Duskfire Glacier mission

Pack meeting! One post from me ;) we can break off into separates, if we wish! @Iosef @Keshka @Astier @Jora @Svalla @Tuhin @Blackfell

the air was crisp, dawn just beginning to bleed its color into the dark horizon. faust stood upon the boulder, the lupine meadow stretching out before him, violet and blue petals swaying in the cold morning breeze. this place, this land, had been cultivated with blood and sweat, built upon the backs of warriors who had given everything for its survival. and now, it was threatened.
his call rang out, sharp and unyielding, reverberating through the glacier. he summoned them—all of them.
as the wolves of darukaal gathered, he stood tall, his green eyes burning in the half-light.
war is upon us.
his voice carried through the still air, steady but weighted.
the caribou hunters have maimed a woman, wife to your warbringer. they threaten us, what we have built. what we have bled for.
he let the words settle, let them twist in their minds, let them feel the injustice of it.
i bid a call to arms. for all those who can fight, i urge you to join me. our loyalties bind us. our strength defines us.
his breath came slow, controlled, but there was a plea beneath his next words.
please.
he waited. waited for his warriors to step forward. waited for his people to stand beside him. waited to see if darukaal still had the heart to fight.

the soldier had been called upon. they all had—and he arrived with haste. lumbering forward, gaze cast toward his baskaan. the man was tense with worry, with ire. iosef listened as their teeth were requested; their might. his might.

he would push himself forward, expression grim. war was what he was bred for. what he had been crafted into the perfect soldier for. and oh, how he'd missed the thrill of battle. the wardrums in his ears, the blood that would be spilled. 

the lives that would be taken for darukaal. his bulk and muscle would be his baskaan's to command. he would kill, come dawn. he would prosper. he would become the winter soldier again. 

"i will fight with you, brother. we will kill them all." the soldier inside of him stirs, crazed, hungry. "for darukaal!" his voice bellowed.

the second faust’s call split the morning air, she was moving.

the cold gnawed at her hide, but she barely felt it. her paws carried her swiftly across the meadow, the scent of frost and blooming petals crushed beneath her weight as she carved her way toward the gathering.

when he spoke, when he uttered the words maimed and wife to your warbringer, she bared her teeth. her brother’s wife! she did not know the woman well, but she knew her brother. knew what she meant to him.

cowards, the fucking lot of them.

her blood ran hot beneath her thick pelt, and her fury curled into something sharp in her chest. there was no decision to be made—only action.

jora stepped forward without hesitation, without pause, firm as steel.

“i stand with you.”

there was nothing else to say.

she would fight. she would kill. for darukaal, for her kin, for justice.

keshka heard the call, and she did not hesitate.
she moved through the meadow, stepping into the dim glow of dawn, the scent of the coming storm thick in the air. war had found them once again. it had always been inevitable.
her place was beside iosef, her silent and unwavering pillar. she could feel the hunger in him, the fire rekindled in his bones. she did not share his thirst for blood, but she knew its necessity. they had bled for this land. they would bleed again.
she stepped forward, standing tall, her rosen eyes fierce beneath the dark shadow of her brow. her voice, strong and unwavering, joined his.
for darukaal!
the words rang out, solid as steel, as sure as her loyalty. she would fight for faust, for the wolves who had carved their existence into this glacier. she would fight because there was no other choice.

SCREAMING !!!

The distant uproar had long since settled into silence, yet its echo remained; a harbinger of what was to come. And then, the call. The Kaan summoned, and the frostborne specter answered.
Morning’s breath whispered against his ivory pelt, the sun’s pale fingers clawing at a sky soon to be darkened by war. He did not need to hear the words to know; this was inevitable. Where war had been, war would return. The caribou hunters? He had not known them. But now, their existence was irrelevant. 
A choice lay before him, though in truth, it had already been made. He was no craven to flee with his tail low, nor a wraith to drift idly as his newly-kin fell. He had yet to carve his claim into this glacier, and today, he would.
With a step forward, his broad paws struck the stone; a slow nod followed, his voice like wind over ice, sharp and steady. 
„For Darukaal!”

The glacier shifted, again.

Satori, still reeling from their talks of further peace, hobbled jadedly to Faust's beacon. Others had already gathered - she recognised Iosef among them, and more she could not name. Soldiers, fighters, everything the druid was not.

She settled on the outskirts to listen, obscured mostly by alpine brush, but his first words, that one sentence, sank her gut in horror. War was upon them. War, not with Winsook, but with the caribou killers.

Her breath shook. She'd known this day would come from the moment the beastly woman had set foot here. She should have sounded the alarm then; she'd failed. By the looks on their faces, this was not a conflict that could be won with pretty words nor a marriage. No, this would end in blood. Darukaal's, Saatsine's. Faust's. She was useless here, useless. At diplomacy, at war. At everything the pack she'd come to build stood for.

Chest heaving to retch up last-night's dinner, Satori spared a last glance at her Baskaan before slinking from the meadow to Bosk Iana, wondering her place here and whether it was all worth it.

a heavy weight to bear in the frost of the storm. to ask these people to go to war. faust had made him warbringer—and was that not what he was?
warbringer.
he stands, quiet. a shadow picked apart by the corvids that flocked him, now, a gaze cast over his shoulder. there he sees the raven come, land roughly upon his scruff, the carcass of a frozen rat in beak. an omen. an offering.
the people cry. cry out for war, for justice, revenge. they thirst for blood and it only alleviates little of the guilt he feels. people would be wounded. people might die. but his campaign that had begun as to liberate morwenna from the chains that bound her, had turned swiftly into a crusade for vengeance.
when those eyes turn to him, he steps closer. raven wings stretching, flapping, shadowing him in a crown of onyx. his lips, pressed to a firm line, move.
war is not easy. his voice is sour. he inhales heavy, emotional gulps of breath. war does not change. he seeks to look upon each face, to memorize those who would soon fight his battle. his twin sister, there, amongst them.
a inhale, and his voice rises in strength. but we do not falter. we do not sway. teeth snapping, gnashing, the thrill of war to come filling him. projecting his voice out into the coming dawn.
the first shreds of light peek. blackfell is there to greet it, onyx crown raised.
there will be no greater war than the war in the north! a shout that resounds heavily, powerfully, into the bones of those who chanted for the bloody justice. they will know no greater fear than that sown by those born of the ice's flesh. for darukaal!
for gjalla.