Ankyra Sound Uppskera

Hunger so dire, it had consumed him.

The bear had padded to the sea in search of fish. He had fished for hours, feasting on them with delight. They had dulled the sharpness of the hunger’s blade. The demand to eat had been so strong. A mindless, dog-whistle frequency that filled the world eater’s head. It was all he heard. It was all he felt. He was mad with it, overcome by it.

And none of the dogs had allowed him to feast on them. Heimsætur was enraged. He had drawn blood from all of them, but he had not tasted their meats to his satisfaction.

Wind drew the fragrance of dog from the cliffs overhead. The bear chewed and swallowed a whole crab. It’s dark eyes watched the rocks with interest.

With three injured wolves and two of the adults on the outskirts of their society, Sapphique could always use more guardians. Sobo took it upon himself to descend from the cliffs to the adjoining Sound in the morning, searching for signs of the bear and finding none. That should have been the end of it, but something, some otherworldly force and deep curiosity, drew him down into the grotto to explore.

By the time he emerged back into the light, hours had passed. He did not recognize the reek of bear for what it was until he had turned back toward the cliffs and was on his way to the well-hidden path. Only then did a large brown shape on the beach catch his attention; only then did he recognize the musk that was threaded through the pelts of all three victims.

Sobo froze, casting about for an escape route and hoping the bear would not see, smell, or hear him.

The bear traced the stone of the cliffs with dark eyes. When he grew tired of the dark rock, he turned to search the sands for more crabs.

The seas blessed him more than once, then.

Heimsætur growled, hot air erupting in a plume that lifted over his large head. The bear’s bottom lip dropped. It lifted its head up and drew in the scent of the dog. Meat and wet, meat and others. The hunger inside demanded its payment with a bloody palm. Heimsætur did not waste time on this mocha-faced whelp. He sunk his paws into the earth and gave pursuit.

Whatever had drawn him down to the grotto today, it did not have good intentions with him.

He had thought it the will of the loa, but when the beast lifted its great head almost on cue and fixed him with dark, malevolent eyes, Sobo felt their absence in this place. His tongue tried to wet his bone-dry lips and his body cowered down of its own accord. Perhaps the bear would ignore him if he made himself small and insignificant.

No such luck. With an ominous growl, it rose from its place in the sand. Sobo felt his stomach drop out from under him. Before the monster took its first step, he was whirling, scrambling for the only safe direction there was: further down the coast. It occurred to him, a very fleeting thought indeed, that he should call for back-up from his pack, but the thought died immediately. Running was his only recourse. He could not endanger them.

Sobo thought he was flying. It was the fastest he had ever run. But the large, lazy gait of a bear belied its own speed, and anyway, he was not a very swift wolf. He thought he was flying, but that thought also died with a screaming yelp when its claws raked his backside and sent him tumbling to the ground.

The wolf thought itself swift. Long strides carried it down the length of beach. The stench of fear wafted back to the bear to encourage him forward. Heimsætur did not dally with this one. Too many mistakes had left him sleepless and searching for anything to satisfy the demands of the hunger. The other wolves had made a fool of him. The world eater did not intend to be made a fool, again.

Reaching with razor claws, Heimsætur sliced into the back end of the racing dog. It was enough to cease the sprint along the beach. It was enough to spice the air with the metallic, tangy, bloodsmell. Drool formed at the mouth of the bear. Its paws sunk into the ground, closing the space on the dark-faced prey.

Heimsætur did not wait for the beast. He held the dog down in the sand until he knew it would not squirm free of his grasp. His dark eyes searched hungrily at the fearful creature. Leaning toward Sobo, Heimsætur opened his mouth and wrapped his teeth around the wolf’s head.

It gave way with a satisfying crack and crunch beneath his fangs. No chance of fleeing, this time.

Pain shot up his spine. Fear spiked through his veins. Sobo became unable to comprehend his surroundings or the horrifying circumstance he found himself in as panic overrode his senses. He scrabbled uselessly at the sand, attempting to claw away from the specter of death as it hunched over him.

Huge, rotting fangs found the back of his head. Sobo only had enough time for his voice to shriek out of him in a sharp warning cry that might be heard as far as the clifftop before his vision exploded into shards of black and white to mirror the shards of his shattered skull.

