Nova Peak what’s yours is mine.

it is time to go. qiao shook @Stormchaser awake, moving around the encampment loudly enough that @Lilitu would be awoken too. she measured the gradually growing light against the distant peak as she collected her wares. 

the sun rose slowly behind them as they traveled. eventually they came to the borders, where the scents holding this place together thinned out to wisps. qiao studied them silently for some time before making up her mind. she threw back her head and howled for the stragglers left — but she had impression they were advancing into a ghost town. 

the dead woman’s scent was all but faded. the male’s scent was hardly any stronger. qiao saw a footpath and consulted her nose; they would follow the freshest scent available. 

eventually, the footpath joined with another and the scents here were strongest. it was blood, not odor, that drew qiao’s eye. he’s wounded. she murmured to her company, placing the to-lang behind a large rock. by her estimation they were close. 

the dried blood droplets led uphill to a dugout. here, qiao could hear the squeaks of young pups. she looked to each member of her party, gaze somber as she advanced towards the den. do not let him touch you.

this was dangerous work, but qiao was certain this male was the only one left. judging by the amount of bloodsplatter on the ground, qiao did not think this man would present much of a fight. 

she stepped close to the den, allowing her eyes a moment to adjust. there was a dark figure hunched in the corner. around him three young puppies milled. 

qiao braced herself for violent extraction. pleasant nights, stranger. we sensed your blood on the road. are you alright?

Ever curious, Dirtwater Fox had lingered around the territory. He'd lost track of the sentinel (@Dagur) — but did it matter? No one else was here, it seemed.

Eventually his curiosity drew him past the borders and onto the trail of three unfamiliar scents. Hm. How odd. Dirtwater Fox kept his head low and his steps light. He halted a healthy distance back from the den and the scene unfolding at its mouth.

He thought he heard whispers at his back.

he must not hurt them he must not hurt them he must not —

dead

where was redd? redd redd redd come please no don’t touch daddy don’t get close don’t —

His eyes snapped open to the sound of a voice. It was not the voice of his mate or Goldeneye. He could not understand it, but he saw a shape loom across the mouth of the den.

Riley stood abruptly, balance unsteady. What instinct remained left in his feverish body told him this incubus at his doorstep must be killed must be put down must be chased out must be —

Get out GET OUT GET OUT GET OUT— came the quivering madness from his bellowing jaws, spittle and blood both churning between his teeth. don’t touch them, he gibbered, turning in on himself as the blackened incubus spread its form along the edges of dugout. don’t touch them!

Riley threw himself at the door.

There was danger here.  Wealda was immensely aware of this as she crossed the boundary into the Spine.  Yet the message that had come was clear once she’d understood the communication delivered; there were children here too.  Her sister’s future, a future that was not the Rise’s, but felt her own all the same.  She would not allow nature to take them.

And yet, when she arrived, it was not nature that threatened.  Strangers had come instead.

Wealda bristled at this, torn.  Riley defended his own, but this land was not hers.  She too intruded, and she too threatened him in this way.  Were this the Rise she would not hesitate.

A low growl left her as she hovered, torn.  Riley was outnumbered.  If the strangers attacked, then she would have no choice but to enter the fight as well.  Some instinct held her in place right now.

an observer lingered on the fringes. qiao caught his scent, but did not see him. her attention remained riveted on the ailing shape in the dugout. 

he rose and she stepped back. his gold eyes were clouded by madness. he gibbered as he staggered out into the sunlight, and it was then that the full breadth of his sickness was fully measurable. 

a crusted garland of blood encircled his throat. his hind end had little control. spittle clung to his lips. 

this one is sick too. qiao whispered to her entourage before she turned back to the man, body language intended to be appeasing. you are not well — easy, stranger. qiao took another step back, her gaze hastily turning to a new face in the midst. 

shit! she had not accounted for a remaining packmate. this one observed too, but the low growl that hung her lips spoke of her affinity here. he’s sick, qiao explained to redd, her accented tone as disarming as possible. do not let him touch you. we buried his mate last night. he and his mate both have — it was then riley lunged and qiao skittered back, giving the madman a wide berth. easy! we are only here to help you.

