Dragoncrest Cliffs the world's grave. not ours.

warning: mention of gore. AW.

shardik dragged the lean limbed corpse from the cave, staining the white snow with streaks of red matter.

he knew the dog had come from here -- where there was one, there was always bound to be more. like rats they came from the woods, infiltrating, multiplying -- shardik's gums lifted in a grimace of contempt. he would exterminate every one of them that dared settle so close to his favored den.

he had outsmarted this little thing -- how hard would it be to outsmart the rest of them? they were stupid and blinded by the bounds of their pack. they would come the moment they heard his throaty bellow descend their cliffs -- they would see their packmate, and surely, they would throw themselves to his jaws just as this stupid little dog had done.

shardik threw raleska's body -- (if it could still be called such - it was mangled beyond repair, her skull bare and open, her spine broken, her limbs contorted in grotesque displays of lifelessness) to the hard edge of stone. his thick skull tilted to the sky as a brutal bellow rended the air, throaty and murderous and summoning all to come and witness the might of shardik.

Chacal would be the first in the area, who fervently drew closer, when she'd caught the beast's scent approaching. The one memory she had of the day they'd lost Valravn, all she'd heard was its mighty bellow, which she could only hope had been terrifying enough to send Valravn running for cover. The rest of them had been herded away from the area like a small batch of chicks, kept safe as they were kept together and led away from the bear's locale. But it would seem once again that a bear had come to their midst- and while she too inept a tracker yet to recognize that this was the same bear, some little part at the back of her mind tickled that fancy. Perhaps this bear was a demon, come back to haunt them and urged forward by pure rage. 

The little shadow remained some distance away but even from where she stood she could see the soft, dark pelt belonging to a mutilated body holding still at the foot of stone in only the way a corpse could settle, twisted and without movement. She uttered a soft, high pitched whine, unsure just then if that was Raleska or Valravn though in that moment she mourned them both. The bear bellowed, and the little shadow slid to the ground in a subtle faint, though she forced herself to skitter further away from him, knowing that bears could be very swift, when angered. 

She issued a tearful cry to inform the pack the bear had returned with a corpse, and that he was still there, but she did not engage him. Warily she watched, hoping he might simply present the trophy and then leave their shores, though she couldn't help but wonder why he'd chosen to make such a spectacle.

She hadn't even noticed Raleska's absence, at least not yet.  Rosalyn was close when she heard Chacal's cry, though, and it was wrong.  She wasted no time.

She wasn't prepared for what she arrived to find.  Nothing would have ever prepared her.

At first there was only rage.  The creature was the same one, she knew it immediately, and that it had dared follow her there made her sick with fear and fury.  But then she saw the corpse it carried, and froze.... 

Chacal disappeared.  The cliffs, gone.  Rosalyn's expression twisted and she screamed.  The sound was a broken mixture of sorrow and palpable, white hot fury.  Her caution shattered alongside her heart at the sight of her daughter's corpse... because Raleska would never be any less.

And this monster had taken her.

Heedless of anything else, Rosalyn threw herself at the bear.  She would kill it, and if it killed her here as well, so be it.

The first thing that came to his senses was the bellow that called out through the cliffs. The light trickle of blood slowly followed into his nostrils causing for him to immediately follow the scent and arrive to the location where the sound had called out from. Chacal had ran past him, what would be alarming was more so soothing knowing that she would be away from whatever this was and not in the fray.

The mangled corpse came into his sight second to the bear that challenged the pack. From the stench, it was the hot-headed Raleska. Though his heart was heavy for a Sapphique member, he still couldn't help but think how it was only a matter of time for someone so reckless to meet their end. That he would keep to himself, she was gone, and there was no need to spit on her name.

