Dragoncrest Cliffs live and die by the gun and the knife

@Sobeille

By morning, the adrenaline of his nighttime escapades had worn off and Sam was bone  tired. He had passed the night in the woods, sleeping fitfully and moving often, and by the very first blush of dawn he was up and on the move. Cliffs. He was to meet her by the cliffs.

Said cliffs were very clearly claimed, and not just by Sobeille. Sam wrinkled his nose at the strong scent of urine that marked the meandering border, which he followed at a slow and lumbering pace. Pre-dawn had progressed to sunrise, and the star of the show had painted everything orange.

dawn broke over the cliffs in broad strokes of molten orange. for the first time in a few days, sobeille felt up to the task of patrolling.

her wounds had scabbed over and the fever claiming her had abated; out of caution she’d slept in dogfish’s den while @Yura stood watch, fretfully sleeping as the last vestiges of fever fled her body.

she drank from the glimmerglass surface of glintwater, and then as the sun broke over the shale, moved out along the borders at a conservative pace.

already she felt her energy waning, but her attention was pulled towards a familiar scent. it took her several seconds to place it; the boy — sam — from the sound.

memory of her task flooded back to her; with cheeks flush in exhaustion, sobeille picked her way after his meandering tracks.

He hadn't seen her pain and exhaustion last time, even though her wounds had still been seeping and raw at that point. Sam wasn't particularly observant once he had seen what he wanted to see, and Sobeille had fit the part of masked villain so well.

His heart soared when he heard sounds behind him and whirled around to find her there. "You!" he declared breathlessly. If she was tired, Sam did not see it - to him, she was a larger-than-life character that had given him a quest, and 'tired' or 'weary' was not things such characters felt. "I did it," he whispered, casting suspicious looks left and right. "I put it in on the beach."

in better health, sobeille might have made a game of stalking after him, to see how long before he became aware of her shadow. her tread was too tired to mask, and in short order he heard her and whirled around.

amused by his low voice, and the careful way he glanced around them as if discussing something scandalous, sobeille flicked the tip of her auburn tail. she hadn’t thought to make it clear she expected delivery, and cursed her ineptitude in making this clear.

de beach? irritation flit across her face, soon after smoothed over like tablecloth hastily spread over an uneven surface. but the gulls and the tide and the beach! this was not the exhumation sobeille envisioned. fuck. recovering her exasperation, sobeille leaned in. i need de skull. de rest, you will return to ‘er grave. when done, you must mark ‘er grave with a sprig of blue fir and a broken conch she wondered if he noticed the missing rib - furthermore, had the crone that stolen it ever used it?

a slow realization came to her then, chilling her down to the bone.

"i need de skull."

Shit. Sobeille had not specified and Sam had not asked - not her fault, though, it wasn't the villain's job to be specific. He might have snapped at anyone else that they should have said so, then, but Sam was already so infatuated with his new boss that the thought didn't even cross his mind.

"I... we can go get it, together?" he suggested, wetting his lips and making huge, pleading eyes at her. It was a stupid idea. Top management did not need to see how the sausage was made – it was their job to receive said sausage on a silver plate, frown at it, and demand to know why it was being served even though it was exactly what they had asked for. But Sam wasn't quite ready to rush off on another errand.

together? sobeille’s yellow gaze flashed, lingering on his briefly exposed teeth as his tongue darted across dark gums.

you need to rest, sobeille came yura’s admonishment from days before. sobeille weighed this against the pleading look leveled her way. it wasn’t in her nature to question why a random man would practically grovel at her feet - in her mind, such things came natural and sam was simply a more useful val, obeying the natural order of things.

again came that nagging thought - of the witch, and the rib, and the fang she’d loosened from sobeille’s jaws. something was wrong.

fine. but it wasn’t fine, and the scrunched up look across her face certainly conveyed that.

"fine."

It was all he needed to hear. The look on her face very clearly communicated what she thought about chaperoning an underling on what should have been an easy mission, but Sam did not care. If anything, he was delighted – his own mother could not have created a better character.

Her worries about witchwomen and bones did not telegraph to her face, but she would have found a staunch supporter in Sam. He was not much for witchy-woo-woo types. Certainly not ones that had wronged his mistress. 

It felt so right. Sam, servant of.. well, she would tell him eventually.

He was about to turn back in the direction he had come when a thought occurred (halt the presses). "Oh, wait – do you have.. maybe a secret way?" A dark tunnel, perhaps? Sam shivered from the tip of his tail to the tops of his copper-dusted ears.

feeling very much put off by the prospect of expending energy, sobeille started but then paused. she ignored sam for a moment, listening to the keen wind and the surf below.

if something was wrong, what was it? she sniffed the brine on the air and turned back to sam, realizing his gaze rested expectantly on her.

what had he said again..?

what? sobeille’s ears moved back to her dark skull. oh. mm, inviting a man on her turf filled her with a sense of impropriety, but she decided for this, it was necessary. dis way.

moving off at a guarded walk, sobeille brought him to the narrow tunnels that flanked dragoncrest and spat them out down at the sound. she’d traveled this particular tunnel many times with astera, the ground made polished by the endless patter of enthusiastic feet.

Once again, Sobeille delivered - there was a tunnel, its floor worn smooth by traffic, and it was the most glorious thing Sam had ever seen. He followed her into the dark with big eyes and a slack jaw, adding his clicking claws to the ocean's rhythmic hissing. It sounded like a snotty nose drawing breath.

By the time their paws hit sand, Sam's smile was competing with the now risen sun. A few minutes later, standing before the headless serpent he had constructed out of Caiaphas' remains, the plummet into cold dread nearly gave him whiplash.

"I-it was here," he stuttered, not daring to look at Sobeille. "I swear."

once or twice in the tunnel she glanced back to see an owl-eyed, slack jawed gibbon. had he never seen a tunnel before?

when the clicking tread of claws on flowstone ceased, replaced by the muffled sound of feet on sand, sobeille glanced to sam for cues. as they advanced towards the strand, a misshapen collection of something stood out to sobeille — drawing close, she realized these were bones.

her bones, even. sobeille was far too suspicious a wolf to exhume them herself, but the excitement rippling under her skin turned to cold rage as she noticed a glaring absence. the skull— the totem sobeille needed most — was gone.

she turned to sam with gaze hard, a hiss expelled between clenched teeth. den find it. noting the sand was disturbed with footsteps leading away, she motioned towards the tracks with a rough cant. an’ sam? yellow eyes pinned him with irritation. don’t come back wit’out it.

Sobeille was not pleased. Sam's heart bounced into his throat when she turned on him, eyes like the flash of a sharp knife in a very motivated lunatic's coat pocket. He licked his suddenly parched lips and began to back away, nodding hard enough to light the fuse on a future headache.

Without another word, because what could he possibly say, Sam followed the thief's prints into the forest.

too exhausted to give chase to the sound’s thief, sobeille simply had to trust the competence of sam. she pinned him with her most doleful stare as he backed away, nodding profusely — not until he disappeared following the tracks of the thief did she turn back to the shapes in the sand.

the sea witch. a certain gravitas to be had in these bones. reverence thrummed through her bones as she reached out to touch one of the vertebrae.

sick as she was, every remaining piece laid out on the shore was carefully returned to the grotto. when she was done, exhaustion hounded her heels and she slept there in the sound under the oppressive weight of fever.