skip me<3

rowdy kept to the back of the den. the meat pile remained untouched. he missed his mother and cried for her often — silenced only by the occasional pained look of his father. 

after a while daddy didn’t move. rowdy grew emboldened by this, but his courage faltered as a face peered into the den. 

he slid back, watchful - floppy ears turning to drink in the strange lilt in the newcomer’s voice. she sounded calm, and an ethereal glow haloed her face. it was a stark contrast to the scary, strained emotions on his daddy’s face. 

maybe this was a new friend come to bring him to mommy! ooooo! the boy babbled, bolting out between the legs of his father and out into the blinding sunlight.

Shook from sleep, Stormchaser groaned in protest and pushed his leg against Qiao. The old crone did not seem to appreciate the benefits of a long rest. When he finally pushed himself to rise, he was forced to hurry to catch up to the other two. All the while, he wore a displeased expression and slightly bristled hackles. He wasn’t much of a morning-person. Then again, he wasn’t much at any other time either.

When they drew near to a den and the sound of pups could be heard from within, the stormy yearling looked to Qiao and found memories of being young - being lost in the woods and finding the sharp-eyed woman who had collected him. Stormchaser had been an offering, a sacrifice, and he couldn’t help but wonder if these pups were destined for the same ill fate.

A warning was issued, not to let the man touch them.

But the man was wickedly protective and seemingly deranged. He spat at them, howling to leave them alone. Did he not think that his illness would infect them? Had the sickness also claimed any sense he might have had? It seemed so.

Stormchaser growled low, warning to the sick man.

You want them to be buried too?

There was a distinct lack of empathy in his tone. Still he tried to appeal to whatever was left of this man’s mind.

skippable!

They had been sent back to the den after their brief escape, but when they saw Rowdy make a run for it a second time, Ruckus wasted no time peeling after their sibling. The world was not just bright out here, but positively stunning. When their eyes faced the full force of the sun, they stopped dead in their tracks, blinking wildly at the new, curious sensation of being overwhelmed.

Ruckus picked up on repeated words from the strangers. Bur'd! they chirped, stubby tail wagging behind them as they leaped further into the bright void of outside after Rowdy.

He tails after Redd.

Something was terribly, terribly wrong on the Peak.

He can hear Riley’s crazed cries.

Strangers crowd the den. And he can hear the babbles of his nephews within—the thought sets his adrenaline through the roof.

His growl intertwines with Wealda’s. They are flank to flank, until he decides he cannot hang back any longer, and marches forth.

Pups stream from the den. He mustn’t let them wander far.

It wasn’t his territory, but he didn’t care. Redtails always belonged to the Rise.

State your purpose. He hisses in demand of the foreigners tormenting Riley. His lips are pulled back in a snarl, teeth glinting in the sunlight.

So many new voices and faces. He couldn’t comprehend what was happening. But father was angry at them! He must also defend the den!
Ruckus and Rowdy use the moment to escape, but he is more noble than that.
The boy takes to his fathers’ side, copying his mannerisms.
GEEEH OOOUUU!!! He squeaks valiantly. And looks up to his frothing father for approval.

There was always so little time to make the biggest decisions. The sort that would define the type of person you were, in the end. The sort that didn't always reflect what you meant or what you wanted, but all the same, they would come to define you.

In a moment Dirtwater Fox thought of many things. He thought about Slow West. He thought about Lonesome Dove. He thought about the sentinel (@Dagur). He thought about all the times he'd nearly died alone, and how maybe this would be the time he finally did it.

He thought about Earp.

Then, with a suddenly crystal-clear understanding of the situation, he darted silently forward to intercept the dark-furred young man (@Stormchaser) with teeth. The one whose words were still ringing in his ears. Whoever these wolves were, they weren't friends. Not in this place.

You want them to be buried too?

edit: I jumped the gun, sorry! For some reason I was absolutely convinced I went after dirtwater.  Apologies for any confusion that might cause, group threads are hard to keep track of XD.  I can remove and repost if need be

Riley held that same aggression and the same twisted gait that Masquerade had shown.  He was lost; if the illness did not take him, his wounds would.  Wealda noted this at first, but then several things happened at once.

