Sleeping Dragon we always tear our Gods to bits and eat the bits we like

It is revolution that walks on four paws. Traces of destruction is left in her wake.

She does not return to the empty shell of pack lands to take over and conquer, as she once had and instead thinks about the last time she stood upon Sleeping Dragon, the ground shaking beneath her and a call screaming into the night to run north. They’d lost a lot, that night. Their home, their wolves, and a lot to recover from. As she had fled Sleeping Dragon with blood on her paws, she returns to the same way.

A new mark adorns her shoulder, fresh and scabbed, marked in front of the rest of the wolves of Trigeda next to those she’s earned along the way. She’d touched their land as she had this one, and the cliffs, belonging to her. Wolves bowed in her presence and she remembers her teachings from long ago, everything she’d seem to have forgotten as she’d gone wayward with her decisions. The former commanders had come back, speaking to her in dreams nearly every night with the aid of counselors and healers of a life she’d once left behind.

They’d wanted her to stay after the win but she knows on some level she cannot. Drageda is not the same without her and she is not the same without it. Trigeda has been capable before and will continue to do so and if not, they know where to find her. Eager she is to return home, she does not speed and instead wanders the incline and depths of the Dragon, once quiet now feels weak beneath her paws. The ground seems to vibrate with life despite the cold around them and she turns, looking along her path for those that follow, before setting her sights on her destination.

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It was probably a prosperous mountain once, but it offered little more than death now. Wind and weather had long blown away the majority of the evidence and some regrowth had happened, but here and there Ephraim could locate piles of ash pressed into crevices or piled against walls where the wind never made a mark. He passed along a ridge overlooking a river to the south, tall ears twitching nervously. The place still smelled of fire and it made his skin crawl.

Best to leave a desolate place like this sooner than later. The coywolf peered back over his shoulder for his comrades and flicked his tail when he didn't see them. Off exploring elsewhere, he guessed. Heda's trail went on ahead and the wiry boy picked up his pace, slinking along the mountainside until he caught sight of her dark form. She seemed focused on the distance.

He padded slowly up behind her and reclined gingerly onto his haunches. "What happened here, Heda?" Ephraim couldn't help but ask. He'd heard some of it in passing, but not all of it.

Bobby brought up the rear of the group as they traveled, mostly quiet along the way. He was glad that they were returning, not minding the relaxed pace they were taking. As they paused, he glanced to Thuringwethil, his gaze resting on the new scar on her shoulder. Part of him wished he had one. He almost felt like a failure, not having done all that his mother had in the war. Yes, he had fought, and yes he had given wounds as well as he got them. But, he did not get to take the life of an enemy. 

His gaze turned to Ephraim as he voiced his question, and Bobby finally looked at the lands around them. They looked scorched almost, and he could feel the subtle vibrations as they traveled through his paw pads. It unnerved him a little, and made him want to push the group to move past this point. But, instead, he remained quiet in the background.

The war had given him some dope scars and some stories to tell. More importantly, though, it had given him the chance to meet Thuringwethil. It was fitting, really. He was a badass, she was a badass. . .how could they not be allies? They had gotten on so well that he was even coming back with her to her old home.

New adventures for Verx. He dug it.

The brute gave Bobby a playful nudge and a sort of 'sup nod to Ephraim before drawing alongside Heda, bicolored eyes raking over the land. A volcano seemed perfect for their family, massive and volatile. He echoed the boy's question silently with his eyes, glancing over at Thuringwethil and waiting for her to speak.

Many meetings were held once upon the ridge. What is different upon Sleeping Dragon isn’t enough to skew her path, making the same familiar ascending steps where Gyda, Dio, and Wildfire once stood with her. From the pests that settled once behind them, to those that fled before they’d even arrived with their army, to the announcement of her mateship. Drageda learned and developed so much on the soil and stone beneath her feet that without, she couldn’t imagine where they’d be.

One ear twitches upon her head, turning slight to see Ephraim a second before he poses the question. Behind him stand Vercingetorix and Robin as they catch up quick enough to hear the answer. Sleeping Dragon is in their history but she did not make an announcement and she slows to a stop, turning to face the trio.

