Greatwater Lake She’s betting on science

Setting: Evening — 1950, sunset.
Weather: 88 degrees — Mostly clear skies, light breeze.
Exact Location: Set on the southern side of the territory where Otter Creek meets Greatwater.

@Aries

Donovan comes to Greatwater lake more than he needs to. It’s a nice place to wind down. Though really he still prefers the roughness of his sandy canyon opposed to the green grasses of the flatlands. He often comes here just because he can. 

Now he stands at the bank of the lake. Shoulder deep in the water, basking in the bright evening glow of the magenta sunset. The cool liquid even feels better on his wounds. Perhaps they’re beginning to heal better than he thought.  With those thoughts out of mind he trudged through the water and closer to the bank. Standing still enough to trick the fish into thinking it’s safe once more. He dips his massive head into the water, teeth bared with intent to catch the scaling beings in his grasp. Coming vac up and out of the water with a medium sized silver scaled fish he begins walking back to the cluster of trees he finds himself sitting by often. Flopping his body down with all the grace of a big cat Donovan begins chowing down.

Bleached skies, darkening, yet air of warmth – the canvas above remained pellucid as the lake’s surface, those writhing, floundering rivulets as they pirouetted along a blackened, watery mirror in endless turmoil. He stared solemnly down upon the fluid veneer; glacier-born eyes leering back at him, outstaring, domineering in silent command – his own reflection, that cynical slayer of night.

The Silencer.

Canting his chin downward, obsidian lips kissed the surface sacrilegiously and parted to slip his tongue between – water to abate this fathomless thirst; quenchless. Hiemal as it slid from his jowls to his throat, snaking frigidly through the caverns of his body until finally it settled in the belly of the beast, absorbed into the unlighted flesh of the slayer. Gratifying.

Then, he inhaled—

Following a benumbed breath, scorned through obsidian nostrils and salmon tongue, conducted to him was the pungent scent of fish, and with it, a vaguely familiar individualist. Donovan, he mused in wordless rumination, before raising himself off hadean haunches and beginning to trail the fringes of the lake toward that aura of darkness. A shadow himself, pulled forward by some force of tenebrosity, a bestrewing of malevolent intrigue.

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Something flickers in the corner of his eye like a flame. Shortly becoming more and more obvious like the growing embers of an unforgivable forest fire. There’s someone approaching him, Donovan doesn’t fret though. Simply lifting his head up from his meal, he sets his eyes on the approaching figure. The light from this fire burns fight and causes an interested smile to spread onto his maw, just barely teasing the idea of fangs. 

“Look who it is.” Is all that rumbles from his dark lips. Ear cupping towards the male known as Aries. The one Derg had a squabble with only some time ago. “What’re you doing here, peaches?” His tone is teasing, playful. Though he does wonder why he’s wandering around these parts.

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Baleful; impending brute.

Strewn alongside tepid lake-water, the grandmaster – snout upthrust to mellow air. Aries tightened his jaw as his steps began to near, ash-grey clenching in disgruntled acknowledgement of his own. The man was strange, mildly intriguing, a mercenary of oddity, yet ruler alike. A brow quirked, visage solidified firmly into a permanent scowl, etched like a carving into rock – and yet a twitch of his lip signalled bemusement, paltry drizzle of liquid soaking the fur of a pockmarked muzzle. None before had spoken to him with such casual nonchalance.

“Donovan,” came the thrum of his voice, low and thunderous in timbre. “your meal reeks.”

Donovan spits out a sharp bark of laughter at his sentence, though not at all annoyed by it, but more amused. Though the laugh only lasts a quick second before Donovan’s dark, scarred muzzle is crinkling at the corners as he smiles at the other. He might just like the way he says his name. Might.

Just as easily as he teases him with the nickname of peaches, he continues just as he left. “Aries.” He hums almost flirtatiously, parroting the other. “Don't like fish?” Comes his cutting inquiry. Though it isn’t necessarily rude, for the teasing smirk on his face rules out that possibility. 

The fact that last time they met Donovan, him and Derg had been threatening him with their teeth and now they speak casually. Though that could be because Donovan finds his savage nature interesting.

“No,” came sonorous riposte, blunt yet lit with a candle of cloaked mirth – mild, by all degree, but present all the same, divulged with the secondary twitch of charcoal lip.

Lambent ice; perfervid gold.

The Silencer locked eyes with the grandmaster as he purred his parroted words, void of emotion in the throes of his gaze. Aries was as the night, formed in his solitude, imbued with secrets never to fall from tongue or hearsay - of shadow, forged in a myriad of umbra. While Donovan lacked as such in secrecy, he clung to him an incongruous intrigue, the kind of which the silencer was intent to explore; when previously they had encountered, the brindled man had trailed his accomplice.

“Your friend didn’t seem too fond of me,” he hummed darkly, then, the faintest traces of an unilluminated smirk etching across his muzzle.

The other male is blunt, yet there is a hidden message of playfulness drowning in the waves of his sharp behavior. The hardly there twitch of a waggish smile on his maw and the intrigue mixed into his icy blues. The color draws in Donovan’s own. The color should remind him of the baby blue of the never ending sky, yet it’s much more acute than that. It reminds him of a cold, unforgiving storm that rushes against the coast. The ocean that rages within merciless and cruel, it only seeks to drive him further into the void of interest Donovan had towards this man.

Though even as he continues into a longer sentence, Donovan eagerly cups his ears forward to listen. His own teeth showing in a dark smile as the other reveals his own. Though as Donovan realizes what he’s said it makes him laugh once more. 

“I’m sure he has a valid reason not to. Derg is usually quite calm. What’d you do to him?” He asks with a mysterious sort of curiosity.