Rosalyn already lunched herself to the creature, triggering for the guardian to rush in immediately as well to assist. He would have preferred for more to appear and assist in taking down this obvious danger. With hungry fangs, he aimed to grab the ursine by the throat, ducking down and rushing in underneath with snapping teeth. Unafraid of the claws and hoping he could at least be a good distraction while Rosalyn or anyone else on their way could do their own damage.

had she known her foul contribution to the reasons her daughter's helltorn body flopped limply against the shoreline that day, erzulie would have drowned herself.
she stood with her own scream rising high and keen in her throat, claws gripping the frozen sands —
an echo of rosalyn's, and then the blur of her sea-honed wife flaring viciously and fearlessly forward —
and her own head filling with a heavy dull buzzing as she forced herself to focus upon chacal, upon grabbing for the girls's nape no matter how old the child had become, seeking to drag her backward as her wife clashed with the ursine — oh, she knew him, she knew this one with sour familiarity;
"kouri, ti fi!" the breathless words garbling into syllables that blended. 
turning back to raleska, expecting chacal to heed and to flee, back to the guarded halls of sapphique.
her daughter, bonesplit and empty of life, in the way only one so twisted could be. but horribly recognizable all the same.
she could not know, but the loa did, and grimly they for the first time stood back from erzulie as she lunged after rosalyn, their favour paling as she filled herself with the shrieking might of her wife's presence and tore blindly for the sake of the girl she had always loved as daughter, mind in the last turning to valravn and to regin —
her thought of them stamped out beneath the saltwater rage blistering her blood.

The red-tailed seafarer was not far from Rosencrantz when the bellow of Ursus and the shrill cry of Chacal pierced the winter air. A flash of white streaked through the pines as Njord spied his two-faced sensei reeling towards the chaos unabated. At first, the buccaneer hesitated  — untrained in immediate action. He thought of the kids. Solaire. Chacal. Should he find them instead of being on the front lines? Njord had barely begun mentoring under Sapphqiue’s pale knight, and he had never seen an Ursus firsthand. Only tales of its might and prowess warned those of Meares Island who might encounter the beast.

Then came the grieving war-cry of Rosalyn. It shook Njord to the bones. Something was terribly wrong. He could feel the familiar trickle of adrenaline through his veins as his paws began to carry him across the territory, hot on Rosencrantz’s trail like a steam engine. Then, the tree-line broke and he saw them.

Time became meaningless as the bear’s massive form lumbered towards the wolves. Rosalyn, Rosencrantz, and Erzulie engaged their foe. Chacal was shepherded away. And there, among the stones, was the broken body of one of  Sapphique’s own: Raleska.

Njord’s blood ran cold, and then suddenly very, very hot. He surged forth, joining the combined assault as the pack’s strength grew with its numbers. His lips curled, fangs gnashing as he sought purchase on the monster’s thick hide.

If one were to ask him, years from now, if he could recall this horror, Kaertok would say he could not. There were only flashes.

A bear.

Chacal.

Rosalyn.

Rosencrantz.

Erzulie.

Njord.

Raleska, dead.

No thoughts were in his mind then. Only hellbent rage like the others that this large creature should die. Die for stealing the thing away from them that he knew Rosalyn and Erzulie loved. Die for stealing the thing away from him that he had come all this way for. Die for killing her.

It was now five against one, and Kaertok was confident that the odds were not in the bear's favor. They would rip the bear limb from limb, or they would all lay dead at its feet.

shardik's eyesight was poor in his old age -- he missed the darting form of chacal, alerted to her presence only by the thin cry which wavered from her. by the time he investigated where the sound had come from, chacal had moved.

then came the first of the dogs to witness his magnum opus -- his greatest work in his lifetime of ceaseless violence against their kind. a keening wail set from rosalyn lips as she tore towards him, blinded by fury. no music came any sweeter than that disconsolate sound.

the great bear rocked onto his stout haunches, something akin to a wicked laugh spilling from his deep chest.

then came a second, white with a face disfigured. this one shardik focused the full bore of his attention, attempting to slap the cur down before he ever made it within the vicinity of his throat. rosalyn was forgotten then -- for rosencrantz had made an easy target of himself.

before he knew it, he was besieged by teeth from every direction. rosalyn, erzulie's -- the bear whirled around in a frenzied dance, aiming claws wherever he could despite the repeated sting of teeth.

then came a beast of grey with fire upon his tail,

then came a pale ghost guided by rage,

every one of them would find their mark on shardik's thick hide -- but shardik gave no quarter. blood began to spill profusely, matting his dark hide and staining the snow beneath his massive paws a strange and diluted red. somewhere, from rosalyn's first well-aimed bite, blood flowed in great gouts of dark red - donating a slick sheen to shardik's dancing paws.

