Redsand Canyon One more drink, one less I’ll lose

Tori, Nemisis’s player, has given me full permission to power play and kill off Nemisis.
Backdated to the 24th of July.
EVERYONE in the Saints is highly encouraged to post or at least make a cameo pls ;)

It was late at night when he awakens feeling the coldness by his side. No Nemisis. For a moment he wonders where she’s gone off to. He knows she’s off causing trouble or perhaps just walking about the canyon. Standing from his spot, he stretches. He’s not really in that much of a rush, so he paws out of his den and follows the freshest trail of her scent. It leads all the way up to Healer’s pass, still no matter the walk, he follows. Perhaps the king and queen can have a pleasant night off by themselves.

He steps over a small circular cactus and as soon as his eyes flick up he sees the mottled brown woman. She’s got an assortment of plants upon a rock along with a regular sized, possibly smaller than most, hare. He assumes she’s baking up a nice little meal for him, though what Donovan doesn’t know is exactly how positively killer that meal would actually be. He thinks nothing of it and he’s pawing up beside her. His presence startles her in a way that he doesn’t often see. Then just as quick as it came it was gone. Her sly smile replacing it as she rubs against him, of curse he returns the affection by doing the same.

Then his eyes drift to the plants. Some of them stuffed inside of the rabbit. Though small and crushed up they're noticeable. It’s rushed and he looks down to her, inquires about the rabbit and the like. Something is off about her answer, so much so that he goes closer to investigate. He recognizes those fucking plants, those flowers. An abundance of golden flowers adorn this fucked up alter, a mix of White False Indigos and Marsh Marigolds — poison, she’s going to poison someone. Though he’s not instantly suspecting it’s him. She’s too obsessed with him to poison him — or so he thinks. 

He interrogates her a certain sadistic interest in his voice and he can tell there’s something wrong here. Mutiny. It has to be. Then his voice is booming, arguing and blame coming from his maw. She spits it viciously back to him. Mentioning that he was hers and if she couldn’t have him no one could. Speaking of how she would run the pack perfectly fine without him and he actually scoffs at that. 

As soon as she straight out admits to planning to poison him he’s on her. Teeth bared in a vicious onslaught of potential death. He will kill her this night and kill her he does. It’s a bloody battle and the vicious, bloodthirsty woman doesn’t go down without a fight. He’s able to give him multiple puncture wounds all over his body and two deep slashes from her canines horizontally across the top of his muzzle and underneath on his chin. They’ll surely scar. The same with his left ear, a deep slash that produces more blood than one would expect from a cut on the ear, leaving a nick in the rounded appendage. Not only that but she almost rips out a chunk of his shoulder, frenzied marks of gnashing teeth can he seen raking deep into his muscled shoulder and forearm. He swears she was going to rip his arm off at the shoulder. 

Finally, just barely when he begins to feel his arm going limp he snatches her up by the back of her scruff. He thrashes her about violently. The moonlight illuminating the nearly black blood spewing about them both. He rips his body into a rush shake, muscles rippling and shifting at the force of it. Unrelenting as a hurricane, she’s unable to shake him and she’s only then released by the chunk of skin he rips off of her. The woman stumbles to her feet and he almost feels bad for doing this to her. Shoving the vanilla thoughts to the back of his mind he goes for her again, this time slipping down far enough to snatch up her throat with long vicious fangs. 

No mercy. She has to die. She betrayed him. Just like Sasha did. Fucking die. Are the only words that slip into his mind. He crunches his powerful jaws down onto her windpipe and hears the most painful gasp of breath accompanied by a broken cry of near death. She cannot breath now and will surely die — if he doesn’t rip her throat out first. He hopes for the latter. Ripping his body back and forth, crimson life force spills out onto him and he revels in it.

