October 12th; Afternoon; Sunny; Warm.

Since the pack hunt, Fenru Tainn had been driven by the instinct to prepare for the next few months. His younger sisters would experience their first winter soon and the yearling was determined to give them every reason to enjoy the relaxing, but coldest part of the year. He, himself, had had a particularly unfortunate experience with autumn and winter. First, just as the leaves had fallen, brown and devoid of life, he had discovered the death of the first friend he had ever encountered. Then, as November and December blanketed Relic Lore, he found that he had no energy whatsoever to enjoy the phenomenon that was snow.

He smiled to himself as he recalled to mind how... beautiful, entertaining, and scary his first snowfall had been. The skies were gray and though he, Rihael, and Kisla remained nestled in the den, waiting for Corinna's return, he could not help but to be amused by the strange, bits of white that had started to fall from the sky. It had captured his attention for sometime but after that first experience, his mind had shut down. Food had been scarce when his father and certain pack members had left and he had no choice but to conserve what energy he had for growing... for survival. Now that he was shouldering the responsibilities that had once belonged to Angier, he discovered the opportunities that came with hunting and cache-stocking, as well as the satisfaction that came with realizing he was indirectly helping his mother and the pack help raise Aiyana and Rissa.

Herds of deer were slowly beginning to migrate again, but the boy knew now that most of them would still be nearby in the next month or so until the winds and nights became much cooler than they already were. Creeping through the underbrush Fenru kept low as he exercised his senses, testing his tracking skills. He hadn’t noticed had far he had wandered away from the Grove until the aroma of fresh blood pierced his nostrils. Someone had been here. He drew forward from under a canopy of low-hanging branches so he could lift his head and take a deep breath. Old and new blood. Coyote, rogue wolf, fox, and badger... Everywhere.

He craned his head about before inspecting a small mound that rested against the base of one of the forest’s gnarled trees. From what he could pick up underneath the fresh smell of death, what had been buried here clearly belonged to some lone soul, hoping to eat another day. It was strange. Now that he took the time to scan the area, he noted something rather off. The longer he stood underneath the crooked boughs that fought for the space above him, the more scents he picked up. Fear. Anger. Ravens. Crows. Mice. He dared to inspect the area further, slowly becoming aware of the ground beneath him, hard and rotten… uneven as though it had been disturbed.

Fenru tripped over what he thought was an unearthed root and as soon as he withdrew his right limb from being snagged on the protruding obstacle, he gazed over his shoulder to stare at what had once been a fawn. His breath caught in his chest and his ears drew back.

What is this place?

His eyes, electrified with shock, darted to the ground around him. No wonder everything was so still here. Everywhere underneath the crawling ivy and fallen leaves, wherever natural debris could not pile up, skeletons and old pelts littered the forest floor. Was this where Angier the Hunter had been spending a majority of his days when he had supposedly loyally served his family? Had he hunted and cached away his prey here for his own use? Contributed to this graveyard of a place that could only be described as the pack Keeper’s barrows?

The blood had drawn her in too. Though determined not to go far from the Cedarwood, Trisden's feet had a habit of taking her further than expected. Her willpower was ten times what it used to be, though, and it was easy to resist that curiosity to see what was over the next hill. She had a home to go to, parents, siblings, a pack. She had responsibility again, and that felt better than any urge to carry on walking.

Besides, the packlands were oft tread and the available prey were thin, especially at this time of year. She always had the most success with solo hunting when she went further than their borders. It was why the scent of blood had caught her attention so quickly, despite it being nothing more than a whisper on the wind. She had prowled into the Ghastly Woods with barely a second thought.

Then the trees had pressed in around her in a way that they never did in the Cedarwood, and the wind had turned sour.

Head low, she barely registered the fact that her heart was beating a mile a minute until she, too, accidentally nudged an old bone with a paw. There was nothing eerie about a skeleton in and of itself, but with the scents on the wind - birds and rodents and small creatures of all kinds, a dead zoo, and those were just the ones she recognised - she knew that this was a dark place. Death and darkness ruled here.

She could not help it. Her mind flickered between old terrors as though she were three months old and listening to Kiche's preaching. Memories of dark faces in her home, of lunging snakes, of paranoia and fear for her soul, they all pressed in on her. It was only stubbornness and refusal to be weak that held her firm, that kept her moving forward. Nightmares were not real... but the opportunity to scavenge was. She just had to keep reminding herself of that.

It was at that fated point that she heard something, a movement, and she simply froze. Was there someone here? It was a graveyard that smelt of anger and despair... she could not handle the notion that somebody or something was there at that moment. She was going to get sucked in to the fear and that would be the end of everything.

Fur on end, she lowered the paw that had been frozen mid-air, and it landed upon a tiny brittle skeleton which crumpled and snapped with a soft crack.

Heart pounding, she stopped breathing.

The snap of small skeleton or a thin twig sounded ten times louder than it should have in the yearling's ears. WHERE?! his mind roared. WHO?! WHAT?! He clambered to his feet and turned around, desperately trying to find the source of the sound. In his younger days, in a state of panic, he would have cried out for Corinna or for Indru when he had first returned, but now he stood up on his own, wild with shock but able to see clearly.

He took a breath, as deep as his chest would allow, and stretched his neck forward as he tried to pick up the scent of the newcomer. It barely came to him underneath the smell of death and decay. A girl. Fenru turned his head from side to side until his sight fully focused on a very still figure not too far from him. What little sunlight filtered through was just enough for him to fully pick her out against the twisted trees and overgrown brush.