but he was shardik -- he would never die --

for every tooth that strayed too close, shardik would counter with a furious swipe of his claws -- raking air or flesh with the same cold indifference. a splatter of blood came from every swing, a bellow from every bite -- but shardik fought well and shardik fought hard, despite the mounting disadvantage which threatened to soon overcome him.

keeping any hits/attacks he makes on you guys vague, everyone is free to assume their own injury (or none at all!). figure i'll do one more post then y'all can rip him to shreds. <3

Chacal out

She cowered in the shadows, hyperventilating as she looked from the towering bear to the dark form on the ground, so broken and bloodied that at first, she'd not known whether it was Valravn or Raleska. She still wasn't certain, seized by shock as she was, when she saw the form of her mother hurtling past her, followed within an instant by the pale form of Rosencrantz. They snapped and bit at the bear which had reared, to free up its front paws to use to claw them away. 

She immediately dropped limp from surprise and fear when she felt teeth at her own nape and for a wavering second she thought perhaps there'd been another bear- and that it certainly had her in its grasp though...It was far too gentle. And the figure bore her Maman's form. She stared up at her mother's face, terrified, as she was urged to run and so she did- scampering away and flattening her ears to the pulse of growls and roars, not knowing if that might be the last time she ever saw either of her mothers again.

She was shoved violently aside almost immediately.  She was blinded by both rage and grief and did not fight with caution.  Her only design was to kill.  She'd never been this angry... last time they met, desperation had guided her.  There was none now.

So she hurled herself again... and again... and again.  Her blood spattered the sand, dripping from gashes on her forehead... her sides... her withers.

But her jaws finally caught their mark.  She knew others had joined, but she ignored them completely.  It was only she and Shardik, her jaws closing on his throat.... tearing.  He ripped her from him and she took a piece with her as she fell, slammed with rattling force into the sand.

Slapped away quickly, claws cutting deep into his nape, shoulder, and neck; but his attempt was not lost. It was the perfect distraction as intended, allowing the others the opportunity to rush in while the ursine was focused on the immediate threat. While Sappquique backup rolled in one by one, launching themselves to the killer bear - Rosencrantz quickly stood up once more. Blood pooling from his wounds but not keeping him down, not yet. 

This time the others would be his distraction while he aimed to find his target under the creature. To the tender fat of his underside and bite, rip, chew at anything he could reach and dig his way through the bear's gut, legs, and inner thighs. Anything he could get his teeth on so long as he was able to remain underneath the thing. Here, he would do the most damage possible where the flesh was softest and left mostly unguarded.

single post/cameo <3

the bellow that tore across the cliff was unmistakable -- the very same voice of the demon that had pursued val from iktome to the south.

his insides shriveled in fear.

last time, val had run. he had left raleska and regin and chacal behind, and had fled into the plains. it made him a survivor, but it also soured him -- and he knew he could not always run. not when it meant leaving something important behind.

the clamor of snarls and voices led him to the grisly scene; the blonde-furred monolith dancing around lunging wolves. to the side, a sight val wished he had never seen: raleska, slumped into the dirt in a contortionist's impossible pose. lifeless and beyond repair.

val gulped, closing his eyes as fear wracked his frame. @Chacal, where was chacal? he turned to see erzulie streak towards her, instructing she run. wordlessly, valravn pursued after his sister, casting glances over his shoulder as his mothers, his family threw their lives at the jaws of the bear.

Skipped Erzulie with permission

The Sapphire dove in with gnashing teeth and winkled lips, but when the great beast rocked back onto its hind legs Njord balked at the sheer size of the beast. It’s massive 5-fingered paws slapped at the relentless Sapphiquians... but they were berserkers – incensed by Raleska’s death.

As he zigged and zagged around the bear Njord could see the blood start to flow. The Ursus’ claws sliced through flesh easily like a soft cheese. First Rosalyn began to bleed and then Rosencrantz, who was cut deeply across the nape. Njord paused, shocked that the pale knight had received such a blow. Hesitating was a great mistake.