Shaking her so much so her already broken neck twists her head sideways and her throat is nothing but gore. He nearly decapitates her and when he drops her lifeless body his eyes slide down the form of her stiffening body. Inhaling, exhaling deep breaths, barrel chest heaving up and down and his blood is still pumping with adrenaline. Coin gold eyes are wide and circular as he basks in his kill — wild and pupils small enough to be swallowed by a sea of fiery yellow. The sickly blue white light of the moon reflects the wetness of the blood that blankets his form. His entire head practically draped in curtains of dark red crimson. His cream colored chest is much the same and blood spews from the wound on his arm. His mouth and teeth are stained with it and it drips from his maw like he’s a rabied, feral animal. In this moment he is. Even with the pool of red forming beneath him he basks in the death of what he would consider a lover, a pack member, his equal. Now, only his betrayer. 

She is dead now — a member of his pack. He must show the others. Show them what truly happens when one betrays him just as he has been betrayed before. Tipping his massive head backwards, he lets loose a daunting, unearthly howl into the canyon calling all that he shares it with. When they show up he will be shown looking down to Nemisis’ dead body covered in blood looking like the devil himself — perhaps he is.

The priestess in white was up this night, it would seem that this would become a habit of hers. Her mismatched eyes of fire and ice taking in the silvering that happened when the mistress of night was at her brightest but tonight was not to be a peaceful one, there was to be mayhem and murder. Oh, but was it murder when another betrayed you, when the one you trusted and found dear had a plot to murder you? It was the rage that drew the woman, the accusations that turned into a bloody battle. Though it was still night she felt the scorch of fire as if it were light of the sun, his anger was just and hot and she felt like if she was any closer she would have been burned. She had not met the woman yet but she had heard of her, she had learned that she was his equal and perhaps his lover too. 

The fight was bloody, vicious, and in a way thrilling to watch. Her minds came to a ritual that could be preformed in blood, one that could curse the one that died to never pass to the afterlife but to be forever cursed into drifting along the planes of purgatory and the unseen. Would her leader want that for the woman he could have cared for, should she offer? Blood should not be wasted and there was just so much. Oh, perhaps she could make her fur into a coat. Well, the part of her that was still whole. Maybe he would like something like that, maybe not.

The most painful gasp reached her ears and her eyes looked back up from the pooling that was beginning to spread. No time for last words, her life was forfeit, she was the weaker of the two. He shook her until her head nearly came off, the sight was fascinating as she had never seen something quite like it. The beast had not noticed the dove that had been watching, she had not hide her presence but she knew the blood rage that clouded over his eyes. She had seen it once before, and she knew she would see it more. She had not moved until that light finally faded, when reason could be registered again. He howled and she quickly followed to show she bared witness to these events, her own sound as haunting as a desert ghost.

When he finally looked at her she moved closer, looking over the now crimson stained woman. How unfortunate, she probably started out a pretty color. Would the blood wash off a dark coat? Her paws touched the pool of warmth and she simply looked down, the dark puddle staining her colorless paws red. She lifted a paw to her nose and then set it back down. Interesting. 

Finally she looked up at him, curious to his reaction to her proximity. She tilted her head and gazed over at his new wounds, the fresh oozing being added to the dead. There was a ritual for this, a way to take in the no longer living's soul. Damn them to be apart of their murderer. The Monastery frowned on things like this but she learned it form a swamp witch so they would never know, after all, they were all gone from this world. "once the show if finally over, you need to come come to get all this looked at. After all, she did get a few hits in.. not that it did her any good."

Like radioactive decay, he lost more and more of himself to the yawning vacuum of the world, scattered so thin you could look through him like sunlight leeching through the thinness of an ear...

He is in agony. He is in the garden.

Nemesis had fought tooth-and-claw into existence, and she had fought tooth-and-claw out of it. It takes so long for her to finally die, and it will take even longer for her to stop bleeding. The photos of the crime scene are laid out like so: Nemesis, plucked straight out of a film noir murder, another Black Dahlia, a small white-haired woman who puts one hand in the spilled inkpot redness and provides her medical opinion, clean-cut and sterilised...

