Ankyra Sound " Look at that deep well, look at that dark grave. "

The moment she left @Rosencrantz, Raleska felt her composure begin to unravel. She fled shakily through the fir-studded cliff, a yammering fury blotting out the last of her sensibilities. How could @Erzulie and @Rosalyn have told him? Just thinking about that forced a sob to tear from her throat.

She didn't go to her mothers (how could she? they'd castigated her with the foulest mark possible by sharing with Rosencrantz what Raleska felt was a secret that ought to have gone to their grave.) If @Regin and Valravn found out, Raleska felt their worlds would be taken from them. She could kill him -- she could fucking kill him.

Never had Raleska been so deposed by anger and hurt. She wondered if this was how Caiaphas had spent most of her life. Feeling on this side of wrong, Raleska could see how her mother had gone gibbering into dissolution -- it all seemed so easy when you perceived the entire world had done you wrong.

But her mothers and Rosencrantz had done wrong; she couldn't see past that, and it was that dark and choking thought that she carried all the way to Ankyra Sound.

Before Raleska knew it, she was wandering the familiar, moss-carpeted halls of the great forest in which she had grown up. The trails came to her easily, even with most of them being half-obscured by thick ribbons of hard snow. Down through the thinning trees, the throat of the grotto became visible.

Raleska surveyed the coast line with a sense of weariness. She was compelled for some reason to visit the gravesite of her true mother -- the one who had done everything wrong but had never once betrayed her. Not in that way. It hadn't hurt as much when Caiaphas had left, it hadn't hurt anywhere near as much as the betrayal she felt burning in her heart from her surrogate mothers. 

It was strange being in the grotto again. Raleska walked solemnly down the smooth throat of the tunnel in silence. The plink plink of water in some distant subterranean tunnel came to her ears, as well as the low groans of captured wind which roamed the dark halls of the grotto in eternal entrapment. Occasionally she heard the soft sigh of the sea above, or the low growl of earth as it moved in its slumber.

She came upon the cavern where the pool in the center gurgled. Splashing the surface, Raleska looked up to the ceiling where the many serrated teeth of stalactites grimaced, briefly illuminated by rippling phosphorescent blue.

Her mother's grave was not so far from here. The earth still looked disturbed where she and @Ephraim had interred their mother. Seeing the gravesite caused Raleska's fur to stand on end and a chill to ripple down her spine. It was hard to believe this had been nearly a year ago -- the cave had a strange way of preserving things to the point she could have sworn Caiaphas had only been buried yesterday.

Sitting by her mother's grave, Raleska closed her eyes. She tried to think of what Caiaphas would do, what she would feel. She tried to pull in from that emptiness some sense of purpose, some reasoning that could justify why either of her surrogate dams had felt it wise to tell Rosencrantz anything. For all they knew, he'd flounce off to some other pack tomorrow -- how was he worth entrusting the most important secret Raleska had ever bestowed upon them?

She bit her lip. I'd kill them all, came the cackling voice of her mother. Was it the wind, was it her exhausted mind? Raleska's eyes opened in a flurry, greeted with nothing but the grim features of the cave in which she'd been born and the cave in which her mother had died.

Along the wind, a scent that brought a shiver down Raleska's spine. KILL IT KILL IT, shrieked her decaying mother. Not the scent of brine, not the scent of decomposition. The scent faded and Raleska closed her eyes once more. She was imagining it. She was feverish, she was out of sorts -- all sorts of fanciful things came to one who was hysterical. She just needed to sit here for a while, regain her composure and think. Eventually, she would know what to do.

While she sat in silence, Raleska felt something uncanny slip into her conscience. The plip-plip-plop of water still churned its ceaseless wheel, but there was something else. Her ears strained between the sundry noises of the cave; something soft and muffled, a quiet pit-pit-pit of stealthy but heavy feet.

Raleska's hackles fully flared as the realization came to her. It wasn't her mother's ghost she was feeling in this cave -- it wasn't the groan of the sea she'd heard. Behind the plinth in which her mother's body had been interred, Raleska's eyes opened as a shadow fell across the mouth of the chamber's entryway.