Shardik’s beady eyes targeted the frozen man and wound up. Njord, who spied the large paw hovering above him, scrambled to escape the bear’s range, but it was a fruitless effort. The Ursus’ swing nailed him across the haunch and sent the man flying, tumbling away in the blood soaked snow.

Dazed, Njord struggled to find his footing. He hurried, but swayed (probably a bit concussed). The wolves, who appeared like colorful smears in Njord’s vision, continued to attack the bear like angry hornets. His pack needed him! Pull it together, he told himself. Wish a shake of his head and a whip of his fiery tail, Njord ran back into the fight. As Rosalyn was momentarily knocked back, Njord took her place. A relentless affront: the tactic of wolves. He bit at Shardik’s open wounds and latched onto the bear’s hide. He would not let go unless Shardik's flesh came with him.

the bear, twisting in rage beneath their jaws,
the terror of the day ironsea had fallen;
shrieks rising unabated in the back of her mind;
rosalyn, slammed downward; njord, batted away, the scent of their blood mingling into a reek that choked erzulie and flared her rage higher and higher, her own jaws ripping into the shoulder, the arm, the scarlet staining her, until a grave misstep, a slip in the cold sand wet with red brought the opportunity for the bear to buffet her too away.
hips snapped against the hard ground; she groaned and felt nausea rise in her gorge, but blood, his blood, bearblood, smeared her mouth and erzulie shoved her aching figure forward once more to tear toward the vital organs of the barbaric creature.

I know this ruins some plans (and might botch some timelines?), but I feel like this is as good of an end as Kaertok will get. RIP, sweet prince.

Thrashing, blood, and mayhem surrounded the white bear as he and the others attacked the true bear. Unfortunately for Kaertok, today was not his day. A set of claws raked through his throat when he launched his umpteenth attack, severing his lifeline. He would die thinking of Raleska, thinking that this was why he had been called back; to help avenge her death.

The large white body lay limp, crumpled at the feet of the bear who had caused so much heartache for the wolves of the Teekon Wilds.

for every dog knocked aside, another came.

gnats! the lot of them! shardik bellowed, rearing upon his hind legs with a throaty roar to the skies.

in shardik's life, he had always dealt pain. he'd been the great inflicter, the judge -- and now, wolves came to his summons and delivered their own judgment: one of blood and death.

live by the sword, die by the sword; shardik would meet his end with no quarter.

he knew not the name of the brown cur that had come for his throat and seized it -- when he smacked her away, a warm looseness spilled from his throat. shardik's snarls lost their power and became liquid gurgles, cut short by the severance of his chords.

he stumbled forward, drunken with both bloodloss and fury. when a pale wolf came too close shardik's talons cut him down as if he were a dandelion's head -- a cackle gurgled from the bear's bloodied gums, which now boasted a frothy rime of pink from the severance within.

he was seized again, this time by a wolf darkened by a red tail. shardik continued his reckless charge, feeling agony for every bite that njord and erzulie delivered.

shardik's lunges became erratic as great gouts of blood spilled from his throat and dribbled from his mouth. he lost his coordination, stumbling -- the wolves beneath and around him blurry as they darted again and again, overcoming him.

no! he was shardik, ruiner of wolves -- he would surely never die to such beasts! --

but he did. at last the great bear fell mid-swing. his body toppled to the blood-soaked ground with a soft thud, while white snow fell gently around him and a dark halo of blood spilled from beneath.

The vision in her singular eye flashed as she impacted and, in an eerie repeat of their last encounter, sound went muffled.  She was prone for a moment, but despite her senses being scattered instinct drove her to rise and stumble unsteadily away.

She did not see the bear fall, nor Kaertok's sacrifice.  But when she looked and at length was able to parse what she saw, both were dead in the snow.

She should check on the others.  She should attend the bodies, draw the pack together, help to heal what she could.  Instead she stood trembling, unable to bring herself to function for any of it right now.

When others arrived she would suggest a burial place, but at the moment, she did not have the wherewithall to take the helm.

An eerie silence fell over them all - perhaps it was only for him as nothing seemed to have any sound at all. Not the licking of the waves along the rocks below, the gulls on the shores cawing... nothing. Looking around, he could see the wives still standing, Njord, none of the bodies along the ground really mattered to him anyway so he paid little mind to them as he tried to stabilize his own footing. Along his neck were gashes, stained a deep red and oozing. 