Donovan. Grandmaster. Drenched in blood like the monster in a slasher, the man who had built billboards and handed out pamphlets and built a new city from the ground up, it drips from his mouth. Parts of Nemesis are still stuck in-between his teeth, trickling down his throat, pooling in the blackness of his stomach. 

He can hear the frown in Dove's voice. After all, she did get a few hits in... not that it did her any good.

What happened?

Off-screen. Colin steps back from the pool of blood as it nears his toes. He already knows the answer. Turning to Dove, his jaw tight, his teeth needling around the exclamation, A show? 

There is nothing much else to say.

The dunes are ever changing beneath her paws, a never-ending sea of sand that aboloshes all thought. The only thing left swirling in her skull is how beautiful this place is. It may only exsist in her dreams, for in truth she had only ran among the endless hellscape once, when she was a pup fresh on her legs. She had run for hours before she finally returned back to the dissapointed arms of her mother. The she-wolf ran now, like a blur beneath the starlight, towards her leaders enraged song. Wait. 

Auriel's eyes snap open, her head raised in alarm. Donovan called to her from the depths of her mind, she must go. On her feet, she races through the weaving catacombs that she had once feared, arriving in Healers Pass where she had already been just mere hours before. There was death in the air tonight. She stayed back, her mind fraying at the possibility of what could have transpired. Yet she had so see. Shouldering her way past Colin, a brief tail run along his spine. Comfort, for both him and her. 

Lying there, she almost looked at peace. As if. The almost severed head of her leader, the woman she had fought with, had feared. Someone will pay for this. Donovan will not let it- His maw was coated in a thick, sticky red. Bits of flesh still hung from between his teeth. Ah. Nemesis had played a dangerous game, and she had lost. "Aistarah alan." She muttered, head bowed. That was all the respect she showed, however. She was not sure if it was even her place, after such a betrayal, to speak to him. But as her leader, as the beating heart of their pack, he must be seen too. "If you will allow, I will clean the wounds." She made no move closer.

The echoing snarls and clear disturbance that seeped through the canyon awoke most, if not all, from their slumbers.
He slunk around for a few moments, noticing Nemisis and Donovan were gone.
Perhaps they'd found an intruder. Perhaps...it be the court?

His paws, as sore as they were, carried him swiftly out of the Warrior's Heart.
He loped to the Healer's Pass, where it seems others have concluded to go, and found the scene of the crime.

Head, snapped back in an ungodly fashion. Blood, staining the dusty surface, coating the littered flowers. The hare, perched and smelling...deathly. Moreso than any other prey.
He studied Donovan. The wild, disbelief.
The disbelief of the action...or the reason he knew not.

Dove, callously commenting on the scene but still offering her services. Witch. She reminded him of Caiaphas. ​And Auriel, too offered so.
Colin, shocked.

Derg paced anxiously, a few whines escaping him.
Nemisis certainly would know of ways to set curses, to harm them even long after her death. And for her to be killed by Donovan? The one she loved?
Derg did believe in witches and curses, and times that many thought were long gone.
He didn't want to suffer the hate Nemisis may have bestowed upon him in life or death.

present tense felt fitting here. Finley’s present, but only physically, and stands a short distance from the fray; groggy unreliable narration ahoy!

Screams rip through the night; Finley is marching to the source, tensed for battle. A fight has broken out; Donovan is there. His howl beckons her to hell and hell is what she sees: two “leaders,” drenched sanguine red, Nemisis on the ground, lifeless, beheaded. At last, he’s dealt with her.

A white apparition stands in the crimson pool, speaking; unrecognizable. Colin’s voice; he backs away. The other female, her head bowed; more words, more noise. Whimpering; Derg.

Check. Check. Down the list. Renard has not drifted into awareness, if present at all. Others, if any, are no clearer than the feathered-ear healer. The show. A show? Ghastly performance.

