Phoenix Maplewood i was the one who stood in rain

teleporting my ass over here weoo @Keen here you go!

Winter was a cold, ravenous beast - it swept frost-laden claws over the earth and froze it stiff, breathed gasps of heartless snow to swathe the world in cadaverous white, and consumed all who were unfortunate to lose themselves in the bitter tornados of frigid air.

In countless ways, Aries was much the same. Beautifully deadly, adept at his purpose and morbidly unpredictable. When the sun fell, and the moon was dashed in the darkest charcoal, the king of dead slithered from the shadows, traipsed the wood's path in utter silence, masterfully hiding the presence of his steps. Tonight, a hunger grew in his belly, the whispers of the demon in his head; less of a soldier and more of a beast.

He wanted to create a bloodbath.

Her meeting with Merrit had broken her, in a way. She'd come away from their conversation with no less grief than before, but the feeling is different now. This time it comes with betrayal, with anger; she isn't used to feeling this way, and to call it disconcerting feels like it would be an understatement. The fact that she hadn't returned to Easthollow alone is still a shock to her, and she can hardly begin to process the feelings behind it. All she knows is that she can't go back, not when her mother has already made it so clear that she is moving on without her.
She'd said little to @Derg about it, too wrapped up in hiding her turmoil to offer many details, though it'd likely been obvious anyway. She hopes he'd gotten the gist of it, at least: she'd found her brother, but she cannot (will not) return to her home. Eventually, she knows, she'll have to speak to someone about it — perhaps not Derg, not if she wants him to see her as strong (which she's likely failing at achieving anyway), but someone. Nevermind that she doesn't actually have any other friends.
Their trips together help, though. Over the last few weeks, her anxiety regarding their traveling has melted away almost entirely, and she finds herself eager now whenever birdboy mentions another trip. She's grown more confident in her own wanderings, too. Though darkness has already fallen over the land, she strays farther than she's dared yet, letting the man slip out of view as she explores the snow-kissed forest. She pauses every few steps to inspect some new discovery, upturning snow occasionally with her muzzle to see what lies beneath. She's lost in her own world, oblivious to the dark wolf just ahead, though she won't be for long; her own path leads straight toward him, oblivious as she is.

As the figure of ashen steel weaved betwixt the looming trees, he became distantly aware of a scent - it grew like roots to spread across his mind, filling his heightened senses with a delightfully fresh bloom of satisfaction; even more, the rapid growth of his burning hunger. She was close. His path adjusted accordingly, shifting so that he was not ahead of her, but beside, following her movements with only a brief distance between them, masked by the elongated shadows cast by the wood.

Ice orbs of glacial beryl scanned the feminine figure with peaked interest, following the lithe dips and curves of her physique and allowing himself to feast upon the chocolate hues encompassing her pelt.

But eventually, as with all things, he grew tired of simply watching. His jaws ached for the sensation of flesh between his teeth, and so the reaper stalked closer like a panther in pursuit of prey, sliding up alongside her with graceful swiftness. "Why do you come here alone?" He murmured, gruff voice slipping from his lips; the elegance of the words' departure from his tongue was a stark contrast from his intentions, the malice waiting behind sharp eyes.

She remains unaware of the presence until the wolf draws up alongside her silently, startling her nearly out of her own skin. She flinches, scrambling back a few steps with a sharp yelp that nearly drowns his words. For a beat she can only stare in wide-eyed terror, but words begin to slip from her quickly. I-I don't — She falters, realizing as she studies his features that something is wrong. Something in his gaze, perhaps; a glittering coldness she's never seen before. Her panic only grows, breath coming shallow and too-fast, and she takes another step back, trying and failing to come up with some excuse to make her exit. It doesn't occur to her that she doesn't need to be polite here — that she could simply turn tail and run; she doesn't yet understand that there is any danger worse than how uncomfortable she feels right now.

"You're quick to startle," he observed with an empty, hollow laugh - suiting, for a man such as himself. Aries was expeditious in absorbing all signs she cast carelessly to the wind; those who had not trained to be heartless and tipped full of stealth often were foolish in their expressive demeanors. So easily they let slip clues, for him to gorge himself on in the build-up to the masacre. The beast loved when the prey were frightened, when their eyes looked like they might pop right out of their pallid skulls and their skin bristled with deserved anticipation. 

"You don't what?" he muttered, a teasing flicker in the frigid pools of his gaze. While ordinarily he was adept at burying any sort of emotion deep within his bones, the creature that emerged from time to time was void of any humanity, filled with aggression and malevolence; it savoured every drop of pain, every twinge of blood. Right now, the beast was in control.

