The world turned; Traveler screamed in his sleep, perhaps in real life too. At this point there was no telling what was real and what was fake, maybe this was all a horrific dream; or maybe he was dead.... The idea was almost appealing, and with each weary blink back into the world of the living it felt more and more like he'd rather be dead anyway. One by one and yet all at once he was aware of all the different pains eating at him down to his bones. Throat sore from screaming, from crying and coughing, choking down dirt and blood. It was dry now, and scratchy, from lack of water and the weakness in his body from the bloodloss, tongue rang across the roof and the friction made him wheeze."No," he tried to speak, but nothing but a crackling whine came forth from his weary vocal cords. Attempting to speak made him ache even more, now feeling the pain where Ki Tisa had torn away the flesh from his nape and where Lev Malakh had clamped down with the strength of all the mothers in the world on his jaw. Traveler tried to moan weakly, forcing the air through his nose, expelling dirt and realizing there was going to be no good way to move his head. I'd much rather be dead. The boy tried to curl up, and found his leg refusing to cooperate, listless eyes sought it, but the head fought the impulse to look and he remained unable to look back at where Francisca had torn his tendon. The red Fringe remembered how it felt then, that sensation of the snap and the muscle recoil... Of all his injuries, this was the one that seemed to hurt less with time, maybe he'd think the blue-haired woman for her mercy. Not near dead enough to not feel sarcasm. Aches and pains flooded in, bruises, bumps, where he'd been tackled from the giant wall, rode like a rodeo bull, dragged to the ground like a sacked quarterback. The yearling felt the sting at the base of his tail and for a moment did not recall the reason for it. Instead he realized he was laying in the mud, laying somewhere with a dirt wall in front of him. Trav had yet to turn his head to inspect anything, it had not yet dawned on him he was in a pit. It had not yet dawned on him that he was missing his tail, but it was coming, coming fast. Normally bright eyes blinked with the thousand yard stare, trying to recall the events. Even though he didn't really want to. A mess in his head, a boy, a cut foot, skulls, skulls, skulls, blue eyes, skulls and BLUE EYES; his stomach lurched. Barely anything was in it but what were there was no more, slipping up into this throat, stinging the damage with bile, out past his bloody lips into the mud. The giant wanted to move away from it, to not be near it, feeble legs fought to flail him away. This was not a happy story or a good fairy tale though, slipping in the mud and nothing more was his gift from the writer. Bitter smells and mud was seeping into his nose, the boy bared his fangs and flung himself, his back and wound smacking hard into the muck, landing belly up with a shout. He did his best to draw his front legs in against his chest, now muddy and dirtying up anything that had been spared previously by him being on his side. Languid, disoriented, staring now with unseeing eyes at his leg for a long time before it made sense. Wounds on his neck were stinging, perhaps bleeding again too but he couldn't tell for sure. The smell of blood was all around. Those golden eyes searched then, noticing a slight discrepancy in the physical appearance of himself; someone whose body he knew well. There was no tail stretched out between his back legs and to the best of his knowledge he did not feel it caught beneath it, just that horrible pain at it's base. Now that he thought of it, he only felt the base and nothing more. So he tried to move it and locate it that way, but as soon as he tried the memory hit him and took the breath out of his lungs. The red woman pulling one way, the boy with the long snake-like tail pulling the other. It was gone, gone, GONE! Traveler started gasping then, eyes wild, oh how he wished to be dead.

➷ TRAVELER ➷ |➷| captive |➷| mover and shaker "A man travels the world over in search of what he needs and returns home to find it." -George A. Moore Profile #5C1310 lines © lilyote on dA

The hellhound's strides are harsh, footfalls crunching autumnal ground-cover. His paws, worn to scaly scar-tissue from years of travel, do not falter as they move from breezy forest to salt flats. Vaudeville doesn't spare a glance for Saki, undoubtedly trailing behind him, choking on the chemicals he kicks up carelessly. "You ever seen a hyena, Saki?" Split tongue flicks, joints settle as he crooks his neck to see her. "Nasty fuckers."

He turns on her, far from spry for his age, but unpredictable as ever, and warns-- threatens, "Don't get bit."

The hellhound grins, blackened gums and rotten teeth, sweet as candy and dangerous as the cyanide it's injected with. "There used to be a whole clan of 'em out this way, but the territory was shit, so they survived off trade. Up and left, and now everything they didn't grab is ours for the taking."

The old renegade sat resting, alone upon a barren borderline. A sagging fern, browning at the edges, sheltered her from the lukewarm rain.

