To breathe, to feel, to know I'm alive

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Hip-deep in the frigid shallows, Szymon grappled with his prey — a powerfully thrashing dogfish that tested the limits of the angler's fearsome grip. Die! he willed, a litany of malice pouring from him in the form of an undulating growl. His back and neck arched exaggeratedly as he drew back onto his haunches to strike the young shark's head against the porous rock that formed the tidepools, and though a spray of blood and brine spattered upward upon impact, fanning crimson across Szymon's face and chest, the dogfish was slow to relinquish its grip on life and slower still to allow life's illusion to fade. Dragging the sizeable carcass ashore, Szymon refused to release his grip until the last involuntary spasms of the flesh left his prize. He would take it to Doe and to Muses, to Julep and Isengrim and his brother's abandoned children. Carefully he set the carcass within a small tidepool, high-walled enough that he need not fear the Sea would steal away his trophy, his narrow skull swinging reflexively toward the edge of the territory as a familiar howl struck the air.

Jagoda.

This time, Szymon would not avoid his fel-eyed brother. The youngest Cairn was through with skulking at the fringes of pack life — he was Leviathan and Doe was Akhlut and together they would heal the hurts the Sea held against them. The golden-eyed alpha had more than earned his place here, being the only Cairn who had remained beside Her since the Depths' founding. Notched legs moved at a swift clip, carrying the angler to the protective ring of black rocks, and though his heart took up a frenetic racing at the sight of the salt-masked wolf who had given him so many of the scars that now littered his body, Szymon's expression was schooled into a blood-spattered mask of cool stoicism. Black lips curled, revealing a flash of gleaming white fangs, as the inky-ribbed Cairn advanced toward his larger, more heavily muscled brother with slow, sure steps. Piercing gold snapped aggressively to clash with eerie green as Szymon drew himself up to his full height and allowed his ginger-laced tail to curve high and proud above his back.

Abruptly, the Leviathan flew at his brother, angling his maw higher than the brutish interloper's, his intent to seize the bridge of Jagoda's muzzle in a swift, controlled grip of serrated fangs. It was an excessively dominant gesture that the alpha would not have typically employed, but he had something to prove here: he was not the same weak wolf Jagoda might recall, and he would not be bullied here.

He was Leviathan.

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