Mulherin came to her side.  She had thought herself heavily outnumbered but still felt no relief; only worry.  She had hoped to risk no more of them than necessary.  Yet he had the right to come.

Then the pups appeared, emerging from the den to defend their father.  This was the moment that broke her hesitation.

She either claimed them or she did not.  And if she did, they were hers to defend.  At any cost.

In an instant Wealda had surged forward, ignoring all but the biggest threat present right now; Riley himself.  She struck aggressively for his neck, intending to catch hold and drag him back and away from reach of the children.  Away from Mulherin, and should he try to join, her snarl would warn him away.

Protect them.  The strangers were not a large threat, but they were one, and in the chaos she no longer could track what was happening.  All she could do was try and give Riley the mercy of a swifter end.

This had been a terrible, terrible idea.

She shouldn't have come. Should have left that body, sad as it was, and headed on back to Swiftcurrent Creek. But she was impulsive, lonely - and her empty womb yearned for children.

If there were puppies in need, she wanted to be there.

But the situation quickly went belly-up (as she should have supposed it would). The madman frothed and raged; others arrived, threatening both the trio and the father.

And in the midst of it all, the children, helpless and confused.

Stop it! Lilitu cried out, her one bright green eye shifting quickly 'round to light upon each wolf in turn. We're here to help, not hurt! Their mother is dead; we found and buried her in the valley. And he—

Her gaze met the crazed, empty stare that was Riley. He was the most terrifying thing she had ever seen.

dead she was dead dead

Riley struggled to hold back the welling wave of delirium. His hip sagged to the right as he tried to make sense of the assortment of faces around him; friend or foe foe foe foe —

A blurry shape bolted past his legs. Then another, and then a third standing by his legs with a cheery “get out!”.

His brow furrowed, trying to make sense of the pieces of his vision which kept pulling apart and then whirling close.

His children.

Do you want them to be buried too?

No! Riley slumped against the dugout’s external wall. Two new figures swam into view, the face of one so familiar that for a moment Riley gasped. Masque!

No no no no no she was dead she was dead dead dead; this wasn’t her this was someone else wearing her face and now she was coming towards him and —

He stepped back with a strangled cry as Redd and Mulherin flanked him. don’t — don’t touch them! He snarled hysterically, standing over Riot in protective fear. Now she was advancing and her teeth found his flesh.

A madman’s scream tore from Riley’s lips. The last of his mental acuity was slipping. He was confused, he was terrified, he was losing control and he knew there was something so profoundly important he needed to do but — what was it?

He bucked under Redd’s teeth, panic fueling a stifled instinct in him. Much like Masque in her final moments, a basal part of Riley knew if he was subdued now he would never walk again. He turned to his assailant with the puncture-and-pull maneuver of his kind, the force behind his blows fueled by sheer desperation.

At some point during his panic, the face of his mate slipped away. Riley’s frenzied muscles stiffened, gradually coming to grips with the realization.

R-Redd? He bleated, the fight seemingly extinguished from his bones. He was so disoriented, so betrayed by the feebleness of his waning consciousness. Again came that nagging sensation of something important he was forgetting.

In that moment he saw the blur of Dirtwater Fox lunge. He was too feverish to track the man’s trajectory, but between the crowding of strangers and the fresh blood welting his hide, coupled with the alarming disorientation of his uncooperating brain, Riley snapped.

No!! No!! He shrieked, wrestling to free himself from Redd’s hold. They were all enemies. It was them; they were doing this to him - they had made him sick and now they wanted to steal his —

Riley’s golden eyes widened. His desperate brain had sent one last electrical impulse as reminder  — the vision of Masque’s long tail curled around his three beautiful children.  This memory lit some distant corner in Riley’s disintegrating brain before blackness extinguished it forever. Survival instincts took over and in that moment Riley was lost — replaced by a rampaging beast whose only imperative was to survive at all costs.

