Noctisardor Bypass [m] luke 10:19

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The participants have indicated the following reason(s) for this warning: SIGHS AT THIS FUCKING MAN. violence and language later in thread

was feeling quirky

rivenwood had a rat problem.
it felt good to wear a crown yet again, even if it was made of twigs in comparison to the one he held in his prime. and with this crown, he had new rights and privileges and tasks to do. the passive ones he readily maintained as it was — hunting, patrolling, watching over the kids. but there were two others on his immediate agenda.
objective one: marry heda.
objective two: get rid of the vermin — or at the very least subdue them.
and so he prowls the planting grounds in search of @Anselm, watching the tall grasses for any signs of movement. a conversation needed to be had.

Anselm had gone to the wood @Heda told him of, and found no trace of Druid.

He returned in a sorrowed state, fur slick with mud and bramble. No Druid may as well be dead Druid, but now they were robbed of their chance to physically mourn her.

Anselm wrestled with this knowledge, and found he could not bring himself to break the news to Heda. It was too tangled and complicated to navigate now; better to rest and tell her tomorrow.

He settled by the banks near Etienne's garden patch. Why he referred to it as that still, he did not know -- he bitterly cursed his inability to let go. He contemplated swimming, but as he sank down to his belly he saw a shape that made him rise immediately.

Amadeo. If Heda was a minefield, this man was a charnel-house. Anselm kept his eyes upon him as he moved, willing the man to have the good sense to walk anywhere else but in his direction.

to the untrained eye, amadeo looked as rivenwood knew him — but deep within the bearing of his step was a furious thirst, a violence that almost created a fissure in his facade. surely, he had been clocked by the man's intuition; like how the herds scatter just before a storm rises. and in some way, amadeo was aware of this, and in some way, that was the reason for the inevitable carnage which towered over them both.
on the surface, it is only the rage of testosterone; amadeo was now the captain of this proverbial ship, both of heda and of rivenwood itself, and no sane man would want his betrothed's rat-faced, useless baby daddy lingering where he was not wanted.
anselm stares, but backs up; moves away.
amadeo's response is a flare of his hackles, his body a bristling eclipse of midnight against the afternoon sun. his message is clear in every way save for verbally — get the fuck out of my home.

When their eyes met, there was a chilling sensation that speared within Anselm’s intestines. He’d been aware — in a way he could not possibly confront — with the gradual shifting of hierarchy in Rivenwood. 

And he felt, in a certain way, that his contributions and continued presence had been ignored. He intuited that maybe this was what Heda needed to move on. Yet any relief he felt to know her wounded heart was healing was robbed of him the moment he set his eyes upon the usurper. 

Anselm stood his ground. Amadeo’s rippling display of testosterone-fueled dominance would cow most — but Anselm was proud, stubborn, and stupid.  

He answered the man’s impressive body language with an issue all his own. How’s it feel to stick your dick in my seconds? It was a cruel jab at Heda, and he felt sorry for it — but he would not feel sorry for taunting the man that had given him nothing but trouble since the moment he arrived in Rivenwood.

Mature Content Warning

This thread has been marked as mature. By reading and/or participating in this thread, you acknowledge that you are of age or have permission from your parents to do so.

The participants have indicated the following reason(s) for this warning: it's amadeo y'all already know

amadeo had been prepared for almost anything except for what came out of anselm's mouth.
his conformation hardly shifts, but his expression certainly does; determined resolve morphs into shock and then to hideous rage. but he does not lunge, does not even snap his jaws.
yet.
talk about her like that again, faggot, his tone edges on taunting, but slips ice cold and monotonous from between his clenched jaws. go ahead. why don't you shout it out, so she can hear what you think about her? so your children can hear what their father thinks of their mother?
closer now, his footfalls thunderous. every step is calculated, and yet burning with palpable, animalistic ire.
don't make this harder than it needs to be.

Seeing as this is marked AW... >:) Cameo unless he is stopped.

Gideon pranced through the tall grass toward the abandoned garden where Anselm whiled away so many of his hours. In his muzzle, he carried several wildflowers. Most of them were weeds that served little purpose but to look nice and attract pollinators, which did nothing to stop the boy from believing each and every one was valuable medicine. He meant to pluck a couple real herbs from the garden before making his way to the rendezvous to present his findings to mama, who would surely praise him no matter how deficient his bouquet truly was.

That never happened, for he spotted two figures long before reaching the garden.

From that distance, he could not possibly hear the words exchanged, but his ears flew attentively forward anyway. He recognized his sire immediately, and took a beat longer to remember the other man. He had come by the rendezvous recently and spoken with Ezra. Gideon himself had been away.