It was so sudden, he did not even form a coherent final thought. His body went limp at once, blood leaking from his ears and nose as the world-eater crushed his head whole.

Satisfaction had slithered into the world eater’s belly and sat coiled like a snake.

The flavors from the dripping skull were everything that he had needed. The hunger purred, welcoming the fresh warmth of dog meat. Heimsætur lifted the wolf up by its skull and shook until the head had popped clean from the body. He lowered his round frame into the sand, gripping the skull in his paws. He gnawed at the muzzle, at the ears that were tender and touched with the cold, making them stick as he worked to swallow them.

There was still a body- Heimsætur rumbled in delight.

When the head had been picked of the best pieces, the brain lapped up like a melted popsicle, the bear used a meaty paw to turn his meal over. The haunch was most pleasing, the most meaty, so he began to peel flesh from the wolf’s side. It came away like skin after a sunburn.

Heimsætur wanted more. 

The beast looked to the cliffs and left the remains of the wolf upon the beachside.

Thread open for anyone who wishes to find Sobo's body. <3 Bear is gone.

a scream and a crack; val regretted his habit of coming to the sound, for now there were rattling noises that set his spine on edge.

the smell of blood drew him from the stony walls out towards the beach. the scene he was greeted with ran his blood cold.

an unspeakably large shape hunched over what he knew now to be the former body of sobo. he watched powerless as head was plucked from body like an apple; lips smacking and long teeth gleaming with teeming red.

an ominous pool of redwine darkened the sand beneath the bear’s enormous claws. val remained in horror as the beast began to lumber forward, leaving what remained of sobo there alone on the joyless and impossibly cold sand.

Etienne left the pack lands behind. His search was for his uncle Sobo. He had a healer's question, but what he would find would forever haunt him. He heard the scream and though a sixth sense told him to stay away from it, a sort of sickening need moved him forward.

And there he saw as a bear ate his uncle and left the bones to the birds. A soundless, scream leapt onto his lips, while his fur stood on end. Every fiber of his being begging him to back up and return home. Eyes of golden glass, and a mist upon the horizon. He could have sworn the sky itself went dark that day.

He ghosted forward after the bear was gone, belly crawl. Fearful and sad, and weeping. But he couldn't go near it, for fear the bear would return. All his limbs locked upon the rocky cliffs, and he clung to them with every sing aching need of his paws. Long white scratches in the dirt, as he anchored himself to the land itself. And deep within his mind, he cursed the bear, he cursed the shore.

Gut wrenching, sobs.

And he knew then, without a doubt. It did no one any good to leave the borders, you only came back bloody or dead.

the bear was gone, yet sobo’s corpse remained.

at last a wrenching sob choked its way from val’s seized throat. his body had not been his to command these last minutes, and it rooted in disbelief before a vision of red pulp and cracked bones.

he felt himself buckle, unaware of eti until the noise of scrabbling snow from the cliff caught his attention.

val turned a quivering gaze to his kin, unable to tear himself from the scene. get maman. he grit between teeth that threatened to clack. run.

it was a mother's intuition which washed over erzulie in a shuddering frigid showers. she stood vigil with quennell and swordfish, facing out stiffly toward the territories beyond sapphique. and then she could not wait; she called an older daughter to sit with the boys while her legs moved into a quickening blur, until she was sprinting along the cliff-face and cliff-stone.
etienne pulled to her side, val given a haunted look; she knew and yet she did not want to know — noiseless tears!
sobo! her sobo!
erzulie screamed.
and for the bear she did not look; she crouched over sobo's mangled form, shaking, shrieking till her voice simply gave out.
"go!" she shouted hoarsely at her poor son and poor grandson, eyes blazing from their wet furnaces.
and, leaving a smear of gore behind, erzulie took the long task of dragging sobo back home. her muscles would scream in protest by the time she took her poor boy to the bear-damned graves along the coast of sapphique, eyes darkened, numb, numb, numb —
"@Njord!" she flung into the long places where the father to sobo might have gone to ground; erzulie, hearing her small granddaughter raise the alarm of the bear; yes; yes, time now to march; erzulie felt herself breaking as she sobbed into the fur of her son's still shoulders and then drew herself up, dragged herself away, covered in his blood and burning with the rage of near-insanity.
erzulie would not let his death be in vain.

