Deepwood Weald I don't like walking around this old and empty house

just because Vuk may or may not do something stupid at this point; I'd like to make this thread non-consent for minor injuries. AW!

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the girl had left the southern regions of the Wilds behind, skirting a circle around the craig where she'd last seen the boy and heading resolutely north. she'd liked Tuktu, but it was been her original goal to penetrate further into this place her father knew, and that she would do. currently, she'd managed to sandwich herself between the rocky wall know as Moonstone Quarry and the Melonii's territory, not that she knew either to be named as such. all the girl knew that that she was forced far to near to the border by her unwillingness to attempt to climb up the quarry. she'd learned well enough from her last attempt, and wasn't going to try her luck at this much more difficult cliff. so she moved at a clip parallel to the border, the well-patrolled stretch that now and again she practically walked atop of. she merely quickened her pace and hopped the formidable rock wall would ease such to allow her to get further away from the border she had no interest in being all that near to.

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There was nowhere left to go, nowhere left to run. Panic crept up my throat as I ran into yet another dead end, and realized he had led me here. Turning around, I found him...

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Moath, the lumbering giant of the most bare consideration of ‘wolf’, was getting through his healing as he could. His Mother tended to his wound as she could, leading him to salted water and leading him around in it to cleanse the patch that @Evergreen had ripped into him. Or rather off of him.  His Mother seemed more disappointed than upset- regardless of the dismay, he wouldn’t have been able to decipher the emotions. He couldn’t understand emotions. It was only who he was, a simple entity of just urge. 

Making through the weald, he found a thread. It was a blurry one, one his nares snatched up with a swift and harsh tug. His mind, absent and idle, found this purpose and attempted to understand it. The gears, they cranked and sluggishly moved as lethargic as his own lumbering weight, prompting the barbarian to follow the string forever. 
He would.
He did.

The Melonii kept the barely visible irises string on the invisible pathway, snout downcast and mind slurring through this situation. The echo replayed in the caverns of his shelled mind, clicking, and sticking, as a feather to tar would. 
None too soon, the urge arose.

A minor mount loomed before him-
and atop it, a figure of pelt near to match. A flash of  minnow blue eyes, as soft as the Baby Eyes. 
Would they taste the same?

Haven’t been seen yet, his body lurched forward, his brain baptizing his body in a speed it didn’t deserve, christening it into a stealth that was unusual for such a hulking tank. But even megalodons could be silent until it was time to peel back it’s lips and rip chunks from the Food.

Moath took a route around the rocken mound, his thick steel limbs pulling his body forward with the haste of a steam-power engine.
And his body, mind, urge, was on a lethal track.

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And in silence, he waited.

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there is an instinct shared amongst all wild things. it is the prickle of foreboding, the itch of warning that prey feel when they are chosen for the slaughter. it is a rare boon granted them in a world that oft wants to see them dead, and it is this Vuk feels now. at first it is foreign; young, sure, predator, she's not felt this before. but it allows her just enough warning to prepare, should she have been smart enough to listen to the intuition. she is not and she does not, proceeding stubbornly forward. if someone is there, she's not going to hang around and wait for them to show themselves. she's done nothing wrong, surely, and soon enough the itch lessens. still, she hums under her breath now, and she moves with a forward tilt toward where surely the rock must end.

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There was nowhere left to go, nowhere left to run. Panic crept up my throat as I ran into yet another dead end, and realized he had led me here. Turning around, I found him...

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Indeed the rock ended-
but it’s finish began a new chapter. There he stood at the end of the sandstone slate mix, his empty gaze strapping across her face without expectation. Where wolves typically gestured their intent of made effort to feign one, there with him was nothing. He was unreadable simply due to him portraying nothing but relentlessness . 

Just as the youth emerged to the top, he met her full force with the sudden bulk of his 165lb body, and across that very ledge, the pair fell from. The hard packed rocky ground awaited them as gravity sent them on their way.

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And in silence, he waited.

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the rock began to ease, and soon, she was sure, she'd be able to climb higher up the ridge and turn south. she took to the rock, and gradually the sandstone that had existed as a barracade came to end and she became confident she could find a new path. the man who stood there suddenly could have been mistaken for a rock had her gaze only glanced over him; he lacked and outward intent and was entirely motionless. in that brief moment in which she considered between simply continuing on with a little more speed or pausing, he moved and her clumsiness betrayed her. she was large enough, only a few inches shorter than him, to have stood a chance of not toppling had she reacted. a slim chance, but one nonetheless. 

much like a rock, he sent the breath from her lungs as they collided in a dull thud. the ground was hard packed and aprroaching fast and then it was there, and ony fortune kept one or both of them from dying in that instant. neither landed entirely on the bottom (which surely would have resulted in death) but together and awkwardly. things cracked and snapped and without the air to breathe she didn't know from who the ghastly sounds originated. somehow, she was kept from fading entirely into unconsciousness, though darkness and static clouded her vision. she writhed and kicked then in the manner of a stallion, one limb almost comically bent and her entire chest on fire. her only desire was to get away, half-crushed still by the man as she was.

