Ankyra Sound outside a doll, inside a plague

Don't feel the need to match, I kind of just... Word vomited.

The woman had woken on the shores bedraggled but not bloody, soaked to the bone with familiar brine yet not broken. She had roused herself out of a stupor within hours of her return to the mainland and, bereft of any sense of appreciation for her state of living, began to roam. She had picked her way carelessly along the shore — even cast her eyes from atop a grand citadel of stones along the cliff side — so the woman knew she was no longer trapped alone upon the isle. So sorrowful was she that, when given a glimpse of the setting sun burning fiercely from the bluffs, she contemplated how long it would take for her body to drop upon the battered stones below. Too long, had been the verdict; the woman veered away after that, dragging heel in the manner of a walking corpse.

At this point she had made landfall precisely four days ago. It had been four days of mindless hell; a sore body accompanied by an empty mind insisting on survival, although her plummet from the island had been for anything but. She had not eaten. The only water to pass her lips had been salt-ridden and so cold that her body had refused it. The silvered woman had wasted away upon the isle and now continued to do so — she was desperate, but also at war with herself in that desperation. The end was all that she wanted and yet life, or whichever energy persisted within her and kept her from it, life found a way.

The woman was delirious by the time she entered the forest upon the bluff; the stench of the sea had not left the area nor had she managed to cleanse herself of it, fur hung loosely from a concave belly and tangled across her exposed spine in the manner of dried seaweed.

---

"Adelfí! Adelfí eímai -"

—- edó! Ti káneis apó to nisí sou?" voiced the stern-faced and pale Antiope, scowling from the crux of the dark grove as if her sister's survival was truly a curse upon them all. Behind her was a shadow; Parthenos wished to look beyond the figment of her sister but could not find it possible. The silver girl flashed her teeth at the darkness and insisted, Móno, ímoun mónos - írthan, pígan, mónoi tous akóma!

Epistréfete anepithýmita. Epistréfete éna fántasma! Pós tolmás, ótan eínai aftós pou eínai nekrós! Antiope's icy glare became white-hot and she seemed to shimmer on approach, sliding in to the intermittent light; the sea air was ripe around her, blustering, and her figure seemed to bluster with it — but when Parthenos looked upon her, those eyes were a flashing gold that did not match her sister's. As if dreaming, she overlooked this detail. 

lest the sea wish it]Poios eínai nekrós? Eínai mitéra? Den boreí na eínai — gia na min to thélei i thálassa, The silvered girl wasn't sure if she had spoken or if she had thought it, but perhaps they were the same. Perhaps sometimes her voice did sound and in others, when her tired tongue failed her, she merely imagined. Antiope began to laugh at her — it was like coins scattering upon stones more than true laughter — and soon Parthenos found herself weeping with the trees swaying around her. Akóma kai tóra arneítai! Theorísate ton eaftó sas periorisméno apó atýchima, adelfí? To énklimá sas ítan ypérocho! I Mitéra epélexe timoría - óti epiplíttetai san paidí, óchi ligótero.

No. No. Enklima? To ékana - den to ékana - but the world around her continued to shift with the saline wind, her sister continued to laugh, and that shadow behind her only grew and grew. Parthenos did not understand and soon enough she was faltering against the trees, trying to hold on to her sensibilities and pressing up against them like a bear might; the feeling of the bark upon her skin was solid, it wrought blood quickly, but she did not feel — and upon seeing the red as it was blotted by her salt-crusted pelt, she felt further lightheaded.

---

The world kept on spinning, and she murmured things to the growing dark that made little sense; her mother-tongue of Greek did not seem to agree with her any more than the events unfolding within her mind. She resisted. She fought and spasmed, but Parthenos would not die — not yet, not unless the Fates had another trial in store for her first — and soon she was staggering beneath her own meager weight (or perhaps the weight of her sister's admonishment) until she is faltering against the trees, awake but only just, and hardly in a rightful mind.

Being a leader was work, and Wylla hated work.

Most days she was content to lounge about on the pebbled strand, finding new ways to procrastinate on her duties, but she awoke on the wrong side of restless, and the need to burn some energy drove her to pace the entirety of their claim. She started with the beach, working her way to the shoreline from the Grotto and then up and around the northern side. It was chilly in the shadow of the cliffs. By the time she reached one of the few paths up into the forest above, the tide was beginning to roll in, and a cool wind was blowing in off it as well.