Without a moment's notice, he would step to block her path, only to swerve around at lunge at her from the side, eager for his incisors to pierce her soft skin - to ruin the pretty picture, and keep it for himself.

She winces slightly at his first words, ears flushing with shame and guilt as the man speaks further. The sound of his voice further reminds her that this is just another wolf, not some strange creature of the night — nothing to fear, surely, though this logic does nothing to calm the pounding of her heart. Her shame intensifies with his question, and she opens her mouth to respond — but she doesn't quite get that far.
Suddenly he's moving, stepping toward her and blocking the most obvious path to freedom. She lurches instinctively in the opposite direction, startled and dismayed by the unexpected proximity but failing to see the reality of the situation until it's too late. Another yelp bursts from her as the dark stranger lunges, the sound cutting off abruptly as she tries too late to step back. She only has time to close her eyes before she feels contact, a white-hot surge through the side of her neck as teeth slice through her flesh. Another sound tears itself from her throat, breathless and strangled this time; a ragged half-scream, followed immediately by one louder and more desperate as the feeling fully registers. She's never been attacked, not once in her life, and all she can think to do is throw herself backwards in a clumsy, fumbling attempt at an escape.

Eerie droplets of delight tingled the surface of his tongue as blood began to spill from her neck into his slavering jaws, cocoa fur stained with the rusty tang of crimson - the first mark, but most definitely not the last, as his fangs dragged across her skin. The more he tasted, the more the demon craved. 

A cracked, broken scream fled the parting of the youthful girl's lips; it was useless. He had scouted ahead of time to ensure that no living bodies were in the immediate vicinity of the pair - perhaps help would arrive at a later point of his deadly game, but for now, they were utterly, paralysingly, alone. Keen was at the devil's mercy.

She began to backtrack, to throw herself in any direction away from the Svartell and his mouth, where shadows seemed to seethe in a bucket of animous hunger; her attempts would meet no success, as her movements (as compelling to track as they were) were almost disappointingly predictable. His lean figure slid in place like a blackened ghost, whipping around so that he blocked her next attempted escape, pushing with a brutish force to knock her down, should her brain not click in an outbreak of ideas.

Pin her to the earth, the beast whispered in his silvery ear, cut off her air.

The wet warmth spreading through her fur registers only vaguely as she scrambles to get away. All feeling dulls in comparison to the pulsing agony shooting through her neck now, and any thoughts she might have are drowned out by a deafening chorus of panicked impulses. The breath is knocked from her in the next moment as the man slams against her, and this time no sound escapes her as she hits the ground with aching force, spattering blood across the snow. For a moment, she's too stunned to do anything. There is no time to even breathe as he descends upon her, a dark shadow choking out the scant moonlight, though she has enough time to feel her heart skip and shudder with terror. She sucks in a cold breath too quickly, head spinning as she stammers out a panicked plea: S-stop — please stop — An abrupt, choked sob cuts her words short, tears rushing belatedly to fill her eyes as she renews her efforts to flee his grasp.

Her plea was a blessing to his mind, entertaining the entirely opposite effect than poor Keen begged for; it urged the creature on, where his savage jowls would lean down to rasp a breathless whisper into chocolate-painted ears. "Not yet, little bird." The king of death had yet to conclude his dismal appearance on the film of the willowy sylph's story - he was the unwritten page, ripped out of a leather-bound book. The page cast away to the wind, that managed to return and haunt the reader in a plaguing darkness, unavoidable, unapproachable.

Dark silver pushed down upon the back of her neck in response to her continued struggles, forcing her further into the blood-washed snow; he planted his weight with enough force to decrease her air supply, but not enough to cut her off entirely. The demon wanted her alive as he battered her delicate body, so he could watch the tremendous fear bulge in her electric, vivid gaze. Those sparkling gems drove him further to the edge - Dakarai, he saw in them. The cowardly father, who'd failed to raise his son. Who'd disowned his children, in favour of covering his foolish mistakes.

A surge of venom to curse his teeth, and he dove forward, aiming to savage her pelt and cover her in brutal scars, scars that would dig deep into her body and curse her for every breath she took. The hardened bone of his incisors would drive endlessly into her skin, daggers to maul her physique and destroy as much of her beauty as possible.

Esurient, and unafraid to act upon his desires.

The words hardly register over the rapid boom of her heart in her ears and the sound of her own too-fast breathing, but fresh terror bolts through her when they do. No — And then he is crushing her, weight dropping upon the back of her neck and crushing her delicate throat with devastating force. She chokes as her airway is compressed, frozen in the half-beat before the stranger lunges again for her flesh. This time the fire lights between her shoulder blades, bursting quickly into a raging inferno across her back as teeth rend her flesh relentlessly. Already she feels breathless, desperate as she struggles for more oxygen, for purchase against the snow, for anything. She arches against her assailant with a broken half-shriek that dies quickly in the absence of air, writhing against him in a futile attempt to throw him off of her. The movement scatters more blood across the snow in droplets, smears it against the stranger's ashen coat, and the scent chokes the air around them.

i'm sorry he's such a butthead, thank you for the thread! aries can either run away here, or derg can try engage him in something else before he disappears, i don't mind!

