Log: First of Rebirth's Decline

[sorcerous]

Who: Loki (recently turned into the Big Bad Wolf) and OPEN
What: Loki has gone a little wild.
Where: Two-Faced Forest, the outskirts of town
When: All today.
Warnings: Probable violence; Loki is not a nice person right now.
Notes: Basically: Loki's brain is all focused on doing villainy right now, combined with the instincts of a wild wolf. He's going to stalk victims, especially young, pretty princesses, kill livestock, intimidate people, huff and puff and blow your houses down. Today is mostly the workup to it, and on the Second of Rebirth's Decline he'll really try to cause some damage. If you'd like to plot or plan something out, PM me!

He awakens in pain. Claw-furrows down his fur and blood soaked into the ground beneath him. He limps to his feet -- go, go, leave this, go. The scent of his own injuries is overpowering. He will attract any predator in the area.

Finds a stream on instinct and plunges himself into the water, the current trickling away red, untangling clumps of fur and mud and blood. He stays, shivering, for too long. Until his belly begins to complain.

And then he goes to hunt.

Comments

[brosif]

Sif carries the head of beast. One that she has never seen before, but that tried well enough to end her. She is caked in blood and grime, awash in the feeling of a battle well fought.

“I’m going to have you stuffed,” she muses, to the head. And perhaps placed in the throne room – an apology of sorts, to the king.

Settling down by the river, she begins to wash her hands. She has no problem entering town in her current state, but the townsfolk seem to have ever encroaching expectations on how princes are meant to look.

[sorcerous]

And here he steps slow and delicate out of the stream of water; here he shiver-shakes moisture from his fur. He treats her presence with a lack of concern (enemy-friend), but once he reveals himself, he looks to her with slow, dangerous yellow eyes.

[brosif]

She looks at his eyes, and likes that she sees a hunter in them. It's a familiar enough sensation -- some days, she feels she has more in common with the beasts in the forest than the people in the village.

She is unafraid -- she is armed, and has killed much larger this day.

"This is my spot of river, for now. And my kill. Go find your own, wolf."

[sorcerous]

He lifts his muzzle, and is absolutely, utterly still, for a very long moment. There is a half-memory of a woodsman, an axe, his belly splitting open. She smells like that, like wood and splinter and metal.

The sound of his growl is now loud. It floats over the stream soft, the sort of sound you feel in your bones before you realize it has touched your ears.

[brosif]

Unusual, for a wolf to be this loud. Or to approach a human at all. In Sif's experience, they only willingly approach people when there is a lack of game in the area. The forest is many things, but it is not barren.

She takes the growl as a threat, a declaration, and holds her sword out. She does not break eye contact.

"I would split you where you stand and turn your skin into a coat. Move on to weaker game."

[sorcerous]

He throws his head up and barks, a sound and movement that comes off startlingly like laughter. He does not care for weapons or threats.

[brosif]

“Laugh all you like.” She more amused than threatened. “I am not moving, and you do not cut such an imposing figure.”

[sorcerous]

He is still as a statue.

He could wait for hours, if necessary, and still be limber enough to spring.

[brosif]

Very unusual.

She thinks of the wolves she has met here, of Faolan. She remembers her own promise to the Stone girl to see that the guards don't shoot Lady on site.

She takes a step closer to him. A challenge, though the river still lies between them.

[sorcerous]

Still, watching her. He does not back down, and he does not advance.

[brosif]

“If you are related to the wolf-boy, now might be a good time to mention it.”

Too smart for a normal wolf. That much is clear.

[sorcerous]

Too smart and lethal, too.

A twitch of fur.

And then he springs, aiming to miss her by a hair's breadth. A threat, not a true blow.

[brosif]

Her sword is out as he leaps. She holds it in front of her, blade nearly touching his fur.

A threat, then?

He is quick, clever, and without a pack. Too dangerous of an animal to let live when the thorns no longer offer a nightly cage.

Without warning, she advances.

[ladysarmour]

Beneath the scent of blood there lies another smell, a familiar smell: kin-musk, cold and winter. It is familiar, and so she follows it. No beast moves more gracefully. She reaches the water, stops: here the trail ends, and she lifts her head and howls high and long and low, for she is alone.

[sorcerous]

And before the howl is done, a figure appears near from nowhere: a wolf, bigger than her, but familiar all the same. A dark shape moving swift enough to knock her off her feet and pin her down, his jaws against her throat in threat, not true violence. Remember who is dominant.

[ladysarmour]

There is something different in him now, something beneath the blood and a part of it: he is more the predator she and her siblings are this day. She yields easily, baring her throat to the bigger wolf with a quiet whine; her tail curls limp on the ground as she waits to be released.

[sorcerous]

Good, she is good; he licks at her, sniffs her. It is a small pack, not a pack at all, but how many does it take to bring down a human? Not so many. Not so many at all.

[ladysarmour]

Permission, there. She licks him back, presses her muzzle into the thick fur beneath his ear. But no: she wants to avoid humans. Remembers - dimly, in the way of wolf memories - the flash of steel in the dark.

[sorcerous]

No, no. Theirs is the way of predators. They hunt, they do not run.

But he will allow her something small. They will only take something of the humans, not hunt a man, not yet. He whuffs at her and nuzzles her protectively, and then he is off, loping steadily towards the farms outside of town.

[ladysarmour]

She whines plaintively, but she has already submitted; so she trails after, light following shadow instead of the normal way around.

[sorcerous]

He guides them through the thorns to a fence, a farmyard, distant cows munching on the grass. And he drops low, in the shadow of the hedge, a hunter searching for the perfect prey.

[ladysarmour]

She has never hunted prey so large before; it makes her shy back, it makes her fur bristle with anticipation. But she is a quick study, mirroring his movements precisely with her smaller form.

[canistricari]

Coyote sensed the chaos nearby, a slightly different flavor than this particular entity usually put off.

Being a Coyote, of course he sought out the source of the mayhem. After all, what was a good prank if there was nobody around who would appreciate it?

He stalked the other wolf, not trying very hard to stay hidden but telling the other wildlife to pretend he wasn't there.

[sorcerous]

He knew he was being followed before he knew what it was that followed him.

He made a broad circle, slipping through tree and fen, around his hunter, in an attempt to get downwind of the other creature.

[canistricari]

He snickered wildly to himself, and the sound seemed to echo off the trees. He didn't need his godly sense of smell to find this particular wolf.

[sorcerous]

And Loki caught the first steady scent of the creature following him.

He stops. Freezes still, smelling power and chaos. He is dwarfed, he is defeated, and a part of him wants to whine and press his muzzle to the ground, and another part wants to howl his defiance.

[canistricari]

Coyote laughs manically and approaches, head held high. Yes, he is mighty. But he has no intention to harm Loki. Just to mock him, and perhaps help him if there's something in it for him.

"Dear Cousin!" Because truly, he was more like a cousin now than ever before.