The morning went by uneventfully. Eventually, Ingram joined her from somewhere to the west, and together they made to conquer the sequoia forest that made up the bulk, but not the heart, of their territory. The woods smelled more faintly of Grimnismal than did the beach, for few of their number made a regular point of patrolling the woods, but Lycaon frequented it and kept it marked well enough. Wylla supplied fresh markings wherever they seemed to be lacking, and departed from Ingram's side for a moment to mark out toward the eastern edge of the territory. That's when she found the interloper.

More than neck-deep in their woods was a haggard silvery wolf leaned up against a tree. That was all that Wylla noticed about her before the restlessness from earlier surged up into an uncharacteristic bout of aggression. Her charcoal hackles rose along her spine and a harsh snarl rolled from her throat as she lunged into a furious gallop, but just as she was bunching her muscles to leap at the offending canid, her paw caught on an uplifted root and she stumbled forward, slamming face-first into the same tree Parthenos was leaning against.

In true Wylla fashion, she wasted no time in running her mouth rather than recovering smoothly and continuing the assault: "Get the hell out of our woods!"

Trespassing scenarios in Grimnismal are non-consent so Wylla will be attacking without preamble or explicit permission. I rolled a 1 or critical failure for this though so she's going to autohit herself, so this can be considered her warning post, lmao.

Should I assume that means IC joining is totally impossible? :O

She got only a few steps before the collision echoed through the grove, but it wasn't until a calm had settled that Parthenos appeared to react. Her ears were already slanted back atop her head, but she swivelled at the sound of a voice and half expected to see the shadow flickering in to being again. The shadow, and the seafoam eddie her mind had cooked up, were both absent to her gaze. It was a creature borne of both: a thin cryptid thing that shuffled in its disorientation.

Parthenos did not know what to make of those sounds. She did not speak the same language and did not currently possess the faculties to muddle through. But upon seeing this creature which previously had been a flicker in the back of her mind, a figment in a delusion, she felt crippled. The silver woman was cowed by a heart-stuttering fear that melted her in to a messy cloud. Her legs felt weak and her skin felt as if it were set in fever — and then she was down, rolling, prostrating herself with an animal beg — please, she said with her body, I am weak but I am yours!

A part of her wished to be ended, surely. There was no other explanation for the distance the wolf had covered nor how close she was to marked lands, yet in this moment she was desperate enough to ask forgiveness — to give herself over to this stranger's whims.

he broke from the twist of cedar log and frozen bramble at a dead run, having been not far behind wylla when a thick snarl punctuated the forest. all ingram could think of as he wildly covered ground in rapid strides was how disappointed wylla would be in him; how he had failed to uphold his duty of securing the borders.

they came into view as wylla had a spectacular collision with a tree -- were the situation not so grave a sly snigger would have betrayed his amusement. he knew that the rough plant could not possibly be the reason for wylla's sudden aggression and he looked about him hurriedly until he saw the perpetrator - a ragged thing propped against the tree.

his hackles lifted in alarm but in all honestly he thought the thing to be dead until it wretchedly threw itself on the ground before them. he lowered his head and snaked forward with an assertive rifle of his hackles, his tail swung over his hips and his blackened lips curled back in a snarl. he hung back to nose wylla carefully as she recovered from the tree's rude interjection, but as soon as the female was standing again he turned back to the interloper with a low growl in his throat. it was not grimnismal's creed to accept those who trespassed into their fold -- this wolf would be better off seeking respite well away from such an unforgiving lot of fiercely selfish cads. trespassing to the grimnismal clan was possibly the most unforgivable of transgressions and he knew if the female did not quickly turn tail, her outlook was grim.

IC joining is definitely not impossible but Grimnismal isn't about to accept a trespasser, let alone a half-dead one. Your character was written as being in the forest and Ankyra Sound's territory includes the forest above it so it sounded like trespassing to me. I rolled an 8 for this so Wylla's inflicting some big damage.

She had to steady herself against the tree long enough for her head to stop spinning, and that was surely long enough for any sane creature to realize their blunder and leave. Not this one, though. She heard more than saw Ingram come up behind her with a tip of her left ear in his direction, but her pale gaze was focused solely on the trespasser.

There were a lot of nose-blind wolves in the world, it seemed.