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There was nowhere left to go, nowhere left to run. Panic crept up my throat as I ran into yet another dead end, and realized he had led me here. Turning around, I found him...

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His mind spun, taking the entirety of the world with it. The breeze blew past them as they fell together, in midfall his beartrap jaws nearing a hair’s width to her face. Rancid and rotten breath was all he could place over the delicate features of the minnow woman before his mind was jarred from the goal. Almost as though gravity had enough of his sinful carnage, once they both hit the ground, he was slammed with so much more force than she, and she had been saved by such. Her weight had prevailed, and his body moreso cushioned her impact as the energy transfer was wickedly placed on his hips and ribs. 

Yet he was not dead. 

Jaws once again open and shut to snatch and yank at anything of hers that was near enough, though his body wanted to remain a simpering heap across the cold stoney bearing. Even as the awful entity stood, his wobble was made much more apparent as she had kicked him backwards with ease. Sent careening across the slab, he was far enough away from her for her to run safely away, should she choose. 

Moath stood, his hinds of corroding under the several fractures that harbored in them now. But he took steps forward to the palen cream before him, his mind ghastly stuck on still ruining the woman and ushering her into his Void. 

One step towards her-
a shake and sputtering of his morbidly massive body,

then another.

Blood dripped through his lip folds, his snapped rib bone ripping havoc within his body in unknown minor punctures. But ceaselessly, he kept towards her.

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And in silence, he waited.

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she kicked him away, to the agony of her hock. pain like she'd never felt before competed with adrenaline, and her tail appeared super-glued to her rump. no one had ever attacked her before, and she needed time to acknowledge all that had happened in the span of a few seconds. time she would not recieve, for already the man was rising, lumbering towards her like some dead thing that had no business walking. she needed to run, but he stood between her and the only way she could think to run. 

she wavered, a second, two, while he grew nearer and her window smaller. than, with a sudden rush of eaht through her veins, she pushed forward, giving the man as wide a window as possible as she tried to run past and away from him, as quickly as three legs would take her. 

feel free to deliver damage as she (tries to) run past!

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There was nowhere left to go, nowhere left to run. Panic crept up my throat as I ran into yet another dead end, and realized he had led me here. Turning around, I found him...

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Whatever hellish power fueled him, whatever violent energy coaxed his shambling mass forward, it threw his jowls towards the skittering woman, dragging downward on a nimble hip. Almost like that of an alligator from the bayou surface, it was explosive and well timed, but minuscule in aim. He near missed the hip, canines grating a perilous trail until he had to grasp something or lose all of his meal.

A tail- her tail was all he could get a grip of. Like some rabid mongrel, he took the illegal reserves of his energy and shook that burly head to and fro, then pulled backwards as his body huffed.

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And in silence, he waited.

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fangs grazed her hip but she payed no mind, only continued her blind charge. the feeling of resistance was sudden and unheeded, and as tends to happen when something is pulled in two directions at once, there came a point when something tore and snapped in messy halves. the pain was blotted out by adrenaline and her sole focus on escape, but it came all the same. now, here, it only added fuel to the desperate fire that was her blind charge into escape. in a moment, two, she'd be a considerable distance from here - mostly. roughly half of her tail, begraggled and resembling some drowned rodent more than part wolf, was left in the jaws of Moath.

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There was nowhere left to go, nowhere left to run. Panic crept up my throat as I ran into yet another dead end, and realized he had led me here. Turning around, I found him...

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And just as quickly as it had begun, the baby-eyed food was gone. A splattering line of garnet gave a direct trail, beckoning the urge-filled man to follow, but as he did, the energy simply dissolved. It left him, his broken body and shattered mind a mess on that hard and wet floor. He stood, trunk-like limbs quaking as his weight was awfully heavy for them in this weakened state. His breaths, they were ragged, wheezing in and out in growling huffs and hisses. But he lived. 

And so did she. But it was fine. He would see the food again, soon. Perhaps she will not heal as fast as he- and he will be able to eat her, then. 

Taking his dripping snack, the Melonii wandered all the way back to the Weald, wondering if his Mother would like this snack.

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And in silence, he waited.

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