Presently, there was a meeting occurring in Ouroboros Spine. That meeting would determine the fate of the pack.
Yet its renegade Alpha, who should have been present for such important matters, was the furthest thing from present. Her mind had fallen to the point of disrepair, with the only memory left to her that of her empire. She had been a leader, but now she was a worm. A pathetic worm who could not swallow her own spit for the paralysis of her throat, who drooled on herself like a babe, and jerked and frothed feebly.
She could scarcely pull herself to her feet, and so she laid in terror at the edge of a river cutting through the Spine. Her breath came in gasps, and every attempted swallow resulted in the bucking of her head and the pouring of foam down her chest. Jinx would die within the next few hours... Until then, she lay there staring at her reflection in the river, her head filled with the sound of wind, barely even comprehending it was her.
Ptarmigan was, as always, up to no good.
She had found yet another pack hidden away in a private location, and once more, she had crossed their borders with little regard for them. Her daring was in full force, but she had heard the rallying call of presumably the Alpha as she was climbing the squat mountains from the outside. She had also heard a strange response, the sound of a monster in anguish, and curiosity drew her in.
With the belief that the pack was gathering and would not be tending their borders with much thought presently, the dark-furred Endore slipped into their forest unnoticed. The dominant scent on the outskirts of the territory belonged to a bitch, though the howl that had brought the pack together had been much too masculine for any female wolf. Perhaps they were in the middle of a coup.
It appeared that she wasn't terribly far off, for Ptarmigan had found the river and, as was natural, followed its curving through the territory. It wasn't long before she came across the former Alpha in all her (un)glory, frothing at the mouth and staring blankly into the river. The Endore froze in her path as a pair of lost eyes found her, and the beast gave a grunt, followed by a heave and ragged gasping.
“What are you,” she asked, with her nape lifted into a fearful ridge of silver-tipped hairs.
Her breaths were short and constricted. Her sight was blackened at the edges, like burning paper. She could see the loa in their infinite whirling, spectral forms, though this was only an illusion. Most of what she saw was steeped in hallucination, and understanding was like grasping at the stars. She could make it out, but she could not reach it.
There was one persistent reality, however, that Jinx was able to cling to: she was a leader, or had been a leader. This forest, although she remember nothing about it and none of the wolves who lived in it, had belonged to her. She knew this because the loa were cackling about it in the static-filled emptiness of her head. Their jeers made her flick back her ears and stare more intently at the water, her entire body jerking every once in a while.
It jerked most violently when a wolf came into view, as the Alpha attempted to gain her feet and failed. Coughing and hacking, her mad eyes sought the other as it spewed out nonsense at her. Growling and sending flecks of foam flying everywhere, the rabid beast panted out a single word: “M... M... Miiiiine...”
As far as what she was, her forward lurch and subsequent collapse on the riverbank could have answered the question. She was broken. She was ill. She was practically a corpse. She was Death.
Caution told her to remain where she was, and she even took a step back when the other wolf jolted. Once, the female might have been an impressive creature, with a thick Arctic coat flecked in black upon her spine, and a bearing that suggested she had been tall, maybe even proud. Now, the body was hunched over itself, and the beast kept its head low, its smouldering eyes stuck somewhere between reality and fantasy. Never before had the Endore seen such a thing.
The dying female croaked out a claim of some sort, confirming Ptarmigan's suspicions. Once, this matted and maddened creature had owned something. Maybe she had owned this whole forest. Maybe the howling of the wolves had not been for a hunt or something, but to decide what to do about this sick creature in their midst. All at once assumptions—correct ones, as rare as it was for Ptarmigan to be right about something—flooded her mind.
Her eyes never left Jinx, and she skittered further back when the other lunged forward and collapsed. “It's not yours anymore,” she concluded for the other. Twisting her ears around and lifting her head, the dark-furred woman wondered, “then who's?”
When this female died... Would it pass to an heir? Or would the rank be open for the pack to squabble over? Once, her mother had told her that she would have to leave the pack, for a child's ambition could quickly overtake a parent's law. Quail had been afraid that her offspring would kill her for her position, which was why Ptarmigan had been sent away with her father snapping at her tail... Was this the same situation now, where whoever put this monstrously ill bitch out of her misery would become the queen?
There was a glimmer of opportunity in the other's hazed eyes, and Ptarmigan knew without question she would, as her forebears often had before her, seize it.
She snaked her tongue between her lips so that it dangled, covered in ropes of poisonous drool. One touch of her spit upon the other's eyes or an open wound would give her the same madness. Despite her inner terror for her condition, Jinx was constantly beset with the temptation to bite others and spread it to them, to make them suffer as she suffered.
