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They walked south, the sky dark and cold above them, the ground barren and empty beneath their feet. The few strands of trees twisted together in dark embraces as they fought for meagre resources and the few animal tracks that dotted the land seemed to be the work of ghosts as no animal stirred or took flight at their presence. The land ahead of them boasted only rock and thick bristly scrub brush, the few trees that had existed here long since cut down for wood.

"People live out here?" Boy asked after they passed another small cluster of stumps.

"Not as many as used to," Reynard said. "The Kingdom is smaller than it was, and the kingdoms that came before it smaller still. Once, the king of beasts pushed the wasting back from the edge of the first forest, and kings of the Kingdom build forts it could not pass by."

"And they don't anymore?" Boy said, resolutely not looking back at the Wasting.

"Kingdoms grow and develop other priorities than holding back certain kinds of darkness," the fox said quietly, "and then they reach the point where they no longer can."

"Oh. Were you waiting for a king?" Boy said.

"Why would I be doing that?"

"Lion's are the kings of beats," Boy said, "at least where I am from. A group of lions is a pride." He fell silent, then offered up: "I still know facts, at least a few of them. I'd like to think I knew more about lions than that."

"You come from a wise place, then," Reynard Fox said. "The King is old and his pride runs deep. He entered the Wasting a long time ago, meaning to push it back or destroy it. He has not been seen since."

"He could have come out somewhere else?" Boy offered.

"No one has left the Wasting in living memory until you did," the fox said.

"Oh," Boy said in a very small voice, and then nothing else at all.