Donovan stands, hulking, center stage. Wild eyes burn in the moonlight. He will bow, and shake his head, off with it now; away the corpse’s skull will fly, into the darkness, ripped asunder the raccoon’s leg raining blood limp little spatters on the dirt a toy a plaything goodbye—dead. Long live the queen.

Finley is static. When she wakes, this will be a nightmare.

renard :handshake: finley
    sarcastic long live the queen quips

the canyon trapped sound, just like it trapped heat. the snarls rose over the eerie stillness of the desert like a clarion call. at night redsand, baked dry by sunlight and swallowed up in the dark, was an alien place that bore a lingering menace. around every cliff, a shadow waiting to strike.

and yet they weren't the one in charge of this.

an intruder this far into the canyon? when they'd been on such alert? abandoning the soundlessness of their tread, they picked up speed, sticking to the deeper shadows. the canyon was a friend by now, just like the dark; it led them where they needed to go, through the pass and over the hillside.

and at the top, looking down into the valley below --

donovan was practically bathed in blood. the star of his own little show. it dripped from him like water, dark and gleaming, and before him, nemisis. snarling, streaming blood as donovan bore down on her.

renard's own teeth had itched to teach her a lesson. none of the teasing dismissal from the glacier: a serious thing. a warning. you aren't a child playing with her toys. not anymore. if you don't wise up, next time i'll be coming for your throat. but donovan was smitten, and she, for all her posturing, was a brat. they knew where that would lead.

and they weren't her mentor. if they had been, she wouldn't have turned out like this: bleeding dark enough under the moonlight to look black. donovan's jaws locked around her neck like a vise, crunching through tissue and flesh, the windpipe, the jugular. blood spraying in glittering droplets like rain.

that was it, then. long live the queen.

it took her a long, long time still to fall. and in the interim, they began to pick out their fellow spectators, witnesses to an execution: the healer, first, offering her help. colin, gasping words like a condemnation, as though the saints did not come exactly as advertised. auriel. derg, pacing back and forth.

finley.

they watched her. a predator watching a wounded animal, waiting eagerly for the weakness that would invite it to strike. but she moved with a soldier's mindless blankness. nothing behind the eyes. did she have less of a stomach than they imagined? or was it something else?

something else. their eyes locked on the curve of her shoulder, hungry. they were eager for that conversation. 

but for now, there was only blood. there was donovan, standing over nemisis' broken body, a howl dying in the air. in the garden of the saints, there was silence, the kind that came only on the heels of death. and what better way to stake their claim?

thought you'd learned your lesson the first time, donovan. sasha wasn't enough? but maybe now you finally understand. 

didn't even have to hammer this one into you.

The bloodied man heaves in breathes are the strenuous battle for life and death — a battle no one would try to lose. Though this time, Donovan is the victor and he will not soon forget what he learned on this fateful night.

Then a glowing bright object comes to the corner of his vision, he stills, not daring to look in its direction. Thinking perhaps it truly is Nemisis’ ghost coming to do him in for a second time. Until the sweet voice of the one known as Dove reaches his ears, causing them to swivel and cup towards her. Slowly his head creaks in her direction; he forces himself to blink practically blind with rage and betrayal. This one is not one to kill. He repeats to himself. He meets her eyes eerily and then his attention is shattered by something else running towards them. 

He looks away and back to Nemisis’ body so devoid of soul and life. Awaiting for them all to appear — he stands there like a man possessed. He deems them all worthy of a reply when he sits in drawn out silence and no more of his family show. 

Stepping over her body carelessly he goes to faze them, he has a weak limp in his tight arm and the blood glistens off him as he moves. He looks to the two who offer medical services and hums a low, baritone, “Yes.” It’s a dark and evil sound. 

