Slowly he had learned to trickle efficiently through the crags of the workplace, a smoky serpent sliding between the rocks and clay.  His burden had been lifted for a while, instead watching the other prisoners and slaves work and haul whatever new project the hierarchy had decided to build.  The fickle, gigantic fringe-dire's paws were coated in mud, dark midnight pelt streaked in dull brown.  The nameless wolf had never felt a need to clean itself -- never craved anything but fresh meat and the dull ring of the wild that still beckoned him close.

The wild never gave up on him; not when he had been taken hostage by man.  Not when he had been kidnapped by these militant, sentient canines.  It was all foreign and frightening.  Frightening, just like the night he'd finally escaped and the sky turned red.  He had tipped his muzzle to think that maybe nature had acknowledged him for his bloody sacrifice.  It was, to his (vague) disappointment, nothing but the flames that licked their huts, charring the nameless brute's leftovers.

He felt it necessary to think of escape no matter which angle he turned.  He had already tried -- time and time again, and yet.  Yet.  The scythe-marked woman, police she had been barked to multiple times, always stopped him.  Always biting, always burning with deep molten glass gaze.  Inhuman, hollow.  Just like him.  Just like him.  She felt her sole purpose was to keep the goliath brute at bay, oily fur shining like lithium against the stark matte black of officer's spiked fur.  It frustrated him.  It built it.  Built a slow-burning fire within the iron bull's belly.  Someday it would grow hot.  Someday its bright topaz eyes would flash, and nostrils and ears would blow smoke and the dragon would rear up, throwing away every wannabe past-queen, every so-called chessmaster.  Strategy had no place in the mind of a feral ghost.  He would knock their pawns and kings aside, every piece crushed with the same eagerness.

But today was different.

He was no more cruel than the next guy, if anything less self-aware and pure instinct on legs.  The officer, however, was inherently cruel.  She spoke with venom trailing like centipedes between teeth and spat demands into the back of a slave's head.  Her face was buried into thick mud, gurgling and screaming whenever that spiked paw relaxed its assault.  It only came back more brutish.

Dead, glassy eyes shone without feeling, much less the bright uplifted features of curiosity.  He had never dreamed, never learned anything but survival.  Shatter had learned to speak.  She had learned to be cruel, and he could sense some kind of sick pleasure in her features.  It didn't bother him.  But that speckled woman below --

That one.  He liked her.  He would take her for himself.  Black pelt blended easily, as always.  His only company was the calm, quiet thrum of his heartbeat and the slow, silent panting to keep him cool.  Half-lidded eyes swept across the woman's striped pelt as, finally, she stepped away.  He only waited a moment.  A moment was all it took for Rosewood's form to curl into itself.  She shivered and shook like a small pup.  The nameless goliath, actively confused by her behavior, stepped silently to stand over the lithe slave.  He cocked his head at her.

What's all that about?  It's just mud.  It's just Shatter.  Just another day of slavery.  He stared, blinking slowly through half-closed eyes.  Burly form stepped closer until he was close, almost too close, feet sinking down to his ankles in peat mud.  Little feeling sat behind those empty eyes, but there was a prominent display of confusion.  Muzzle lifted to the form of Shatter, still in view.

Shatter?  Mud?  Why not beat her to death?  Why, he enjoyed a tussle or two every now and then with his owner.

ooc: crossposting from the old forum. Lithium is next.