The constant hunting had him drained. The raven recluses himself from his Family for once, his favored place calling to him once more for rest. The ocean, powerful and restless, waves smashing into rocky boulders and cliffs further down, but lapping aggressively against the sandy border here, he drifted closer to the brine spray until screams of avians caught his aud. They weren’t the usual warning cries. They were upped in their pitch, more fearful. Turning to assess the situation, the Phantom locked his eyes across a much bulkier wolf snacking on one of the flapping things-
until it flapped no more.

Though the crunch wasn’t very loud over the waves passionate crush of waves, every predator knew that sound. A nod to the behemoth before he moved to dip his paws in the rushing salted waters.

Subtlety was a language the Ex-assassin knew all too well. He had been noticed, stared at, regarded, and silently noted. It had settled as it’s own flag on Cry’s mind, something he would too be aware of. There was more to this massive gradient woodsman than the regular talker ‘Raziel’ came across- it was almost much more appreciated to be simply Cry again.

His glacials moved to the chaos of the waters, eccentric blue reflective in his own cold azure gems. His aud caught the man enjoying the morsel of his success. Cry wouldn’t interrupt him. He had no right here for demanded conversation; he was out of pack lands. Here, he was just a regular wolf. A regular face, a regular man.
It was almost a breath of fresh saltine air as it was almost as though he had left his worries away, to fade behind him. His pregnant wife, his Family, his duties- he was running himself around doing what felt like everything. It was tiring. 

He needed this solace.  

Those artic jewels closed as a breathtaking breeze stooe the heat from heat from his lungs and washed away. 

He let it.

The silence had come to doom many who had been too transfixed upon the sea, some menace ushering them into their suicide by tidal pull and drowning. But whatever that was had never lay siege upon Cry. If there was one to destroy him, it would be himself. He nearly had after hurting Gwendolyn- a lethal error he would never do again. 
Or so he had thought. 

The mind of the ethereal man surged forward only to be pulled back from the gravity of his meditation. His center, his command, was the calm eye amongst the calamity. 
The harmony faded away as shifting sand had called to him, a different rhythm from the suckle of the waves. It was near, and accompanied by the cologne of an unfamiliar. It was also accompanied but the absence of the crunch, the swallow, the breaks and chews. The company must have finished his meal.
Auds followed the quiet wander, ending on the final settle of the lupine who had come to join him before revolving back to the turbulent waters. 

Crystal gaze was once again revealed, taking to follow the turn of his ebony neck and land across the extreme counterpart. They had finally met the hellfire gaze of the man, two completely conflicting colors between the duo, before Cry finally released his baritones.

”That tiny bird can’t have filled you.” It was a knowing thing, and a man that large couldn’t have kept up such mass without extreme training, favorable genetics, and heart eating. How had he not ravaged the entire flock?

His words were met with a grinning man, teeth hued by the smitten bird all the way to the gumbase, a ragabond ruffian who’s silent aura simply existed. A simple creature who kept something that he wasn’t meant to touch just yet, veiled. This mount was no intricate safe, but a lockbox, seemingly rustless despite the wind revealing a plethora of scars over that mountainous body. 

‘That makes two of us’ his mind mulled over the scars, memorizing the different patches where they lay without him even needing to remember such a thing. His own back, though much more proportional to his athletic body than the topheavy company, bore its own patchwork of history in grim bands of greyed scar tissue. A forever reminder of how closely death watched him and grew ill with intent. 

Crystals stayed to the amberesque flames that bore into him, and he was unfazed by the ease of which this man could crush him. He was an ex-assassin; surely he could find some way out of it, some range to widdle the foe down and slay him. 
But he couldn’t think such thoughts now...for this company was no foe. In fact, he felt almost as close as kin, a near brother, a familiar, or even a Shadow Fang as he once had been. 

The man licked his jowls, a meaty slurp carelessly slurring birdmeat And blood clots across a reddened muzzle. 
Clearly he needed more, to give this man somewhere worthwhile to reside. Was it his kindness that began to debilitate him so?

The reminder of his home, the woods he fought hard to forge into a housing for a plenty brought back the burden, the memory of his wife and her impregnation, the other two, three, four! females whom too were afflicted with being with child. It was a taxing thing on the Keep’s Watcher, And with him hearing Phex and her injury, his imbitterment began to revisit. That fucking lynx, a nuisance who had robbed him. Morgan had assured him that the cat had been chased off, that Phex was tending to herself, well and Gwen being protected and pushed away before she too became maimed. 

Had that fucking cat touched his wife, he would invent fire,

and burn these woods to the ground with that fucking cat in them, alone, scared, pregnant, hurt, and tormented.

His eyes glazed over, a storm brewing a fierce wintry avalanche that swore to engulf legions, alone. But that was neither here, nor now, he gathered to himself. It was nothing. It hadn’t happened. Gwen was fine. 