“Sleeping Dragon,” she tells them, licking her lips. “This is where I came when Seageda disbanded.” She gives them a gesture with her nose to continue and she is silent until the reach her destination. Two pine trees once stood on either side of the ridge, strong pillars to harness the council. The one on the right is no longer there, a part of the earth broken and torn away. No longer does it hold the power she’d once felt here. She has her place in Drageda, in Trigeda (among the others), and she is able to bury the dragon once and for all.

“This is where we became Drageda.”

Thuringethil turns back to the trio with a raise of her nose and curve of her lips, howling a final farewell to a place she once called home.

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Sleeping Dragon. It wasn't hard to imagine how the desolate mountain got its name. Try as he might, Ephraim couldn't conjure an image in his mind of what it might have looked like before. Surely it was wild and beautiful in the same way the rest of the taiga was at one time, but now it was little more than an ashen wasteland. Even the trees that Heda led them to were a phantom of what was. His eyes lingered on the charred roots of the one trapped in an upheaval of earth as the commander spoke.

Ephraim stilled his tongue from asking the most obvious of questions—why did you leave—and instead he turned a curious look upon his other companions. Had Vercingetorix known this place when Drageda lived here? Had Bobby? Were the wolves the same here as they were on the cliffs, or different entirely?

His attention snapped back to Thuringwethil when she howled, a low and sonorous noise he could never hope to emulate. He couldn't relate to the emotion conveyed in her tone, having never had a place to permanently say farewell to. His memory of his birthplace was hazy at best, if not completely faded. Nevertheless the boy tilted back his head and loosed his own high-pitched cry to match.

His eyes scanned back over the area with a new gaze now that he knew this is where Drageda had begun. It looked desolate now, but it was obviously still important to Thur. He tipped his head back and joined in with the others. He still did not voice any questions, keeping any curiosity to himself for now.

It was special, then. A place from the past. His normal easy smile faded into something more solemn, and he, too, lifted his head to sing, his rich low tenor harmonizing with the others. Once the call had rang out, he looked around, thinking that it was a pity that this was no longer their home.

He was excited, though, to see what was next. In fact--

So, what's next? Verx asked no one in particular, licking his chops as if just finishing a delicious meal. He really had no use for sentiment; he always wanted to move on as soon as possible. It was stupid to linger on things for more time than necessary.

My last post. :3 Feel free to reply again, I'll archive sometime later!

The four of them come together in one song though they’d never stepped foot upon Sleeping Dragon until then. Thuringwethil had always wanted to come back since they’d fled but one thing after another kept her from it but she doesn’t feel the way she thought she would. It hardly means anything to her other than a moment of history. She conquered the mountain for a brief time in history and now it lives, alone and untamed. It doesn’t even seem upset that she’s stepped foot back in the territory.

What’s next? Vercingetorix says but she only hears it in her head, ears cupping forward and moving away from the ground.

“We keep going,” she says. There is nothing left for her here so she moves tired paws until the reach an apex and make their way down. They stop by the rendezvous site they’d shared for a long time and she only catches a glimpse of her sleeping quarters, where she and Wildfire spent a lot of their time. Thuringwethil heaves a deep breath and falls silent, speaking no more of the home she used to inhabit.

The song echoed across the volcano and then fell silent. Thuringwethil signalled that they were to move on, prompting Ephraim to fall back in line with his fellows. They traipsed across the mountain, following the slope back toward the taiga until they stopped in a place that even now bore signs of frequent occupation. There were no fresh scents, but Ephraim's keen eye picked up the shallow pits worn in the ground where bodies had frequently laid, and the prominent den was a dead giveaway.

He felt suddenly like an imposter here. Licking dry lips, the boy inched toward the edge of the pack's old rendezvous, and was none too glad to leave it behind when Thuringwethil led them away from Sleeping Dragon. Like Vercingetorix, a part of him would have liked for this to be their home instead of the cliffs by the sea, where it was often windy. Another part of him felt the weight of the past here and wanted nothing to do with it. It was heavy and tense and made his hackles prickle, and the air was thinner that what he was used to, and smelled faintly of death even now. So as they departed, he let fly a silent sigh of relief and looked ahead, eager to return to the sea and the brisk air there, the salt that sang in his blood, and his fellow Kru in Drageda.