This place was rotten and macerated, yet never quite dead, though its strengthless heartbeat was powered only by a thready pulse she knew would easily be obliterated should someone decide to show it that mercy. She'd fought smilodons once upon a time, as a young volatile girl, hulking roaring brutes that for all the size of her kind could have felled them each with one good blow. Sometimes she'd returned to the battlefield to marvel in silence (silly children new to this world, even she, were still impacted by such things) at how even this gargantuan enemy bloated and burst and decomposed. Gone tomorrow.

That was what this dusty creaking kingdom was, in the end. Just another thing set here to reach its peak and die. It had fixed something inside her once to watch this happen, then to actively make it happen, if only for a while, but here she idled as an uninvited guest prepared for unceremonious departure once her bone-deep exhaustion, an ailment even Isaiah's remedies could not touch, did so as well.

Isaiah. How odd that he, with nothing else to offer her, should still be on her mind. Small, malnourished, crooked little mender. Dragon had no conscience, no reverence for debts and selfless overtures most other wolves would feel obligated to repay. She still planned, in a detached way, to give the regards he'd requested nonetheless. Who knew why? Who could even begin to surmise?

The scent of a native, emanating nearby. A decaying vegetable stink. Dragon turned her muzzle only slightly, facing it with her last eye, the frayed, feathery hairs upon her cheeks betraying her age.

"Salutations," said she, in a flat voice that made a mockery of the cordiality. "I'm looking for a black wolf named Talon. Have you seen him?"

The creature that approached her now was far more wraith than wolf, a living razor with eyes that were almost genius in their madness... or, at least that was how Dragon might have described Shatter, had she been one for bombastic judgements on any four-legged pre-corpse that wandered up to her. No -- this barbarian was hair, a face, a voice, a variety of internal machinations tangible and non. A glorified satchel, that might contain something the renegade wanted.

(Perhaps they had that in common.)

In any case, she faced Shatter patiently, watching her search herself, watching her think. She shifted forward, moving closer though she took no step, sacrificing several inches of the shelter, and the lukewarm rain broke upon her ragged head, the drops catching and then disappearing in the long frayed tangle of her cheek ruffs. Here came the denial, and still she waited, suspecting that there was more coming that she ought not to smother with needless speech.

"Look for the battlefield-- when you find it, dig. You may find what you're looking for."

"The battlefield," she echoed in perfect monotone; the repetition might have been incredulous in another's mouth. What sort of battles did a slumbering, rotting, unnecessary place like this have? If the one sought after -- Isaiah's deadbeat, abusive father, of course -- already lay six feet under at another wolf's jaws, then that was simply that. Her investment in him was thready at best, and like a thread, it would snap.

Opaque lime eye slid thoughtfully to half-mast for a moment. That black, mirthless "joke" was countered by a serious request.

"Show me."

Her slow, speculative gait had not changed with her maiming, squandering in necessity and calculation no precious energy. It still never crossed the line into being ponderous, much like the lime eye -- and the other, once upon a time, its memory enshrined in nothing but dark, puckering keloid tissue that formed a twisted hole one could put a thumb into should they wish -- never seemed entirely vacant even in the opaque, painted-on stare it gave the scenery as into it she delved after Shatter. It was difficult sometimes to look at her and not think of a crocodile.

Follow, the soldier had rasped. Dragon pursued the offering in silent, imperceptable greed. If Shatter attacked her opportunistically, if she led the old wolf into an ambush, then she would accept that and act accordingly. Whatever motive lay behind such foolishness could not be personal... and she certainly would not be the first bloodthirsty young girl to want to open up her throat and drink deeply from the wound.

The smell of this place -- a putrescent reek, the fumes exhaled by life as it broke down -- became thick and offensive, eye-watering, repulsive. There were more than just dead plants at rest here. Still there was no flinch, just a ripple of lip over massive stained teeth as she filtered it through mouth and nose, embraced what was coming without pleasure nor disgust nor anticipation, shifted gaze to the thin beams of sun that penetrated the foliage and opened the way into --

Ah.

Dragon moved past Shatter, observing the battlefield with a mien that could generously be described as... unaffected. There were cadavers scattered throughout the trampled clearing, in various end-stages of decomposition -- six feet to their left, a big (saber?) lion that was mostly bone -- further away, a wolf with the nest of some vermin in the hollow of its ribcage. Many others, beyond even these.

The renegade drifted between them in investigation, evidently looking for something and each time not quite finding it, moving dispassionately onto the next. "You were involved," she said at last, breaking the silence if Shatter had not already done so -- a simple hypothesis framed as a hard fact.

Some things were easier observed for oneself than explicitly spelled out. People too often just did not pay attention.

