Noctisardor Bypass You turned a good thing into a tragedy

Wow. And to think Arbiter had thought that the youth might be the smarter of the pair. That got ruined real quick once he opened his trap -- he seemed to be the type to be best being seen and not heard. By the time Valour had started in on his second sentence, she'd looked away from him and tuned him out entirely. So instead she again calmly looked to Daegmar to see what he thought of that kid -- for yearling or not, he was certainly acting like a child by interrupting and talking the way he was, as if the world revolved around him and she should be blindly begging to be their allies. Just because the way Valour talked was reasonably polite, it didn't mean his words and meaning actually were -- they absolutely were disrespectful to Arbiter's experience and need to protect her own pack. Arbiter herself usually tended to the opposite combination of words versus tone, it made it quite easy to separate the wheat from the chaff, as seemed to be the case here where the two men were getting their undies in a bit of a twist over her not being impressed by their disappointingly empty attempt at diplomacy.

Not that Donareth-the-namechanger was much better but at least he had rank and was thus worth more on paper, so she looked back his way in the end. But so far he'd been avoidant of giving information and now that he'd managed to squeeze out a couple of droplets of something actually useful for her, he wanted instant gratification -- possibly the worst combination of traits. Poor baby need a nap? The whole idea of waiting for a second visit to make up her mind was a joke, wasn't it? It wasn't like there was actually much information to actually think about... Combine that with the fact no Teekon pack here ever described themselves in the way that he did -- the packs here were families who defended their own, nobody went out of their way to describe themselves so negatively as prideful and aggressive -- it was, shall we say, him pointing out his pack was likely a bad neighbor. And even better, he was trying to make it seem like she was the one out of line? Ha. Time to place a couple of cards down and see if they realized they'd talked themselves into a corner.

A single note of a laugh, and to make things worse she seemed amused, You've got quite the inflated opinion of your position here. Let's be clear: you came to my doorstep from a distance far enough away where you might as well not exist, so it's up to you to make yourself worth my time. It was certainly not the other way around. Look, nobody likes door knockers who show up trying to get you to sign a petition to do some random dumb thing on a weekend morning, and from Arbiter's perspective that's what they were here doing. You could have happily been neutral by just staying home. But now you're here, begging for alliance while being ornery about giving the same degree of information you'd give to a potential recruit.

Her weight shifted forward, a sort of inquisitive lean coupled with a slight predatory glint to her eye that was echoed in the way she spoke now, It sounds more like to me that you're desperate. I wonder why. There was no question in it: of course she knew what Donovan had done -- and if he was in league with Ursus just to top it all off, that made him utterly untrustworthy even without his other crimes, known or imagined. It wasn't too much of a stretch to guess that if they were this desperate to wander this far from home to find allies or ensure that those they didn't even know were merely neutral to them, the entire pack had done enough ill to have pissed off most of the people who were a lot closer. They were presenting themselves as a wounded deer to the pale devil herself and she was keenly aware of that fact. She had every right to be suspicious, and every right to think that if they couldn't do things in the proper order without cutting corners -- introductions, explanations, then talk of alliances -- then their impatience meant something was wrong. They needed something and probably deep down knew that no sane wolf would give it to them.