Yet there was no strength left in her body. She was wasting away to thirst, unable to sate it for the hydrophobia that plagued her. Even the slightest sip of water made her throat spasm uncontrollably. She stared wildly at the other wolf, and growled a low, shrieking sound when the other claimed that this was no longer hers. She was right, of course—the mad wolf could no more lead than she could stand—yet a sense of understanding made her yowl angrily anyway.
The rabid wolf responded with a terrible sound, and that spurred Ptarmigan into abrupt motion. But it wasn't away that she ran—it was toward the downed Alpha female. There was a history of conquest in the Endore family. Sphinx Endore, the first of them to touch the Salvaje Valleys, had founded several packs in her time. Nightingale, Ptarmigan's grandmother, had ascended to Sphinx's throne and become a strong and well-respected Alpha. Salene Endore had been the same, and Renatus had gone on to lead the Evertos.
Therefore, it wasn't unrealistic that one day, a latent desire to follow in her ancestors' footsteps would wake in Ptarmigan. The chance to make something of herself was staring her in the face, and she could not let it slip away.
She widened her mouth, diving for Jinx's nape with alarming speed. If she failed, she would die ti the fatal sickness that had taken the ruler if this territory. If she won... Then, by all the laws of nature known to Ptarmigan, she would be the queen and the pack would have to bow to her.
It was a challenge.
She had the faculties to recognize that, and some primal need to come out on top, or bring the smaller bitch down with her, governed her actions. Instinct made her pull her head up, snarl a foamy warning, and gather her shoulders into a hump on her back. She couldn't get her black-dipped feet beneath her, but that didn't mean the Alpha was going to bow down so easily.
When Ptarmigan was nearly on her, blazing forward with a speed that Jinx could not have matched in her best days (but surely lacking strength), the rabid animal lashed wildly out and upward, hoping to catch any part of the Endore with her lethal bite. A broken howl tore from her throat and then she gagged again, spewing foam and twitching violently.
The Alpha responded viciously to Ptarmigan's outright, unspoken challenge. But the Endore had made her decision to stand this day against a severely disadvantaged Alpha female, to stake her own claim in Jinx's stead. She had unknowingly met a few of the wolves who inhabited this pack, but it was not the wolves here that spurred her feet. It was the very idea of being a leader, the blossoming of the seed that Viggo had planted in her mind, that made her throw her life away.
Or so she thought, when the pallid wolf snapped at her. But, despite being the furthest thing from a warrior there was, Ptarmigan agilely danced around the Alpha's attempt at harming her. The ground was slick with Jinx's saliva, yet she kept her footing long enough to fall upon the very spot she had targeted. The Alpha's body jerked madly beneath her, sending guilt through Ptarmigan like waves, but the bitch didn't relent.
Using all the strength she could muster, which would have been underwhelming had Jinx not been so terminal, she shoved the Alpha's face forward, sinking the other's nose and snout right into the river she lay alongside.
A life of being a warrior, both mystic and physical, had set Jinx up for failure. Though her mind whirled with vivid hallucinations, effectively ruining her concentration, her body went through the motions of snapping at another wolf as if they were muscle memory. Yet what was left of her made the fatal mistake of underestimating her opponent... Or overestimating her opponent's morality, rather.
For Ptarmigan fought not like a warrior, but like a rogue. She slipped past Jinx's prone form, and before the Alpha could do anything about it, fear enveloped her and her head was thrust into the river. The panic that welled up in her was like none she had ever felt before, for not only was Jinx incapable of breathing water, she was incapable of swallowing it.
Her throat spasmed painfully with each desperate attempt to gulp and prevent herself from breathing. Her body strained and fought against this bitter end, bucking and convulsing. At some point, her dark assailant straddled her, holding her down into the river even as she choked. She thrashed and gnashed her jaws so fitfully that she bit through her tongue at one point. She fought to lift her head, but Ptarmigan held her firmly down until at last her body relented and her fight ceased. Her lungs filled with water, her eyes stared widely at the river bottom, but saw nothing, and Jinx died on the side of the river.
Only then was her neck released, but it was much too late for a miraculous recovery.
She held on desperately, knowing that to let go would spell her own death, until the body beneath her ceased thrashing. When she stepped back and Jinx didn't rise, she took a shaky breath. She gave the body a hard shove, sending it tumbling into the river so it could wash away to wherever it would go.
She began to pad back toward the mountains, breathing heavily and doing her best to scrub the memory of the mad Alpha from her brain. She paused to drink deeply, composing herself—surely there would be backlash for this, and Ptarmigan expected it, but like her ancestors before her, she would hold strong to her new claim—before loosing a strong, possessive howl over the valley.
The Dread Queen is dead! Your new Alpha arises!