His first target was the cinerous woman whose only crime was standing too close to the last memory Riley would ever hold.

in short order, things went to hell.

qiao’s eyes darted to each arriving cast: shit, how many rats did a sinking ship hold?

but it was the children that ultimately held her attention. they were the reason she was here. they were the missing link she needed.

two - no, three spilled from the den. one for each mouth, she thought wryly - but the arrival of the two dark strangers complicated things.

suddenly, things turned ballistic. the lurking stranger lunged for her familiar. the woman who helped her bury the body balked. and the darkened woman and her comrade swept in, seizing the madman.

bad move, qiao thought with a quirk of her lips. but it worked perfectly fine for her that someone else put their lives in danger. better their hide than hers.

she had mere seconds to make her move.

as things exploded around her, qiao aimed down the barrel-sights of her inner focus. the child was her directive.

the chaos around her was unimportant. only the child mattered.

she lunged for the nearest cub, the stupid little oaf that had bolted blindly out of the cave. qiao was careless in how hard she seized his scruff. she did not slow; using the force of her momentum against him, qiao grabbed the screaming boy in the practiced manner of a murkwater crocodilian — lunging now to the open plains below where she could lose any pursuers in the thicket.

Alright haha this is overwhelming. TLDR: Dogwater lunges for Stormchaser and gets a good mouthful of his shoulder. Mild damage. Stormchaser’s reaction is to bite at Dogwater’s snout/eyes. If he lands a blow and Dogwater steps back to recover, Stormchaser is lunging for another puppy and aiming to flee with the pup.

One of them thought he was man enough. The wolf lunged toward Stormchaser with snapping teeth. The young wolf had nearly left his neck compromised. His attempt to twist out of reach meant that his attacker found purchase in the thick muscles at his shoulder. Pain flushed through the length of his limb. The yearling’s adrenaline soon washed over it, driving him back with a hard shove of his athletic frame. Blood oozed down his limb and dribbled at his paw.

Don’t fucking touch me, he snapped in a guttural and wicked voice.

I’ll kill you, idiot.

White fangs flashed as Stormchaser lunged for @Dirtwater Fox’s face. The other man’s eye were his goal. If he could not rip the other man’s eyes from their sockets, he would attempt to bloody him so badly that he would suffer temporary blindness. If this nosy fuck wanted a piece of him, he’d get it in full force.

Qiao was smarter. In the commotion, she had darted forward and snatched one of the cubs in her fangs. Before he could blink, she’d gone racing toward the thicket. Stormchaser took a single step back, creating space between himself and the man who had attacked him. When he had found enough room, the stormy wolf also made a dive for one of the exposed children.

Redd lunges for Riley. 

His stomach twists—he feels this is not the right decision. The man was not crazed enough—yet—to terrorize his own children. The same could not be said of the strangers.

At least two of them seemed to fight eachother. 

A woman's voice—

Masquerade, dead. 

Everything else is lost on him. The second he sees Qiao, viperlike, snatch a child, he shoots after her in blind bloodlust. 

He'll chase her till his legs give out.

To his horror, a woman grabs ahold of his father. He yelps, flinching, left alone to watch Riley be brutalized. His heart can't take it.
The shrieks. The fighting. An army of unfamiliar faces are upon him. The boy desperately wants at least someone to be with him.
He makes a run for it to get to Ruckus—
But the jaws of Stormchaser find him instead.

D o g w a t e r
I'm giving Dirtwater Fox some damage to the face but he will not be stepping back or letting up in any way, PM me for any changes <3

Teeth raked across his face, but all Dirtwater Fox could think about was those words. The way he'd heard Lonesome Dove in the tone of them. The memories of a boyhood spent so alone and so hateful and so, so deeply miserable.

The man lunged for a puppy and Dirtwater Fox followed. He aimed to grab hold of him now, to wrestle him to the ground if he could — or if not, at least to keep him from fleeing. Someone else would grab the children, surely. Someone safe. Surely.

All he had to do until then was hold on.

ETA: This will be my last post!

Wealda had chosen and, right or wrong, her course would stay.  She trusted Mulherin and she trusted the Rise.  What pups they could save would remain.

She did not trust Riley.

His claws and fangs ravaged her.  She still fought to keep him down, trying to wrestle and choke him into submission.  Any reason had left him, and if he broke free, she would lunge after to again attempt to pin him down.  She only needed to hold him until the pups were safely away.  And if she could bring him peace before then, this would be best for all there.