"I said get out," she screamed at the pathetic wolf as it dropped to the ground in a pose that should have elicited some mercy, but didn't. Parthenos wasn't just some pack mate who had made a big mistake, or some loner out in no-mans-land attempting to appease a more aggressive opponent. And Wylla wasn't just some instinctual creature who read solely body language—she took trespassing as a personal slight and offense as well. Her jaws hinged wide as she slung herself forward, missing the tree this time, and planted her teeth with a jaw-wrenching crunch directly into the interloper's face.

Oh! I had no idea they also claimed the forest, my bad. This is fine — you can go ahead and do whatever to Parthenos, full permissions. (Quietly uses the coast pack to kill toons off, trololol...) Rolled a D15 to see if she's gonna die right now or not: ( 12 ) <-- result.

There was no positive outcome from her bowing nor her begging, and soon enough the stranger had recovered from her run-in with the tree and pivoted to target Parthenos a second time. In her current state (and awkward posing on her back) there was little she could do to stop the relentless attacks; the black-and-white girl was voracious and Parthenos, weak and broken from her her previous toils, could only sit back and take it. She struggled of course — the way a mouse might struggle against the grip of a snake — as teeth caught in her flesh and soon her ragged pelt was further soiled by fresh blood.

Parthenos tried to roll to her feet and had to roll away in order to do so, staggering up to her meager height and would have been turning her back upon Wylla if the girl did not pursue her. The pack wolf did not miss another step though; Parthenos felt the meat of her cheek give way first, then an ear, and though she tried her best to fumble out of the girl's tenacious grip she could only do so much. The wolf gasped and keened a piteous sound, failing helplessly, but did not yet die. She caught herself against a mess of thin but prolific tree growth and fell haphazardly to the forest floor, at which point she began to kick and flail with desperation. 

A part of the siren wished that the plummet from the island had killed her; a part wished in similar fashion that the ill tide that swept her there in the first place had filled her lungs to drown her. Now, although she yearned for it all to be over, the body was in conflict with the rest of her — desiring life, and fighting for an escape.

in careful steps forward ingram followed wylla's lead, though he suspected somehow this wolf was not all there. perhaps she had imbibed too much salt water -- or perhaps she had found a feast of those mushrooms wylla coveted -- either way, ingram felt sorry for the wolf, but not sorry enough to stay the aggressive snarl that welled in his throat.

he lunged towards the intruder, snapping his teeth to worry her. she fell back and flailed over -- with skulking steps he positioned himself in front of the sound's borders and issued several snapping bites at whatever flailing limbs came within reach.

For the territory, Wylla felt only instinctual possessiveness, so her aggression went only as far as the borders. The intruder fought to escape and she was harried by the snapping jaws of Wylla and her brother for as far as their turf went, but once Parthenos was beyond the forest's edge, she was no longer Wylla's concern. The Alpha's pursuit ended abruptly and she stood with her shoulder—bleeding from something, be it wolf teeth or her impact with the trees along the way—pressed against a trunk. "Go," she commanded coldly with quick lashes of her tail and a forbidding glare that prompted Parthenos to listen if she valued her life.

Only when she was assured that the trespasser was leaving would Wylla turn back to Ingram to inspect him with a searching nose for signs of injury that needed tending.

Parthenos out.

The wild-eyed siren did not stop as she struggled against the chaos, and soon enough Ingram's quick strikes would draw blood. She did not feel the sting of his teeth because of all the adrenaline flooding her system, but if she survived the night she would wake in a state of ruin. One look from the slender girl - this wrathful thing - and her command filled the silvered woman's ears. She did not hear it, not really, but she was already staggering away from the copse of trees and out to the open air, where she could throw herself against the wind and forward, to freedom. A low call pushed from her throat as she ran, something close to a sob but more pitiful, as she crashed and bumbled along in search of a safe haven.

his murderous convictions only went so far as the borders -- as soon as the wretch slipped past their markers he freed her from his grasp and rounded upon wylla. the two roved each other over, inspecting each other for any wounds -- ingram noticed the curt scent of blood on her hide, and the welt of red along her shoulder.

their home was theirs - not outsider's - ingram threw back his head in a howl that followed parthenos' quick footsteps - a reminder that grimnismal was no home to intruders, nor no haven for interlopers.

he wound tend to wylla then, and once satisfied, the two would head for the shore for less trying duties.