Then he gazes to the rest of them, hearing murmurs of little things here and there. Taking his eyes off of them to quickly glance to the body he violently steps the paw of his injured leg on her body, Mouth snarling as he feels pain shoot up it. Then fiery gold eye meet his team. “She got what was coming to her. She planned to poison me. Blatant fucking mutiny — betrayal. She deserved to die a slower death.” His words are vicious and mocking.

Swiftly he dips his massive head down and snatched up what remains of her neck for all them to see. He crunches and crunches on her spine until it gives and crumbles into itty bitty pieces, then shakes her violently. Her head pops tight off and rolls towards the feet of the closest of them all — Dove. Taking a quick step over he paws her head to roll underneath his paw. “We will let the vultures clean her skull and put it on display. Never will this pack forget what she’s done on this day. Never will I forget. Let this be seen as an example for those who decide to plot my death again. You will not be victorious.” He hums lowly. 

He begins walking off into the middle of the small crowd, a slight limp in his step, looking to walk past them and continue on to Warriors Heart. “Leave her body; you’re all dismissed. Any healers present, come with me.” He orders softly back to the bunch. Then he stops for a mere second turning to lock eyes with Derg. “I hope you’re ready to take her place as Overseer, peaches.” He almost sings to him, a sadistically devilish, yet teasing smirk comes to his bloody maw showcasing bloodstained teeth. 

Then as if it never happened, he’s on his merry way again. A silent order in his steps to have the medics follow him.

Fascination, was that the word to use here? She had moved in closely and took inventory of his injuries, frowning as another voice interrupted her examination but then she remembered the howl. Ah, yes, they were coming to the announcement. The priest garbed in black and white asked if there was a show and she simply nodded, a smile coming to her lips as she explained. "A show it was, a drama that ended in tragedy but from the tragedy came victory." She almost laughed her reply but held it back, a twinkling in her eyes as she moved her eyes from his baby blues to the lifeless once of the nearly beheaded woman. Her skull was larger than her own and that was when an idea sparked, that would be a rather interesting idea if her grandmaster would fancy a listen. 

More canines poured in like a waves of color against the silvery hues that the mistress moon caste on their desert, the golden ginger had stepped closer and she held back any words that might have come to her and simply gave the girl a warm smile. She had learned she was not a healer but she offered to clean the wounds, interesting but she does not protest as the man speaks one word. Yes, but who was it to? With a small wave of her curled tail and looked over the crowd that gathered to his call, her eyes landing on the man she had treated for over worked paws. She saw the accusation, one she had heard many times before. Witch but why, was it because she was fascinated by this? Was it because her thoughts had someone channeled to him so he knew about the rituals that spun in her head with eager claws?

She turned to him as their leader spoke, all about the tale she had watched unfold. A mutiny, a poisoning. How cowardly, so low and weak to resort to letting plants to all the work for her rather than use her own strength but maybe she knew she would never win in a fight. That the way she died was already screaming a banshee's warning in her ears, she knew that would happen her self one day. Everyone heard the scream that signaled their day, a warning to let them say goodbye. She blinked and watched as he finished the beheading, The severed head rolling to her and all she could do was stare in interest, she could wear her skull but he took it back. His idea was close to hers but not quite, maybe she could get it after all.

he moved causing her own body to follow out on pure instinct, she said she needed to look over his woulds and so she would. It was then she thought to ask, "Can i have her skull once its picked clean?"

He had made absolutely no effort to get to know anyone. It took a lot to pull his attention from his own selfish thoughts and pretend to give a shit about anyone but himself, and honestly, he would continue to be antisocial for as long as no one forced him to be otherwise; why would he willing do something he didn't want to do?

The call didn't immediately pull him from where he skulked through the soft sand of the dunes. He did pause and briefly consider answering it, but then he continued to move. He didn't like being under the rule of someone; it had been a long time since he answered to anyone other than himself—and the voice, of course, although he never willingly obeyed the voice either. Irritation rippled through him, making him pause again to shake out his raven coat. Then he remembered the stipulations he had agreed to when joining the pack—his irritation grew and flared hot in his chest. Fuck he whispered under his breath, and then he whirled around, looking like a child throwing a tantrum, and stomped off in the direction of the call. 