Normally, he would not have hesitated to approach his packmates, but an invisible force held him back. It was the same dark, crackling energy that heralded a thunderstorm, the same heavy and oppressive atmosphere as an incoming gale. He watched the man take a step toward Anselm, and another, and another, and the energy only grew worse with each prowling thud of paws on earth. It was obvious that something bad was happening, and that something bad was aimed straight at his father.

And no one had ever told Gideon that snitches get stitches.

Dropping his flowers, the two-tailed boy turned and began to run to the rendezvous, to where he thought he would find his mother. Only fear that that energy would turn upon him kept him from shrieking for her immediate attention as he went.

Anselm may have signed his death warrant with those words. If he was cut down in that moment, his last thought would be how smugly satisfying it was reading Amadeo's face transform from shock to pure fury.

#worth it

The great brute of a man took one step forward, then another. If Anselm had ever seen lions on the great savannah, he'd know the word for it: leonine. As it was, he saw only his gradual death writ before him -- a black waterfall so great that even a stone would not withstand its beating.

Go on, then, he thought -- waiting for the confrontation to come to blows. Instead, the man employed verbal assault. Only, did he know Anselm was so bitter that words hardly hurt him anymore? His heart and his head were boxes of nothing -- all the contents unpacked long ago by every heartbreak and failure.

Faggot? Oh, that's nice. Anselm laughed in the way a man struck in the jaw by a punch would laugh, feeling the sharp slap of adrenaline pound against his skull. Imagine that - I'm a faggot, and I still pull more vomen than you. Anselm sneered, unaware that Gideon was in the periphery. Unaware that the boy felt the thunderous tension between them, and now ran for safety. It would kill him to learn he'd inspired such fear in his son -- but for now his focus was on the leering face of his only competitor, who jeered and jabbed with a boxer's expert throw.

Harder? Like how hard I vas, each time I fucked Heda? Anselm felt his fur ripple with the electric exchange of pressure rippling between the two of them. They were rutting stags, squaring off and heedless to their own personal injury.

So, he borrowed something from Etienne -- one of the many things the seaborn had given him. He lifted his chin, feeling the pulse of blood just under his throat.

Go on, then. Strike the father of Rivenvood's children. Do it, so they see vhat kind of man you are. So Heda sees vhat kind of man you are.

it was pure spite which kept amadeo from doing exactly what the fuckwit goaded him to do; an unstoppable force meeting an immovable object.
what kind of man i am? i'm a better man than you, an eerie calm seems to settle over him, all the rage dissolving into a pleasant nothingness. i pity whoever your parents are. they must hate themselves for the way their little boy turned out.
and if they didn't, they certainly should.
amadeo advances until his breath is hot and rancid against anselm's nose. his instinct screams to maim, to sever, to twist — i'll bathe my wife in your blood while i fuck the next generation of cardinals into her —
restraint. grace. power.
you listen to me, bambino. here is what's going to happen. you are going to run, like the coward you are, and you are never to return. do i make myself crystal fucking clear?
his eyes say for him what he refuses to admit with his mouth; or else i will destroy everyone and everything you have ever cared about.

The man's chilling delivery should scare Anselm, but instead, it's enlivening his every resolve. Here was the conflict he'd needed -- craved, even. The last vestige of his manhood depended on this moment, and once again Anselm found himself drawing from Etienne: his steel spine.

Was he a better man than Anselm? The bar was low -- even this Anselm knew. He fought back another embittered laugh.

But it was the cutting comment about his parents that got under his skin. He fought back the impulse to strike his face, instead resigning himself to noting the strange fractures absent of color in Amadeo's eyes.

Godless eyes, even.

He could not believe his ears. He had helped found Rivenwood, and now he was being told to leave it by a man that had been involved hardly the length of the summer season? His lips curled back in a grimace of teeth.

I am not clear, vhat exactly happens to me if I don't? He goaded, ears pressed forward in assertive confidence that was only skin dip. Vhat vould happen if Heda was to hear you have taken it upon yourself to deprive her children of their father?

what can you provide for them that i cannot? a rhetorical question, but a matter-of-fact one. you are no father. you are not even a man. they will not miss you.
and even if they did at first, well, it surely wouldn't last long. as far as amadeo was concerned, the only way in which anselm was a "parent" to them was the fact that the sperm had come from his balls.
his lip curls ever so slightly, a bitter silence settling over him before, without warning, the crown of his head jams into the boy's ribcage. a hefty paw raises, intending to slam down upon him like a weight — not a killing blow nor a maiming, but a simple show of dominance.
he, the godhead of rivenwood.
The Father.
are you going to make me say it again? measured as ever, as if this were business as usual; calm, collected, secure.

Vell, for one, longevity. Anselm clapped back instantly, his spine arched in outrage. Did this man think he would live another few years? He'd be dead before his children's second birthday!

Any further riposte he planned was halted by Amadeo's forceful show of dominance.

