Blackbeak Bluff [m] uh oh! bad decision mark!

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@Apollyon other tags for ref

in the hours leading up to the birth of his children, he'd been at the side of @Reverie as requested and gave her space just as willingly. whatever you need, he'd said to her. his chest ached, burned when he was not with her; he could hear her sobs just outside her whelping den and it brought he himself to his knees; and just before dawn reached the willows, he'd made a frantic hike back up the mountainside in search of herbs for @Kukutux.
his son was dead, she'd told him.
their son.
he hadn't been thinking straight. his limbs were static and he felt as if his head might explode, and he'd wove a path in the wrong direction in his terrified flurry. too far out towards the marsh, just along hearthwood's borders, was where he saw him.
protective instinct surged, sundered him; he hadn't been thinking when he gave chase, and he certainly hadn't been thinking about how far away they were now, and how he'd left a spattered trail of scarlet across the snow in his wake, leading all the way back to the willows.
he hadn't felt it when he could no longer breathe beyond the teeth wrapped around his throat.
he hadn't felt the cold air as it blazed across his half-mangled form, the force of the fall sending his consciousness elsewhere; his eyes shut tight as sparking visions of his wife, his home, his children swirled behind his lids.
his last coherent thought as the waves swept him under was the beautiful, shining face of his wife, and then there was nothing.

even a casanova could starve.

this was a lesson the brash young man had learned on his way up from the rising sun. after cavorting with the pretty women, he had headed toward the sea. 

at least one of the females there had been entering her season at the hunt, and his one track mind kept the delightful mingling of femininity and salt in the back of his mind.

hunger bit into his belly with more sharpness as he passed the mountains.

it was the calling which stopped apollyon, vaguely frantic. confused. it had happened once. then again. now he assumed the distraction of the willow pack and when the desperate demon could wait no longer, he darted forward, intending to head over the border and steal whatever he could find from the first cache discovered.

a giant man waited for him, and his teeth laid apollyon's face open before he had even touched the boundary line. crying out, blinded by blood, the demon beat a hasty retreat, tearing the large wolf's shoulder in his flight. 

and it was not enough; he was pursued, slashed again, thrown into the snow even as the mountains faded behind he and the man whose rage burned apollyon into the shape of a scapegoat.

hunger paled, desperation falling into true terror. and when shale skidded from beneath his paws and clipped in horrid clacking down the side of the sea bluffs, he turned.

there they grappled, apollyon fighting for his very life. and perhaps it was the only thing which changed the clash in his favor, that or pure luck.

the towering man's throat was slashed, gripped; apollyon dragged him to the edge of the billowing green field through sheer adrenaline. the man broke away despite the gouts of blood, and bludgeoned him with crushing force, cracking several ribs. the demon fought for anguished breaths.

hindlegs kicked, connecting squarely with the middle of the willowman's chest, and backwards the powerful hunter fell, into open space as if he had never been there.

apollyon collapsed to the bluffs, a similar blackness overtaking him.