This garden was indeed a gruesome one, the epicenter of a land that once had been beautiful and terrible as an eldritch creature, but now lay barren and inanimate as though decayed by thousands of years. And how alike these two soldiers of fate were at the crossroads, how fitting that they'd end up here, despite an abysmal lack of love or loyalty for the nation itself... hungry things, brutal things, that were not attuned in any kind of emotional way to such sights. Living wolves were objects, props, things enough to Dragon and Shatter -- why would the dead be any more highly regarded?

"Yes. I'm not certain as to how long ago it was. I remember all of it. I fought for the sovereign - I won. If any of them knew what would become of this place, there never would have been a war."

Perfunctory and uninterrupting, the renegade kept the younger she-wolf in the periphery of her limited vision, even as Shatter herself turned and began to dig while she lamented the forgotten war in her toneless, faintly tempestuous way. Only fools believed that civility and violence were separated by a stark line; Beryl hadn't taught her that, but she'd surely reinforced it. I will heal, I will survive, the inarguable mantra that had replaced burn the mother down, let neither chance predator with an empty stomach or terrorized victim with an ugly grudge have the pleasure, have the CLOSURE --

Shatter was holding aloft a skull, cradling it derisively, so that the old monster could see. She did so, tilting her ragged head, staring down the long bridge of her nose; someone who didn't know better might liken the gaze to an appreciator admiring a work of fine art. "Does he look familiar?"

Yes, would have been the honest answer, for the mandible hung broken, its jarring dislodgement like so much accusation. She touched the severed skull gently with the end of her snout, scenting it carefully, and very briefly felt the drop of an old memory. A rival alpha, all black and white, queen of mercenaries, whose keep she and hers had raided on the dawn of Eschaton's rise into power. Dragon remembered sinking her teeth into the face -- she'd never even learned her name -- and mauling until it resembled so much pulverized meat. Remembered trapping the lower jaw and shaking and hearing a sickening crunch. Remembered what that woman's skull, stripped of flesh, had looked like months later... just like this one. Exactly like this one.

"I'm afraid not," was the answer the renegade actually gave, drawing back with that same faux-cordiality. She knew name and pelt of her quarry... bones possessed neither anymore.

"Such a war was before my time here," mused Dragon in continuation, and this was technically not a lie, of course. She had started deeper in on the graveyard now, the soft hoarse voice somehow carrying well even though it did not raise to be heard whether or not Shatter chose to follow. "I am sorry to have missed it." An actual lie, to make up for the not-quite she'd just rasped; it was subtly integrating. Manipulative. "Was it a coup of sorts, then?"

Lady in gray offered an single lamentation, as lifeless and insincere as anything the renegade in her long life had ever spoken, and took a long, predatory moment to indulge in viewing the skeletal cadavers that surrounded them. Considering what this one anonymous head might look like adorning her heinous den. Dragon was ever the warrior who'd walk over the dead, crushing ribs or pelvis or tibia beneath her trod, because they were in her path and she cared not to alter it. She was ever the assassin who'd rip apart the bodies of her prey because it so distressed her enemies (poor Elias, poor good-for-nothing boy) to see them in such a state. But taking one's victims apart, making crafts from their various parts, displaying them artfully in her quarters... oh, that was a special depravity she'd never demonstrated.

In any case, the old wolf never mused upon this. She was not looking at Shatter at all right now, in fact. She was several feet away, the frayed hairs on the backs of her lean legs fluttering in the dank wind, observing a most unusual sight. Look at this, someone else might have called over, wanting to share this sight, this strange experiment, but the silence hung heavy around the sides of her head, almost tangible for how oppressive it sometimes felt. The massive bony hull of a wolf, its flesh and swampy purple pelt long have sagged and rotted away, lay spread out among the equally decomposed corpses of several lions. Its limbs were wild as though in mid-thrash. Its jaw was still open and furious somehow. A gaping puncture wound in the back of the huge skull was all any coroner ever needed to see. Inside stirred a cluster of maggots, should one look. Inside the ribcage, an anthill in progress, thriving and unceasing.

Nature, red in tooth and claw. Nature, always hungry.

Nature, needing a change.

"Did it help?" was all Dragon inquired. She'd turned her head to peer over her shoulder at the soldier, green eyes probing behind the flat, drifting, vacant film. Had it changed anything, knocking over one pointless despot and inviting another to take her place? Had that been the filler for the void she carried with her always?

"I am Tanith." Offered impartially, a token dropped into a cupped hand, curling the fingers over it. "Thank you for what you've shared."

Apropos of nothing, nary an explanation given, Dragon knelt down and begin to chew the head from Kotake's corpse.