By the time he arrived, things seemed to be wrapping up, for which he couldn't help but be grateful. He could make his damn appearance and not have to spend much time around the others. Donovan walked by, followed by a couple pack mates, and Midar took a seat, his cold gaze moving from the leader to the mangled body of a wolf on the ground near the rest of the pack. He looked back to Donovan, a raised eyebrow his only reaction. He had seen the woman around, often glued to the wolfdog's side. His violet gaze lifted to the rest of the pack, but there was no question in his expression or any cue that he was interested in knowing what happened. He didn't really care. If she was dead, he assumed there was a reason or maybe Donovan had just been bored. Either way, it didn't matter much to the beast. 

With a lingering glance in the Grandmaster's direction, Midar got to his feet once more and quickly disappeared into the shadows, eager to be alone again.

People fall into line behind him: Auriel, Derg, Finley, Renard, but he can't bear to look over his shoulder. There is no altar, and no one has written a eulogy.

Donovan grabs her again; she ragdolls to and fro and the sound of bones breaking reminds him of boots crunching through snow in wintertime,

back at the church and the graveyard that had always felt like a cruel joke to him because there'd been a clerical error, and instead of his son getting buried next to his grandfather he had been buried a few feet away next to a girl, a beautiful girl who had come in sick with a mole on her cheek and died a week later—

can I have her skull once it's picked clean? 

He wants to say, she isn't even cold yet. 

He doesn't say anything at all.

Donovan buttons his suit up again and rolls the sleeves down, meeting dismissed, and Colin watches his face turn then disappear, thinking of Sasha, and then Ruth, and finally, Theo, his coffin surrounded by those of strangers.

Exit Colin.

She wanted the skull of the witch woman.
From one witch to another, it seemed.
The Teekons was crawling with them.
He suspected the old coastal one to be dead now, though it did strike him now that that new, younger costal woman bore quite the resemblance to Illidan and Caiaphas.
Strange.

He shook her body with the utmost vigour and off bumbled the head, leading to the conversation mentioned above.
Leave her body.
Perhaps it would be best. Not to touch.
Not to disturb the evil.
But to settle the spirit, and keep it underground away from the living, it would be safer.
But Donovan was to be respected and feared; Derg only respected him.
Nemisis didn't deserve the burial.

Colin walked away, and Derg stood to watch a moment longer before following the Priest, probably back to Warriors Heart. Well, that was where Derg was going anyway.

Watching. All Saints to Dononvan. Instinct screams Finley is prey—someone is watching—“got what was coming”—someone is watching—“blatant fucking mutiny”—“deserved to die a slower death”—off with a pop, here’s to the vultures.

You’re dismissed.

Away he dances, ghosts in tow. Nothing happened here. Skulls promise no encore. Someone is watching. The crowd leaves one by one—trickled in, soul after soul, slower drip out. Blood follows them all, prints stained red; always have they been.

Hackles prickling; they will not be quelled. But she’s been dismissed.

Renard watches. Night is murky.

Finley leaves.

Donovan doesn’t stay too long to find out who goes where or who says what. Perhaps they gossip about him, perhaps they praise him, perhaps they’re terrified of him. He doesn’t care. He’s lax with his group, doesn’t wish to force his rank on them. Though if they challenge him then he will. How he acts depends on how his people treat him, even then, he doesn’t like to immediately snap back even if they are being disrespectful. 

Still he doesn’t have it in him to give a fuck right now. He’s leaving the murder scene and so are his pack mates. They’re slowly but surely dispersing. Occasionally glancing back to watch them walk away. Surely enough it will just be Nemisis’ body left alone to bake in the sun in a few hours.

He doesn’t regret a thing.