Aries had been shouldered deep into the writhing glee of his calignous desires, slicing serrated incisors endlessly into the innocent girl's skin - the fathomless hunger enveloped him every few moons, the awakening of a beast bursting so full of ominous, hellish impulses, that perhaps the devil himself would cast him into the void without a second thought. His duality might one day be his very downfall, but he was incapable of regrets, even when faced with the purity of his blood-mother's face, the tenderness of her loving voice. 

The ghost king noted Keen's feeble attempt to gasp for the frigid air, and pushed his weight further onto her throat; to suffocate under his nefarious grip-

Just as suddenly as it had arisen from ash, the lust for destruction began to settle in his belly. In response to the dimming of sensations, the Svartell began to savage her scruff, to release with a heinous rush the last of his demonic desires, until she was left a bloody mess upon the crimson-splattered snow. "There's a good girl... you lasted surprisingly long." Steadying his frosted breath, Aries took a step back to admire his work, and pondered whether or not to end her life; the verdict that he decided upon, after a few shuddering heartbeats, was to abandon her weakened, fragile body, in favour of letting the runaway sit in her own gore. To suffer in torturous silence, until her last gasp surfaced into the wind - perhaps she would die here.

Perhaps that was for the better.

"If you make it out alive, you ought to remember me. I will, for one, remember you." With nothing more in store for Keen, the reaper flashed a toothy grin and turned away, seeking to slither off into the darkness - how wonderful it would be if she survived the attack, only to experience the perilous horror of nightmares, that would plague her in every hour, both awake and in sleep.

So that he might haunt her, like the ghostly demon he was.

---

He was late. Terribly late.
He'd let Keen get lost and wasn't too bothered, he himself had only met one unsavory character out of many others in these lands so he didn't hurry himself to find her until he'd heard a sharp cry of pain.
Faint, distant. She had indeed strayed far from his side but, with ears cupped in his alertness, set forth into his hunt.
He would be damned and would endlessly blame himself if she'd come to harm.

He loped through the forest, powerful and urgent. He'd found pawprints in the snow. Two sets. This only urged him on faster, his heart beginning to pound in fear -- fear  -- for the girl. He smelt the crime scene before happening upon it, the strong tang of blood assaulting his senses as his stomach churned over. His eyes filled with the hot anger and the cruel monster he'd tamed was cut loose. 

And was directed only at the silvered male covered in Keen's blood.

He let loose his personal war cry, the hot roar of old words that he used only against his family, as he made his charge, "Ann buaidh no Bàs thigibh a’ so ‘s gheibh sibh do dh ' feòil."

In victory or Death come here to get your flesh.

He didn't slow for long, perhaps a mere split moment, but not as soon as he'd identified his target he launched himself at them, slamming his shoulder into them, hoping he'd caught the monster by surprise.
Then it would be a battle he'd been waiting for, but supposed the demon would rather run and wash his hands of Keen soon enough.
He turned fangs to the man as soon as contact was made, unrelenting and fueled by hot temper that he'd honed into a weapon.
He sought to sink his teeth into the other, anywhere; mostly aiming for the neck.
He wasn't prepared to let the assailant get away without a wound to lick himself.
A reminder, if he lived.

---

349 words

shh, aries is an angel LMAO. thank you for the thread as well! ❤

The pressure on her neck intensifies, cutting off the last of her air supply only a half-beat before the man's assault becomes frenzied. She writhes with renewed force for several moments, shrieking soundlessly into the snow, but soon the fight finally begins to fade from her. Her struggling slows as her body screams for air and the loss of blood finally begins to catch up to her, movements weakening, and she falls limp just as the flood of sensation stops. Her first breath is involuntary, ragged and gasping and half-sobbed, and the pain bolting through her throat rivals that of her lacerated scruff.
His words go unregistered in this moment, though the promise will surely haunt her in the weeks to come. Nothing registers past the feeling of bleeding her life into the snow and the dim realization that her assailant is no longer upon her. She does not see the silvery man or Derg, nor does she hear them. Instinct seizes her, and she pushes herself desperately to her feet, swaying and sprinkling the snow with blood dripping from her chocolate fur. She takes several stumbling steps back, fighting for control of her trembling limbs, and collapses. Then she rises again, managing a few more steps — but the snow claims her once more, and this time she does not rise.