Masquerade’s death had held no peace.  She did not know why she instinctively knew this.

Everything else was ignored. She would find them when she could, reclaim her sister’s legacy, though it had been reduced to ash in an instant.

She would have leapt to safety if she could have.

And she would have.

The dark, slim figure headed toward her took the shape of a missile, and Lilitu couldn't do anything but move slightly sideways before it hit her.

His teeth sank into her shoulder—sidelong, but still enough to tear flesh from bone.

The pain shot white-hot through her, but all the while she was thinking of—

Sobo, who'd tried to keep the bear at bay.

Erzulie, who put herself on the line.

Lilitu sank into those memories, found those bodies, and felt—as the madman found her body—as if she'd found her purpose. 

They'd protected others. Now she would, too.

GET THE KIDS AWAY FROM HIM! she shrieked, before turning her body toward Riley, taking his blow after blow, putting herself between his rage and those innocent babes.

What frightened her spurred her on. She could make a difference, even if it meant her own life.

She wheeled and aimed for the man's nape, desperate to grab it.

Chaos.

The wolf once known as Riley registered little. Next to him Riot bolted. Fangs found Riley’s hips, his shoulder, his neck.

He fought to keep them at bay, but in the end between Redd’s firm grip and the forceful shove of Lilitu’s body, he had no hope of escaping.

Snarling and slavering down to his very last step, Riley was pulled under. It was as if a current carried him now; there, held to the dirt and thrashing between Redd’s teeth, Riley Redtail exsanguinated. His blood seeped openly from his throat, a dark bloom of vital lifeblood spreading outwards beneath his thrashing body. Struggling against the hard-pack ground and the force of Redd’s grip, his energy ebbed. Eventually, his ravaged body could take no more and he stilled.

The last thing he saw was the shape of his son. For the briefest moment his pupil darkened, before everything went black.

she need not look back to see she had pursuers.

qiao ducked her head and held the babe close, thanking the nines he was so young that he could not put up a proper fight.

if she felt a little bad for leaving her familiar in the reeds — eh, well, he was an adult. he’ll figure it out.

the heavy tread of a wolf behind her hastened each of her flying steps. instinctively, qiao sought the overgrown lowlands. in the open plains she had no hope of outpacing mulherin — but in condensed thicket where an agile body could squeeze that he could not…

with teeth at her heels, qiao the pupknapper sped towards a fistful of curling thornwood, her figure dissolving into the underbrush as she fled further away from the dug out.

Last post from me. Stormchaser will be fleeing. He will hold Riot unless Riot’s player does not wish to be pup-napped. If you would like for him to break free, feel free to say he kicked his way out of Stormchaser’s hold. Dirtwater Fox is welcome to pursue but won’t be catching up! ^^ Thanks for the fun y’all.

With his mouth closed around the child, Stormchaser was forced to think gently. He couldn’t mangle the pup before he’d carried it from the pack. The stranger who attempted to tackle him to the ground had not quite been swift enough. His claws scraped at Stormchaser’s haunch, tearing the skin, but he did not manage to keep the lean figure in place. If anything, he fueled the yearling more.

Silver legs moved swiftly. The adrenaline that filled him was enough to keep the pain of his shoulder and haunch at bay. The child would only be rattled slightly from the motion. Drool formed in his mouth, soaking the pup’s thin fur.

Stormchaser did not follow Qiao. He did not want to lead them to the same dismal place or risk being cornered by their pursuers. Instead, the witch’s familiar turned northeast and began his sprint toward the glacier and beyond that, the hollows.

last one from me; ruckus will end up with redd if that's ok with starr!

Chaos ensued. Ruckus watched with morbid curiosity as the life left Riley's eyes. There was no pain in their chest, no sudden sense of loss, only a sense that something had changed, and Riley was no longer there. In an instant, both of their siblings vanished in the jaws of strangers. But it was the red one who had killed their father that Ruckus found themself drawn to, and it was she who they glued themself to. The red blurry adult was the only one whom they would follow.