She rose with a throaty laugh as the shadow advanced, her lips contorting into a toothsome challenge. "Bring it, you bitch."

among the soft sighs of the cave came the sound of footsteps in the tunnel above. an intruder -- a dog.

shardik's loose gums unfurled in a sharp edged smile, his black china-doll eyes focused on the lean shadow that darkened his doorstep.

he was hidden behind the lip of flowstone and tall columns of stalagmites; he came closer, peering at his houseguest with predatory hunger.

his hulking frame broke from cover when she finally noticed him, issuing a thick challenge accompanied by bared teeth.

shardik needed no second invitation. he lunged in a heavy canter, pursuing with all the dogged devotion of a beast who had not seen a meal in some time.

she was slippery, this little wolf. she kept her distance, coming just close enough to tempt him to lunge before retreating out of range. more than once she baited him into a cumbersome lunge only to seize the opening of his hocks and flanks; her teeth stung his thick hide and always, she retreated before his scything claws could cut her in two.

shardik's malevolent eyes simmered. once again he fell for her baiting taunt, but this time when she sped around to his hocks shardik was ready.

with all of his might, shardik spun on his stout hind limbs and sent his right forepaw forward in terrific force. there was a thick thud, followed by a pained yelp as his hefty claws connected with the she-wolf's head, sending her body spinning into a tall column of stalagmite with a sickening (no -- to sharidk, satisfying) crack.

the dog's body contorted around the conical tooth of stone, slumping to the ground in silence. around her, a dark pool of maroon seeped from an opening in her skull, and her eyes peered back at shardik lifeless and empty.

Last from my girl. Thank you to everyone who ever threaded with Raleska! It would not be a character death without a theme song, so here you go. It was an amazing ride! <3

Of all the revisiting specters in Raleska's life, of course it had to be him.

She recognized him the moment she saw him. The bear that had come to her home when she was scarcely more than several months old. The bear that had chased her proud father and savage mother (two wolves who did not run for anything) across hill and fen.

The bear that had returned time and time again, to cast his black mark on her already ruinous life. Had it all started with him, then? 

Her lips skimmed back, revealing an arsenal of fangs she relished using on the hide of that insufferably ugly bear. Shardik loomed ever close, hideous muzzle low and china-doll eyes focused. Raleska was not so stupid to believe she could singlehandedly win this -- her survival was contingent on baiting Shardik away from the entrance, where she could make a quick exit and flee for home to tell Rosalyn and Erzulie of their unwelcome guest.

Every bid the young Eyjolfur made was skillfully countered; Raleska had very little experience fighting a bear, and Shardik had all the experience in the world killing. He artfully lunged and parried with every one of Raleska's feints and runs, exerting just enough energy to thwart her escape, but never enough that he was baited from the entrance where Raleska could make her escape.

She grew exhausted; she was going to die, here in the very cave she had been brought to life. Raleska felt her reserves slipping, her muscles tremoring in resigned fear and burning fury alike. It wasn't fair -- it wasn't fair at all that she could have lived an entirely different life free of so much suffering and calamity, if this fucking bear had never existed.  Kierkegaard could still be alive. Rhakios and Ephraim never separated. Even her adoptive mothers, all of them, could have lived lives far better served than under the malicious will of the bear.

A dogged grimace stole across Raleska's face, mirroring the laughing bared-teeth sneer of the dead. That's what she was, wasn't she? Her body might still move and breathe, but her sentence had been cast the moment she had allowed herself to become entrapped in this cave.

Whatever happened here, Shardik must not escape unharmed. Raleska's fear of death began to ebb away, replaced then by purpose.

For @Rosalyn, the mother she had ever wanted and needed. For @Erzulie, an idol of righteousness and balance who had served in many ways as Raleska's mentor alongside the pirate. For her children Valravn and @Regin - may they live long lives free of any of the insolvent shackles that had followed Raleska around like a noose from the day she was born. For her brother @Ephraim -- somewhere out there lost, divided from both his family and the culture that had raised him.  For @Kaertok -- whose soulbind had been wasted on a wolf as undeserving as she. For @Niamh, who had only ever shown her that there was kindness in the world that she deserved. For her mother and father -- two wolves that now lay dead and unmoving as their daughter's life raged on.


Raleska flung herself at Shardik tooth and claw, taking satisfaction in dealing hurt to the beast who had followed her like some restless wraith their entire life. She tore and snapped, parried and weaved -- until at last Shardik answered her advances with a hateful rebuke all his own. His mighty arm aimed towards her as if a torpedo, blasting her backwards into the spine of a stony column behind her.

There was no flash of white light when Raleska's skull split in half. No tearful recollection of her life's entire contents, rewinding and hazy. When Caiaphas had died, her memories had unraveled bit by bit in a cyclone of both reality and delusion. For Raleska, there was only the tepid soulless cave and the bear -- the fucking bear -- before all went black for eternity. 

Raleska's soul finally met peace, while the world raged on without her.