He felt tired, more so than after any battle such as this. Something was wrong, he could feel it creeping over him. The hands of death running its fingers across his back. The feeling was undenyable, a chilling reality check that came to his mind that his days were now numbered... Fatigued, he offered one last glance to the others around him and lingered a little longer on Erzulie, inviting her to try and save what was left of the guardian even if he knew, deep down, that even she could not fix what was so brutality broken. 

For now, he would spend the remainder of his days appreciating the cliffs and silently saying his own goodbyes without worrying the others by making it obvious. Slowly he left the group to rest, a mild limp in one of his legs with a small drunken sway in his gait. This would be the final time some of them would ever see him with breath still in his lungs.

- Exit

onward and onward and on; she did not feel kaertok fall, continuining to rip and to hold and to savage numbly numbly, eyes splattered with blood, noseblind in it, staggering aside as finally the bear wrenched from her grip.
panting for breath as the sand soaked red from the terrible wounds that the wolves had torn in the monster;
blinking through crimson as she searched for them all; for her wife for njord for kaertok —
kaertok unmoving and smeared in scarlet; erzulie forced aching limbs to churn her to his side, and there she felt for breath and found none. it was just as well; any breaths taken after his throat had been torn would have only been agony. all the same her heart clutched with pain.
her mouth worked — she staggered up and brushed rosalyn sharply, breathing for the both of them. "i need to go wid him," erzulie croaked in the direction of their failing archangel; a helpless look to njord and then the harlot was shambling after rosencrantz, hoping fervently that she might be able to save him, stopping to stare at kaertok and then what of raleska was recognizable; a single sob rending the air as she found herself caught.

Like a cur on a boar, Njord cinched the bear’s thick hide between his teeth as he used all his might to shake and rend the skin away from muscle. Shardik shook and swatted but Njord held fast as blood drained from the bear. Eventually the Ursus’ movements became inebriated until, finally, their adversary fell – the life drained from him.

Njord’s head was just about as red as his tail as hot steam puffed from his gaping jaws, panting from the exertion. His sides heaved as he watched the bear closely, half-expecting it to spring back to life. Adrenaline made the islander jumpy, his blue eyes big as saucer plates. He looked around at the carnage, coming down from a warrior high. Like Rosalyn, he had not seen the mighty Kaertok fallen… but there he was, the great white wolf lying lifeless on the ground, his throat slit by the bear’s talons.

“Kaertok!” Njord exclaimed, voice hoarse, as he rushed to the Tartok’s side… but there was no retrieving his soul. The man wasn’t even warm anymore. Njord felt his chest constrict – so tight, he might have a heart attack.

I need to go wid him, he heard the lilt of Erzulie’s voice from behind. Njord turn to see the stoic Rosencrantz begin to slink away, grievously injured. The Sveijarn’s blue eyes connected with the queen’s two-tone gaze as a silent, wordless conversation passed between them. They were powerless to change fate, but perhaps the healer could put a stopper in death. The gold-spun queen brushed against her mate, who stood petrified except for the quaking underneath her tattered pelt.

It was if she had been turned to stone by a medusa – shocked by the violent horrors of today. As Rosencrantz and Erzulie exited towards the healing den, Njord came up besides his superior. “Let’s go find tha kids,” he asked Rosalyn with a gentle nudge to her shoulder. He felt an urgency to regroup before sorrow and grief incapacitated him, too.

Rosalyn had seen a lot in her time.  She was no stranger to death; she'd killed, near been killed, and seen those she was charged with killed.  But never had she lost someone like this.  Never before had she cared like this.

Njord's gentle urging broke her from it, though she surfaced slowly.  For a moment she was confused... but with a blink she recalled.  The monster was dead.  Others were dead.  Erzulie was here?  No.. Then where?

The starter was clicking, but the ignition wouldn't catch.  She nodded mutely to Njord, allowing him to lead the way.  His instinct to gather she felt as well, if only she recalled sense enough to know whom to gather to her.

Setting sights on her children would bring her more to herself, enough to press forward and have their fallen buried in the cliffs overlooking the sound... and the bear cast into the sea.