Wolf RPG

A ghost had appeared again. It wasn't the usual polar bear, and Saena didn't think it was benevolent either, but it trotted ahead of her and she followed it all the same. Its intangible form seemed to shift in and out of view, something she ought to have been worried about, but she may as well have been half asleep as she followed it. Her last encounter with ghosts had ended in a seizure, but Saena still didn't remember, and was only now grasping what those ghosts had meant. She remembered their names clearly now—Crete, Dragoncello, Perseus, Echo, and many others—but they rarely appeared in her dreams anymore. Without being able to remember how she'd collapsed in the presence of their ghastly figures, she assumed it was dream knowledge, much like her former naturalism dreams. Either way, having puzzled it out, Saena placed a lot more importance on the ghosts she occasionally saw, which is why she followed this one without questioning its potential maliciousness.

She was wrong, of course, and so following this spectre—a hawk, as it turned out—away from the maplewood was unwise but she was unaware of any potential danger to herself. She only truly snapped out of it when the hawk disappeared a final time at the edge of a grove, and only then did she realize the direction it had taken her, and that she was at the edge of her allies' territory.

But something had changed. The once strong scent of claim was stale and the air told no tale of wolves nearby. Saena swept the narrow stretch of borderland between her and the grove, and found no evidence whatsoever of recent refreshment. It was as if the entire pack had vanished overnight. Throwing caution to the wind with confidence in her theory, Saena took a slow step into the grove, and then another, and another, until she was breaching what would have been the core of their territory. But nobody intercepted her, and when she found the first den, its lack of inhabitant confirmed her suspicions. Jade Fern Grove was gone.

Believing this to be the reason Saena was brought here, the alpha female began to turn as if to leave... and froze with an immediate flare of hackles when the faintest, lowest whisper of skull seemed to hiss out of the shadows to her left.

things at the strand had been lonesome of late. day in and out time wove about the guarded sylph, chiseling away at her sense of security until she was left stripped and bare as driftwood. at first she had sought to surcease the sinking feeling of solidarity by tackling the gloomy disrepair that was her grotto -- and even once she had combed the ceremonial grounds and reassorted her sundries she still felt the sting of solitude sharp as a harpy's claw.

so, she thought about revisiting an old friend and had set a few days prior towards reek's clutch. but she had been distracted when she came across the somewhat stale scent of saena. intrigued, she followed -- though it was quite some time before she was rewarded for her efforts.

catching sight of the pale female, caiaphas hung back -- for it appeared she was following something. caiaphas was puzzled by this behavior, had she overlooked the scent of an ally? she nosed the air, though the gesture was fruitless and no further scent assailed her senses. but it was clear as day saena was following someone -- something. caiaphas thought she even saw saena freeze and her hackles rise as if something had come to meet her. unwilling to be discovered, caiaphas kept her guard and her distance up.  for now caiaphas would watch the pale queen until her company revealed itself and proved to present no harm.

A slow, deep, gravelly laugh seemed to emanate from the gloomy grove, but it took the alpha female several seconds to locate the source. She peered through the mist, coat bladed with tension and fear, until her eyes locked on the slight reflectance in the gaze of an approaching monster. Her ears pressed back against her scalp as she scrambled backward, but the bear's approach was slow and methodical. Its loose snout was twisted into some sort of malicious expression, its piggy eyes locked on her, and it chuffed another round of slow laughter.

It yawned wide its maw and spoke, and Saena had to strain to understand the words it ground out in its rocky accent. "Skull kid," it ground out ominously, "find you." Her face was puzzled as she crept even further back, unwittingly drawing nearer to the hidden Caiaphas, and only then did the bear seem to recognize her. It chuckled again, that same deep, throaty sounds that made her hair stand on end, and rumbled, "tail... delicious."

When she finally puzzled out the exact words, a chill snaked all the way up Saena's spine and she froze. This couldn't be the same bear. "Skull kid," it repeated, taking another heavy step toward her, but she couldn't find the strength in her legs to back away again.

in a few mere moments, caiaphas was euphorically glad she had hung back -- for what split from the darkened woods was not an apparition but a frothing bear, lumbering and monstrous in its construction. caiaphas felt her stomach drop, her throat seize -- and a shrill, keening feeling seared through her gut.

saena was much closer to the goliath than she, and for a moment caiaphas thought to run as saena was the perfect (and presumably slower) distraction. were it not for saena's affiliation with reek caiaphas likely would have left her to the bear's fangs that day, yet a sense of fierce and near maternal outrage gilded her frame. it was not a noble feeling, nor a caring one -- but rather, was more akin to the sense one gets when a sibling plays with your favorite toys. caiaphas made her move then, stepping forth from the ferns with a loud shriek and blazing towards the lumbering beast with abandon.

she had no intention of connecting teeth to the leviathan's hide,  and no intention of making herself the bear's early dinner. but perhaps her loud decoy could prove a distraction enough to give saena time to escape.