Taking a deep breath, he blinked, bringing his full attention to the hidden devil before him. “Come, please, enjoy my home. Fill yourself, and live free...” his words caught in his throat, and he couldn’t exactly figure out why. What had ceased in him? Or rather...

What plagued him, now?

Cry could almost feel himself falling away, back to a world, a timeframe where he had returned to the Nightmares. His sentence wasn’t done, and in this alternate dimension, he was fine with it. Slade was nowhere to be found- it seemed as though his legacy had come to ripen and decay at Cry’s bloody behest. The skull of the behemothian stayed within Cry’s quarters, cleaned, polished, sitting atop his own hide. 

What had he become?

His vision had come at the mere rupture of Reiner’s voice across the isolation between them. It was a foreboding hemorrhage that had hurt the Phantom, but it hadn’t wounded him, nor was it unpleasantly painful. 
His head was a fog as he couldn’t maintain whether to keep track of this implication or whether to figure out this awful sickness he wasn’t fighting off hard enough. 

“There is none,” he spoke to the reaper, his fluid voice much more civil and oiled than the demon he considered himself having a conversation with. 

It was what he needed. He hadn’t been challenged since-
what? Horosk? That situation where he was clearly needed to kill that stalking sister he had that jeopardized the safety of the pack. It was already clear the butch was crazy- but Horosk hadn’t allowed Cry to handle a situation that he clearly wasn’t meant to handle. 

Glacials reached temperatures of below zero, and finally the Watcher could meet the lethal gaze of his company without flinch. “But I am not. And I will not be tested.” He ha barely moved his lips, the brine air between the clear comparisons seeming quiet now as Cry made it known he was no pacifist. “Stand down.”

But could he truly push away such a similar soul? Let alone discipline or harness such a powerful creature? How could he dominate one so...seemingly indomitable? Maybe this was what he needed. A break from the free spirit, from the realm where smiles and laughs permeated so often. 
Perhaps he needed a reminder that he was a wolf foremost, and a good one.

That was all it took. A blur of darkness shot across the lessened space between them as Cry seemed to release his corporeality and morph into a true Phantom. The only visage to break the blur was the pearlescent gleam of his ivories that sought the titanic demon’s napeside closest to his own. He would force this mountain to bow, to bend under his rage that had been clearly bottled entirely way too long.

Cry hadn’t been dodged so easily in- well- ever. Not sincehe had battled Slade. And that fight hadn’t gotten him anything other than nearly killed. Slade has considered it a spar! Him near dying was a fucking spar to that man. 

With his attack effectively not effective, Cry was sent scrabbling near face first into oncoming waves. He couldn’t turn around fast enough- Reiner’s body a hellish wall that blocked any bodily escape. Only option was snatched away from him as bearish jaws patched atop the back of his own neck. Nothing but heavy weight lay behind the hurl of muscle and Cry was bested just that quickly. His resilience forced him to squirm, his thoughts being of Gwen never finding his body, or his children never knowing who their father was. 

Was this what his own targets had felt felt before he had ended them what seems eons ago?

His mortality was held just as firmly as he was, both threatened against the cold lapping of the saline waves. One had run hungrily over his jaw in a frigid lap, teasing harshly his belly and underside. The chill hadn’t bothered him- but he knew how awful it was to drown. He was forced to relive the fate that he had condemned two others to?

He could only twist his neck so far to avoid the torment. To try and snap at anything- but a morbidly weighed limb pushed him closer to that awful water. 
The salt stung the inside of his nose as he had to lower himself further to try working free of the titanic weight atop him- but he wasn’t going anywhere. He only dig himself deeper in the frigid sand beneath. 
Ceasing the struggle, he could only resort to pulling his face back up, shaking the water free as best he could, and trying to pant over the wake.

”I yield.”

Too many visions had sickly skittered through Cry’s mind, forcing him to relive his entire life just that quickly. His trainings with Slade, how he had been tortured, his near death so many times before, and clearly so many times after. It swirled a rancid sickness in him that Reiner unknowingly injected easily into the man who was deemed ‘unbreakable’ by Slade’s belief. Apparently the Nightmare King hadn’t tried hard enough, or perhaps Cry was too stubborn to break so easily then. But age, duty to his family, obligations, all forced him into this role.

Finally he was released, and with haste he clawed to shore, clearly baptized in an entirely new perspective as his wheezes came forth, his choking gasps and snorts making it obvious he knew nothing about holding his breath. 
He finally turned a vehement stare of broken ice to the smug hellfires above, the draconic icon near god in height to his sopping wet crumple. 

“Teach me...” 

His heart and lungs fought hard to free themselves of the brine, but even through his snorting and coughing, that damnation made vocal rose through with eerie arrangement. Food? Land? That was easy, simple, toys compared to lessons. 

“I can show you-“ was all he managed up and out in the dried out throat of his. Striking a wobble to get on his fours, he began to lead the brute back home, leaning up against a tree every now and then to regain some semblance of strength. He couldn’t tell Gwen about him- nor anyone else. No one could know about him, just yet.