The boy squared his shoulders and stared at her. "Y-y-you!" he stammered, taking a step to the side away from the fawn cadaver he had tripped over. "You leave me a-alone!" His tail leveled with his spine and the fur about his shoulders stood up. "I'm jus'.... I'm just passing through. Didn't touch anything, so leave me alone." He looked over his shoulder to see if he could locate an escape route but found nothing but walls of hedges. How he had stumbled into this place was now beyond him. He eyed the girl again, willing himself to keep a brave face on. "Ya hear me?!"

To her distress, she could see something moving, and when a distinguishable shape stared back at her she almost loosed her bladder and fled. Her childhood grounding in invisible, terrible evils really had done her no favours in this moment.

You! it cried, and she was so afraid that she barely registered the stammer - all she knew was that it freaking knew who she was and that was more than she could cope. Unfortunately for the monster, Trisden had not been a child to squeak at terrors and cower, and once the initial rush of fear had enveloped her, she felt a heated rush to push back and get angry. She was Trisden Lyall! Did it know what family it was messing with?! If she was eaten in this terrible place then she trusted her parents and her pack to avenge her as bloodily as possible.

As if it read her mind, the monster yelped back at her, and now she heard the stuttering. She also saw its small size, how very much like a wolf it looked. It didn't matter; she wouldn't be fooled by such attempts to look weak. This place stank too much of death to believe that it wasn't capable of terrible things. She took a shaking step forward, her own expression also one of bravery - though it was less feigned by the moment. "Don't you play innocent with me!" she cried, fur rising. "I've caught you at it, your sick games. You hurt me and you'll regret it!" To run away while the monster played coy, or to attack pre-emptively? She wasn't really very good at fighting, not seriously, but she was a survivor. No horrible thing was getting her now.

The space between them fooled Fenru's eyes into think she was much larger than he was, especially when she began to mirror his actions. "Don't you play innocent with me!" she exclaimed. The boy gave a start, but the fear that washed over him melted away as she accused him of seemingly ensnaring her with his sick games. Wait, what? He shook his head, as if it would clear his head and help him recall what she had exactly said.

"Look," he called out to her. "Look, I don't wanna... I'm not gonna hurt you!" His expression had morphed into one of bewilderment. "What games? This isn't a game! Jus' stay over there, 'kay?!" Without bothering to look where he was going, he slowly began to shuffle farther away from her, keeping his eyes trained on her figure. He bumped his shoulder into the misshapen trunk of a dead tree as a ribcage of a half-eaten mouse fractured under one of his large paws. He stopped, certain he was going not going to get away as easily as he thought he could. "I'm just passing though," he repeated simply, swallowing audibly afterward in a poor attempt to hide the fear that was trickling into his voice the longer he stood in her presence. "Take whatever ya want. I don't want anything."

Afterwards, she would blame the low light on the fact that she didn't really see the honest bewilderment in his face. Instead, she read it as the creature trying to dig deeper into its mind games, his slightly shaky words only further proof of that. Trisden Lyall was not one to roll over! Her fear spiked exactly as her boldness did, not an unlikely combination since bravery and fear were close relations, and she took a heavy step forward to mirror his movement back. She heard the words - not gonna hurt you, stay over there, passing through - but all she registered were lies and deceit. The chill of terror had wrapped itself around her throat and it spurred her on.

Not that she knew what she was doing, of course - to attack a monster was foolhardy, but did she have a choice? Perhaps it would back away into the shadows again and she would be able to escape, claiming victory... but that was when another shape appeared, just beyond the monster. At first she gasped, believing herself to be outmatched, but then, in a moment of clarity that she was still failing to achieve with Fenru, she realised that it was only a young girl. Suddenly Trisden saw herself, saw the danger, and, though far from an altruistic beast, she knew that she couldn't let an innocent be hurt, not here, not now.

"Watch out!" she cried, hoping that the monster hadn't seen the arrival of fresh prey - the thought of a child's blood adding to the stench of the dead menagerie sickened her to the core - before she bolted towards the girl, making sure to swing wide around the monster else provoke an easy attack. It was her intention to stand between them, get the child to leave this terrible place, perhaps sacrifice herself to such a noble cause... would that wash away her past sins?

It was terrible how easily such dots were connected, but really, at that point, Trisden wasn't thinking straight.

She strode forward and Fenru merely stared until the sound of growling reached his ears. It eventually stopped after the sudden addition of something cracking loudly underfoot. He would have made the impulsive decision to run, thinking this woman had somehow summoned another young soul to help her drive him away, if it had not been the sudden recognition of something that smelled like home. Home. Swift River was quite the trek away the last time he checked. He inhaled deeply, the trace of River wolf scent registering in his memory. Wild-eyed, his eyes picked out a glint of gold among the tangled foliage and bits of bone.

Aiyana?

He frowned, but before he could even go about assuming she had followed him or even utter the first syllable of her name, the young woman, the rogue, had moved. Across his field of vision she ran with lightning-like speed, her mottled frame a blurred streak until it stood between him and his adventurous sibling. Sure, he loved his sisters but having the youngest this far away from home could only mean that if anything terrible happened to her, Corinna would have his head. So much for being favored as her favorite and only son then...

Something likened to the spark of a flint against steel lit up behind his eyes and the pure, unbridled drive to defend his family, his pack and blood, set him into action. The steps he had taken back were quickly and boldly regained. He even went as far as to lift his bristled tail in the air and show off his ivory fangs. This lady dared to press his buttons and, now that he had his bearings, he was more than ready to really show her what he was made of... She might have said he would regret it if he hurt her, but with Aiyana now in the picture, he had no choice.

His eyes flickered to where the foliage was trembling then quickly returned to where the hysterical, masked woman was standing. It was clearly apparent she was defending the cub from him, but Fenru could not be bothered to ask why. "NOW you listen here," he growled. "Do whatever you want to me but LEAVE HER OUT OF THIS." Additionally, without daring to lose his focus on Trisden, he growled to his sister, "Aiyana, go home."