Whatever Morran had planned in that thick skull of hers was undoubtedly nefarious. The bear's mouth hung open, a rope of saliva crawling toward the dark ground of the grove, as she stopped mere feet from the frozen alpha of the Phoenix pack. Those disgusting little cretins. The bear had destroyed their most precious possession—a garden, ha! like human filth—and had taken this one's tail to boot. But she wouldn't take anything else, because there was something much more sinister in these woods and it would be Morran's pleasure to watch the skull kid exact her revenge for her.

"It's coming... you", the bear rumbled with another deep chuckle.

Meanwhile, Saena was doing her best to retain control over her bladder. As embarrassing as it was for an alpha wolf to feel so cowed, she couldn't help but feel a sharp pain through her backside whenever she looked up into the deep chestnut of the malicious bear's piggish eyes. It was as acute as the day it happened. This bear had stolen her tail, what remained of it, and any semblance of wolfishness that Saena had retained. Without her tail she was only a shell of a creature, unable to communicate as effectively as anyone else with just her body, and so Morran had struck more than a painful blow that day. Saena ought to be pissed, but she was terrified instead.

Because this time, she didn't have Nochtli and Citali. Nobody would hear her howl from here, not in the deep of the grove. She was alone with Morran, and Morran seemed to have no inhibition. The bear was so close, Saena could almost smell her rank breath when she grumbled again about skulls. The alpha's eyes narrowed slightly; what the fuck was it with the skulls, anyw—

She never finished the thought, for a shriek made her jump out of her skin and a blur of silver from the background blindsided her. Caiaphas' intent was to give her time to escape, and the coywolf succeeded at that, for she'd startled Saena into a panic-stricken gallop. She had no idea it was Reek's former leader coming to her aid. She imagined a wolf with a skull for a face, rising to Morran's summons, and she'd just barely managed to escape his grasp with her life. The gratefulness she should've felt was replaced with dreadful terror, for Caiaphas' swift movement, while effective, had made her impossible for Saena to properly identify, and so she assumed that it was another murderer come for her.

as caiaphas' strides brought her closer to the bear, it was obvious she hadn't really thought this through. not that anyone would really think that charging full-stop at a bear was an effective measure of self-preservation.

plan b. caiaphas slammed on the brakes, swerving in the wild manner of a creature unaccustomed to having to boogey. the slavering monster was all but upon her -- so close she could see the glistening blonde of his whiskers and his teeth as wide and as wicked as a corsair's blade. she was not able to get out of dodge before the bear swung a massively broad paw in her direction -- and like wheat chaffed by a scythe caiaphas was sent buckling to the earth.

a shriek burst forth from caiaphas' muzzle as her body impacted the ground -- but somehow, she found herself running. a scant glance in saena's direction revealed the female was no longer there -- with palpable fear threatening to burst through her chest, caiaphas ran headlong into the thicket. she was wounded, but she didn't yet know it -- all she knew was that next time, it was an incredibly bad idea to call attention to herself in front of a bear.

The haunting image of a blackened skull thrown haphazardly over a silver face remained burned into Saena's retinas as she flew through the grove, eyes darting around in a panicked roll as she tried to sort out where she was and where she was going. She thought the faint scent of lemons rose up at one point, but she went past the place so quickly that there was no time to investigate. Morran was surely slow and sluggish—the Alpha had nothing to fear from the bear this time—but Skull Kid was an unknown factor. How fast the silver creature could run, Saena was unsure, and she didn't want to find out, so she kept on running.

A second shriek from somewhere in the distance behind her should have made Saena stop, turn back, and help whoever was in danger. But Saena was in self-preservation mode and the shriek only made her skin crawl and spurred her on faster. She would eventually burst free of the grove, relatively unharmed but for her psyche, but even then she wouldn't stop running until she was well beyond the borders of her pack. There, she would collapse to the ground and pant raggedly with the hope that Skull Kid was confined to the grove and would not seek her out here.

the thicket proved to be a tangled mess of loam and vine and caiaphas, blinded by horror, crashed through it with all the grace of a rock pushed down a heady slope. behind her she could feel the hot breath of the bear, rank and frothy -- she dared not look his way, having no interest in coming face to face with what she was certain was an immeasurably early death.

yet as she wormed her way through the moss and fern the bear's onslaught slaked until at last caiaphas could barely hear the crunch of his paws on the leaf-littered floor. she didn't stop there -- saena was sufficiently out of view but caiaphas was unsure of her survival yet. she pressed on, feeling a pain clamp along her haunches where the bear had struck her. she would find some isolated den to bunker down for the night, and tomorrow would reassess whether it was wise to pay reek's coven a revisit.