A name to the face, before he began wordlessly to suffuse himself in modicums of past.

Battered skin; gossamer ravaged into thin, ramshackle fragments of gore. A bloody web of flesh - gloriously attenuated. Smouldering stares, to pierce with ice the cloak of her lifeblood. Nefarious jaws, to tear at gauze pelt. Her fear had fed his flame, a fathomless hunger, unquenchable even as blood would pool onto his tongue and rattle his insides like the harsh sting of a nettle. Chaste soul would pay; would feed him, as he waived with the sin of greed.

And yet…

She was not Tundra – did not bequeath upon him such electric power to combat his tyranny, soak it in her own, a pool of bloody ardour set alight in divine deportment. The ward’s body had been left mattered and decrepit among fingers of frost.

“I hurt his ward,” came the heavy timbre of his tongue, storm-glazed eyes shifting to narrow upon the grandmaster, "long ago, though I did not anticipate to have made such an indent in his memory.” A pause, as a curling of wind dove at his cheek, and ill-defined smirk began to wane. “Do you travel together?”

Donovan nods at the admission from the other wolf. I hurt his ward. Comes a heartless reply. One Donovan likes the tone of. Though he cares deeply of his pack and for Derg, he likes this man’s outlook. Hell, even Aries should be able to tell as Donovan’s own maw tilts up into a smirk.

A low hum of acknowledgment is what Donovan gives back in reply to his question. “We do. He’s my right hand man. The other alpha of my pack, The Saints of the Dying Light. He’s my Overseer.” 

Donovan stands and looks to Aries curiously. “Would it be wrong of me to invite you to my canyon?” He asks with that interesting glint in his yellow eyes. “You are just the kind we like. Would love to make you a Saint. Comes with perks.” He grins, yet his voice is sly, smooth in a mediocre attempt at being convincing.

The Saints of the Dying Light.

Greyscale ears steeled themselves upon his crown, smoked fur swishing in gentle gasps of half-inspirited wind. Studious; dissecting. A queer prospect, it seemed – the man led by his umbrage, who in the face of threat sought to catapult himself blindly into combat, reigning as overseer. For all he had known, the silencer could not have been alone, and then the ignoramus Derg might lay still in mouldering earth. Perhaps, still, his passion was what inspired such rank; an unabating drive, perpetual bids for his own verdict of justice. Yet even alone, the svartell had been close - had almost torn the very soul from sepia chest.

Pity.

He watched the other man speak – did not flinch at invitation, spilling as liquid gold from betwixt stygian lips; that same gold as his stare, auric embers resolute in their plea. Of a canyon did he enounce – the den of his crowd, yet there was doubt in the mercenary’s skull that the grandmaster truly understood of what kind Aries was. He was no artless criminal, an outlaw in seek of certainty, no – he was a silencer, an executioner and assassin of the dark woods themselves. Perhaps Donovan had not been witness to the reign of blackfeather, the gore of their silent kingdom.

 “Perhaps not,” he hummed darkly, “but if I may ask, what are these perks?” His voice was steady, yet soundlessly tempestuous - the low rumble of thunder which henceforth may brew a storm.

He can see the gears turning in that insanely intelligent stare of his. Those beautiful baby blues captivate Donovan’s greedy attention. A flick of the ashen male’s auds and finally Donovan is listening to the interestingly captivating voice. His words speak curiosity to these perks Donovan mention.

He’s more than happy to entertain him. “Just the usual perks of a pack. Someone to watch your back, food, a home if desirable. Perks more known of my own pack mostly is death. We’re the judges of our own destiny. He play by our own rules, no one else’s. We don’t bother with niceties like these other weaker packs that rely on pretty words. Who aren’t strong enough to reply on their own manpower, but the ones of their allies.” He steps closer to the monochromatic wolf. “You’re free. I only ask that you fight for us and our allies and we’ll do the same for you.” 

Tilting his massive head he gazes to the other, a question ready on his tongue. “What perks are you most interested in, peaches?” Comes a curious voice, genuinely interested in the man’s point of view.

The storm of his aura would intoxicate, swelling in intensity, liquid umbra coursed through shadow-forged veins. Heeding the grandmaster’s words, wordless himself, only a distant plashing of lake-water beseeched to break this steady heave of words; nature’s imploring. Of brute strength, audacious in command – puissant, yet strength alone would not grant virtuosity, however sinister.

“Pretty words can hold power, if you know your subject,” the corpse-king voiced, thunderous tongue and shivering wind. He did not, could not, disagree with the man, pock-marked and battle-worn, yet with aptitude there was more to attain – potential for greater. Donovan began to lure, then, casting his words like bygone keys, as though he might unlock somehow a window into the reaper’s mind. No. Black lip curled, with amusement or intrigue, tongue shifted behind the guard of keen incisors. 

“Nothing I have not earned,” he mused, ever watching, hiemal luminescence poured from the blinding portals of his gaze; guarded, unfathomable. A whisper of wind, and he prowled, mastering phantom grace, toward the brindled saint. "I think, however..." he slithered forth, a snake from the undergrowth, embracing the space beside the brute’s cheek; beguiling.

 “I could be of use to you. And you, to me.”

The words Aries speaks are not wrong. With some, words are the easiest way to convince or manipulate. For others, actions take precedence over words.this man is no different it seems. His voice is silky smooth yet dangerous, the best kind. Donovan is attracted to him – horribly intrigued by his previously violent behavior. 

Especially as he slithers closer. Donovan watches his closely with his canary hues, following him as he settles beside his ear. Causing his auds to swivel and his smirk to widen. 

I could be of use to you. And you to me.

Donovan hums lowly, acknowledging his tempting words and tone. “Sounds like a mutual agreement, then darling. You’ve got yourself a deal.”