Cassiopeia's View Morse code for trumpet quintets

With the sun close to setting, Dragomir knew it would be wisest to follow the mountain ridges home after his time spent in the Hinterlands. He would need to report to Hydra and probably explain why he'd been gone for a few days. But the boy reached the top of a high path with flanks heaving and mouth dry, having chanced the treacherous mountain instead of looping back around again, and below, he could see a crack in the ice where the mountain rivers wound down into Lake Rodney.

Passing his tongue over his cracked lips once, the youth made the decision to swing into the valley just long enough to quench his thirst before heading well and truly home. It was a quick lope that carried him down from the heights and up to the river's edge. He bent to drink, flinching once when the icy water touched his tongue.

@Hela Warrior thread!

she leaves the borders early that morning, with only a backward glance before she sets into the wilds. she's keen on a hunt, and it's certainly easier to concentrate when she doesn't have to divert a certain portion of her attention to making sure no one tries for her head. the situation seems to have settles, somewhat, and she's established a few clear allies. but she's not blind to the discontent to the discontent breeding beneath the surface. soon she'll have to deal with it entirely. she can either extend the same kind of alliance she extended Valour, or stomp it out. 

in the time it takes the sun to sweep across the sky, she's managed to dull her hunger, and take advantage of the solitude to think through her most pressing concerns. she's considering the matter of Vanity when she comes across the boy, bent over the water's edge. intake of breath reveals a familiar scent, which she confirms with a "moonspear?" that's a whole other matter to be taken care of; she hopes Hydra wasn't a great friend of Vengeance. somehow, she doubts it.

It wasn't like Dragomir to go on the defensive, but when he lifted his eyes and saw the rusty grey she-wolf approaching, he remembered that he wasn't in Moonspear's territory. This was their realm, but he wasn't completely safe here. There was no telling when Blackhead or Sanguinus might rear their ugly heads, and there was no guarantee that they were the only villains who stalked the wilds. There was something downright unsettling about Hela that put his back up. The flat, disconnected quality of her burnished eyes, perhaps.

He straightened up and swept his tongue across his lips, but to her query, he offered only a question of his own. Who's asking? He could no more douse the pack scent from his coat than he could fashion a believable lie, having always been an honest sort, but he delivered the query with a clipped sort of distrust all the same. He knew Moonspear and Nightwalkers were allied, but he didn't know who the Nightwalkers were or where they resided.

Or that their new young Warlord stood right in front of him.

his defensiveness, while harmless enough, had her auds press forward tightly, her tail rise until it pressed the edges of dominance. "warlord of the nightwalkers," she states, her new title novel even as she says it, though with a surety that comes with not having been challenged, thus far. 

again then, she presses, "who are you?" the words are sharp. in a pack she can not trust, having just filled a precarious power vacuum, aggressive is her default.

Hela's seeming bid for dominance was met with impassive indifference. Dragomir was old enough now to know that on neutral land, titles like that meant nothing. Besides, he was pretty sure she was lying. And even if she wasn't, Nightwalkers was an ally of Moonspear, but more importantly, Moonspear ruled them. That made any Warlord of theirs less impressive than Dragomir's own leader in his eyes.

Riiight, Dragomir drawled, and I'm the Alpha of Moonspear. He was positive she was pulling his leg and if her tone wasn't so brusque, he would've been open to such a joke. Instead, Hela was borderline aggressive, seemingly for no reason. That didn't inspire much confidence in Dragomir; in fact, it only made him want to leave.

Look, you're being really rude, he pointed out, leveling a flat stare on her. What makes you think I want to tell anything to someone who acts like that? Utterly unimpressed with Hela's attitude and claim both, he turned and left.