried head in the sand to look towards the city that had suddenly come alive. Large Evanik dogs were everywhere!
Evanik dogs were worse than any wolf could ever hope to be. Wolves had intelligence and while they were known to attack humans it was by no means an active thing on their part to do so. That wasn't the case for the wild dogs of Evanik.
It was said that they were one of the leftover traces of the manipulations of creation done by the fallen Malachim of El Elyon. The stories were old and some truths were hard to substantiate, but it was said that all manner of twisted creations had arisen from the interference of the fallen Malachim into the natural order of the world's original created kinds.
Some of these creations still existed; such as the giants, who lived in their stone fortresses, in the neighboring Nicationer Kingdom of Sapan. Other twisted creations had seemed to fade from the memories of men, such as the manipulations of men with the body of a horse and even lions. Many of the gods that the Nicationer Nations still worshiped were represented by these hybrid creatures of man and animal.
The Evanik dogs, although not as scary as some of the other creations of bygone days, were still a scourge in and of themselves. They killed for the joy of killing. They were known to run down entire flocks of sheep and goats instead of just taking down one or two, as a wolf would've done. Not to mention eating the shepherds along with the flock.