Within Anselm, every nerve fired to life. What had been an almost enjoyable battle of wit now became a matter of pride and victory. Every fiber of his being was consumed by wrath that he had been struck, of all things, by the cuck obsessed with his past paramore. His ribcage stung, but it was the paw forcing his shoulders down that earned all of Anselm's ire.

Before, there was the possibility that this would be a postural battle and nothing more. But now, Amadeo had brought physical violence into the equation, and Anselm answered in the only savage way he knew how. 

He would not be humbled by a man who strode into his camp and sought to upend everything he'd ever built.

With a snarl, Anselm's teeth aimed for that outreached arm. In normal dominance displays, there was some consideration given for the conspecific: don't wound, don't maim, only enough physical force to get the point across. Anselm displayed none of these reservations. The moment he was struck, all consideration for his cohort left the vicinity.

Now his only purpose was to make sure Amadeo never used that fucking leg again.

in amadeo's mind — and by the consideration of wolfy-instinct-law — anselm had struck first. the father's act had not been one of violence, but of upholding a hierarchy that was now falling into place.
anselm, however? he wanted blood.
and now amadeo faced quite the moral predicament — do what heda would want and relent, or do what god would want and rip him to ribbons?
the german is young and swift. jaws snap around his wrist, and he hears the crack of his bone before he feels it. the pain comes in a sudden avalanche, the scream that he rent sending a nearby swarm of ravens to disappear into the clouds.
a hot scarlet blindness sweeps him as he lurches toward the open neck; he does not even realize it when he
snaps
and he is rocketing toward the nearest tree, a looming sequoia, slamming anselm's upper body against the trunk with the heft of his body
the impact startles him into releasing almost instantly, scarlet seeping into the gray of his muzzle; he collapses to the ground as the adrenaline fizzles out. he lays there, dirt caking in his fur, heart pounding so hard his vision starts to blacken. from what he can hardly register, he sees a crumpled mass of warm gray.
merda! anselm!

Anselm knew it was wrong the moment he felt his teeth sink into silken skin. It was wrong in thousands of ways; race traitor, family betrayer, backbiter. The wolven creed in him withered, and it was only the face of Heda he held in his vision now, her eyes round with shock and bitter disappointment. 

His satisfaction to hear a crunch turned to ash as he realized his actions, and felt teeth secure the back of his nape. Though he fought with everything he had, this monster possessed an old man’s strength. 

Anselm kicked, he clawed, and he fought — meanwhile the rounded edge of a tree loomed close. He was being dragged against his every will, teeth snapping at everything and anything they could, but it was for nothing —

The ragged bark of the tree rushed into his peripherals. Though he flinched instinctively, it did nothing to shield the sickening crack of his skull against grainy wood. 

Anselm felt the pain for only a split second; long enough to sense the trickle of blood through the fresh cleave in his skull — before he sank lifeless into the earth. 

Amadeo’s gristly face bent over him was the last thing Anselm saw before the rotted fingers of blackness overtook him.

oh, fuck.
reality dripped back in slowly as amadeo began to gather pieces of what happened. his skull felt as if it had shattered into shards, the slowly fading sunlight bleeding into the corners of his vision as he hoists himself up onto his feet. he realizes now that his forelimb still radiates with agony.
anselm. he had —
oh, no. this fucker was not allowed to die like this. as bad as he wished to leave him there, he refused to let himself, instead beginning to crouch down and search for vitals. no, no, he did not need him alive, but his children did.
heda did.
padre nostro che sei nei cieli, sia santificato il tuo nome, he scoops him up as best as he can, using the trunk as leverage to hoist him onto his back. venga il tuo regno, sia fatta la tua volontà, come in cielo così in terra.
his trek is more of a hobble as he traces the path that led out of the bypass, determination and endorphins powering him onward; westward, purposefully.
dacci oggi il nostro pane quotidiano, e rimetti a noi i nostri debiti, come noi li rimettiamo ai nostri debitori; e non ci indurre in tentazione, ma liberaci dal male.
amen.

cameo

yonder was, honestly, thankful for the scene.

the scream was what got their full attention, local ravens taking to the skies to find different perches nearby - they knew these hunters, their little ground-bound dramas, and the opportunists expected a delicacy. belief was that a bit of rotten wolf's gut did wonders for digestion - yonder thought them stupid.

for his part, the diminutive was just glad to be left alone. he remained in the canopy, watching the fight. animals - they were like a tangle of limbs, before they went into the treetrunk, shock of the impact going up to where he perched.

one went limp - flip a bone whether it was knockout or fatal brain damage - while the other continued to fuss about the body.

yonder watched the prodding jabs of a snout. heard the rising mumble in a language he couldn't guess at - spanish, maybe? saw one wolf hoist other onto its back, and head for the exit out the bypass. the ravens followed, hungry.

yonder stayed. he'd just thought of something.