Njord returned from his hunting with fresh meat for his family in tow. A good meal will do them all well. Especially for Swordfish. Dutifully, the redtail constructed a new burrow to let the frozen snow do its work and preserve the food for when they could all come together.

Though his hale body performed the task like a smith or tradesman, the father’s thoughts swam adrift in a watery frame of mind. Soon, the Sveijarn-Corten family would leave the seaside territory that they had long called their home. He would have suffered any injury or disrespect to keep his family together as Meerkat wished – protected from any threats. Yet his wife, forever wiser, knew it was time to go their own way when the trust between Chacal and her husband was severed completely.

Meerkat was shown no kindness in this decision by their Roja. His wife was so hurt, that she needed to find solace in the willows. The pearl ceremony only seemed to underline their fall from grace within the pack they would soon depart. Njord steeled his heart and turned toward his small family, not knowing if his sons would choose to stay or go. His insides twisted with anxiety over this, feeling the reaper’s breath upon his neck – knowing the bear still lurked somewhere out there. Swordfish’s thousand-yard stare knew it too.

In one moment, all those things became small when the guttural bay of Erzulie’s lament reached Njord’s ears. It was like she, herself, had reached into his heart and unplugged his aorta. Proverbially he was bleeding out, heart sundered… and the man hadn’t even moved a step.

In the next moment, Njord sprinted across Dragoncrest. Past the lowlands, into the Greatpine, up to the cliffs… His body moved reflexively. So much that, in hindsight, he wouldn’t even remember running.

He found Erzulie in Sapphique’s graveyard standing over something. It was a wolf. Was. The head was open and caved in like a broken melon. The meat and skin of it were eaten from the shoulders and haunch down to the… wait. Was that a red tail? Njord stumbled closer. He couldn’t believe it. Wouldn’t believe it. Njord reached out his shaking paws, gathering pieces of the limp body like one did a large quilt until, finally, Sobo’s disfigured face rested in his arms.

Njord coughed a sob. Looked around, dazed. Confused. Was Erzulie still beside him? Val? He moaned like he had been lobotomized. Like he was an animal without words. His son! The life they had created! The relationship he had damaged. Ruined.

Abruptly, Njord stood up. His once-strong legs quaked before he crumpled to the ground. Erzulie ripped herself away – transformed into a passionate berserker. Njord found he could not.

Could not run. Could not stand. Could not breathe.

The tight squeeze of a panic attack took the man into its grasp. The world became small as he fought for tiny gulps of air. He was a fish without water.

The first shriek – as piercing as it was brief – woke Svalinn, drawing him to his feet and setting his teeth on edge as he tried to determine which direction the echo originated in.

When no sounds followed, he eased back into alerted sphinx position, dread settling in his gut like disturbed sediment at the bottom of a pond.

The second shriek – permeated with anguish and abject horror, sounding over and over again – sent him careening through the blackpine, heart in his mouth, until he came upon the gory scene and saw the easily distinguishable Erzulie draped over the shape of another wolf: its body mangled almost beyond all recognition. Svalinn’s jaw dropped, and his blood ran cold at the sight.

A part of him noticed Val was there, as well as another boy, but the gilded wolf was frozen in the middle-distance, feeling less and less of himself as every bit of him started to go numb, inch by inch, second after second, blink upon blink. The smell of blood, and sea, and bear rang hollowly through the cavernous nothingness inside him, and he could think only of Raleska… Raleska…

Raleska, help me!

The others were sent away, and Svalinn went unnoticed behind the treeline, where he remained until Erzulie had gone with the body in heart-rending tow. He dared not come forward to help her, as she took the corpse of her loved one away. He knew if it were him, he would not have let a single creature near, and this moment would have made for a wretched, cursed reunion.

At last, when everyone had gone, Svalinn slunk forward and nosed around for the bear’s trail. With a funereal march, he followed it towards the cliffs.

val had seen many things he wished to forget. yet few paled in comparison to watching his maman drag the headless body of sobo home —

the long streaks of crimson in her wake.

he stepped gingerly around the garland of red, sightless and dumb as he followed after.

svalinn was given but a passing glance — the thousand yard state that announced the coming of war. if val recognized Njord at all, he said nothing — for no word could patch sobo’s skull back upon his bloodied shoulders.

and then, like the bear with svalinn on its tail, val rounded upon sapphique.