Bonesplinter Ravine [M] Viva La Vida

She had fallen asleep thinking of it; had awoken with it. Guilt.

In part it is why she presses on, too willful to release the scent where it leads her creeping along the edge of pestilence, smell wafting in sheaves up towards a toothed moon and the single body silhouetted against it. Below, those of the gully assemble. She stiffens with fear.

This is a soldier’s raid. Eset had never meant to come this far. Now that she had, she understood there was no turning back. He would not survive it, she knew. Her paws still felt the thickened skin on his neck; the poreless, furless marks across his ribs.

Hathor, go to him, her heart pleads, please, keep him strong.

Long shadows flicker over the trail down the cliff face, the rustling of her pawsteps eased by fleet movements. The gathering glows ahead, their voices distinct through the trees. Eset marshals forward, keeping a careful distance while her eyes throng grievously over bodies, searching for the piebald coat.

Then she senses him. The barest voice, just at the limit of hearing, but she catches it. She strains to listen, fear jumping in her throat. Where had it come from? Her eyes track the figures; the woods. She dares not move in the viper’s pit. Her jaw clenches as she tries to still all breath, all movement, to give nothing away…

And then he is there– emaciated, but very much alive among the crowds.

There is no time to study the soldiers’ configuration or plot an escape; in the same moment Machiavelli holds a substance to his lips, Eset streaks through the underbrush with a coyote’s haunting cry, “Stop!”

Her paw catches on the edge of his bowl, spilling the liquid out into the dirt around their legs.

“You are under no obligation to drink that, Machi,” the wildfire eyes flare over his hollowed face for only a second before turning in horror to the surrounding wolves.

One forearm steps shakily forward, barring him pathetically. They are frightened dogs, backed small and sharp into a corner, and with no means of escape. Eset forces a swallow, and in the dread arms herself the only way she knew how; with the same pretenses that had once numbed all terrors.

“W- where is your leader?" She addresses the masses, unable to hide the waver in her voice but still fighting for a vizard's importance, "I must speak with Herod.”