Dragonveil Fold reincarnate

Backdated to soon after Kjors's death; around 12/29. For @Gitano. The length got out of hand; please don't feel any obligation to match. I haven't posted with Karina in a while and had a lot of backstory to fill in. 

 
Karina had been feeling optimistic since Gitano had settled in nearby the Sorenson family. Before, something had been tugging at the edge of the woman’s consciousness; a sinking feeling of uncertainty, like there was something about life in Dragonveil Fold that just wasn’t exactly right. Kjors had been in a mood, though whether it was because of the new young male in Karina’s good graces or that something else Karina couldn’t say. For some reason, that little something else that Karina couldn’t put a paw on, Kjors had never been satisfied with their life in Dragonveil. He spoke every now and then of finding somewhere different to weather out the winter, or even to move their little family for good. Couldn’t he see that this was the land that The Mother chose for them?  Winter hadn’t been easy, but they were surviving.  Together, as a family, finally…  without secrets or lies, most importantly.

Well, mostly.

Karina had declined to tell Kjors of Gitano’s prediction for his future. If their places had been reversed, Karina would certainly not wish to know that her own death was on the horizon. What a terrible curse that would be, to know when you were to die. Kjors would be resistant to the soothsayer’s predictions anyway, as he was only likely to listen to spiritual communication that came directly from the Mother. With Kjors’s and Gitano’s differing spiritual beliefs it was difficult to say exactly how the young male would fit into their budding family, but Karina was optimistic. Even if they could not, the priestess could see that the two males were more alike than different in spirituality.

Truth be told, Karina was much more at ease with Gitano here. He had predicted that a male of great importance to Karina would perish, and yet here he was... he himself becoming a male of increasing importance to the young woman. If he did not fear the danger of living so closely to such an ominous prophecy, Karina would not fear either. She clung to the conviction that when danger was truly upon her loved ones, Gitano would somehow see it and warn her.

It was this knowledge that gave Karina the confidence to travel from the Fold for long stretches at a time, returning to the mountainside to feed from their stores once her belly ached from hunger. It was from one such trip that Karina returned from on this gloomy afternoon. She shook the chill from her body as she entered the cave that the little band had claimed as their nest. It only took her a moment to realize that the scents of her family were stale. With Karina gone, they wouldn’t all leave. Someone always stayed to guard the Fold. The anxious mother rushed from the cave, poking her nose into several other of the empty caverns that honeycombed the great Mountain. Bennet? Kjors? Gitano? Where are you?!

Karina’s unease grew alarmingly as she searched the empty territory. A familiar scent brought her to a dead halt, and her heart dropped into her stomach. It was him. The Second-- the man she had seen in a vision around this same time last year. Or at least she had thought it was a dream, concocted by a weakened, starving mind running wild with the story of the Sorensons’ past. Kjors’s brother was dead after all; Kjors had said so himself.  And yet, he had been here in the flesh; Karina could smell it as plain as anything.  She began to shake, realizing that her encounter with the Second had not been hallucination.. it had been real, and she had been in real danger that day.

Danger that Bennet and Kjors were now in, with the Second returned. It did not take the frantic mother long to chase the scent of the secondborn dragon to the place where he had first encountered Kjors.  There was bloodshed—scraps of fur and decaying flesh scattered around, but no sign of either brother. Karina’s fear mounted as she stumbled after the bloodstains, traveling far faster than was wise for a girl with cloudy eyes.  After what felt like an eternity, Karina arrived at the bloody scene that she had been dreading since she had first heard Gitano’s prediction.

The poor woman’s eyes and nose were flooded with sensory input as she surveyed the battleground, awash in the blood of her loved ones and the smell of stale terror. Without even realizing she had moved, she found herself at the side of her fallen mentor, the father of her child and the dragon to her gem. He was barely recognizable to the eye, face matted with congealed blood that had flowed from his stump of an ear. He was barely recognizable to her heart as well; the creature before her was hardly more than a carcass… just a lupine shell that had once contained the soul of a dragon. Karina buried her nose into her dead mentor’s ruff, hoping to find comfort there as she always had. She felt nothing; cold nothingness. She backed away from the body, confused, squinting.

This was not Kjors. This was certainly his body, a body he had always felt trapped inside, but the dragon had long since flown free. Either to be with the Mother, or (the more likely option in Karina’s opinion) to settle within the skin of one Soren’s other decedents, seeing as they had been so close by. Kjors’s wolf ran in the Mother’s pack now, Karina had no doubt, but his dragon would not so easily abandon his treasures. The dragon lived on now, just in a different form... within Bennet, or the Second, or both.

Karina scraped at the stony earth until her paws were bloody, but she put hardly a dent in the frozen, rocky ground. She had wanted Kjors buried like her father, but the Mother seemed to have a different plan. Switching gears, Karina began gathering the small boulders that littered the mountainside, stacking them up over her beloved’s body until his remains were no longer visible beneath the mound. As she covered each of the deceased man’s wounds, the healer could not help but notice that many were not the sort that could have been obtained from a fight with another wolf. The flesh had not been torn away, as with a wolf bite... it had been shredded. The Second might have begun this fight, but a far more hated foe had finished it.

The mountain cat had returned to reap its long-awaited revenge. Karina could smell it now, so strong she was uncertain how she had missed it before. As she continued to search the area for boulders to add to her grave marker, she found more clues to piece the story together. She found the bushes where Bennet had hidden, and her heart broke to smell the panic that still clung to the hiding place. Her daughter had been here... she had seen everything. This was the spot her daughter was standing in when she saw her father slayed. The young mother ached with sorrow for her child.

She also found the trail by which the two dragons had left; dotted with the Second’s blood (but thankfully none of Bennet’s). They had fled the Fold together, likely under Kjors’s orders. The firstborn dragon would never allow his family to remain here, where they were in danger, even to wait on Karina’s return. There was a mountain cat on the loose after all, and it seemed to have a taste for wolf blood. Karina could only thank the Mother that the Second, out of moral rectitude or obligation toward his blood-relative, had decided to take his niece under his (dragon)wing and protect her.

A sense of foreboding settled over Karina as she put the final stone in place. Now that her mate was laid to rest, it was time for her to leave. She had searched, but found no cougar body to put her mind at ease. It had lost blood, but so far as Karina could tell not enough to end its life. She was not safe here any longer, and neither was Gitano. Gitano! How could Karina have forgotten about him? Without another moment’s delay, she lifted her voice to the sky to summon her friend. She did not wish to worry him, but she could not keep her voice free of her heartbreak. The man would know she needed him, and he would guess long before he arrived that the worst had come to pass. 

A note: Gitano's guides warned him that it would be soon so he went out looking for Karina to bring her home, unfortunately he sucks at tracking and was unsuccessful, he's just arriving back from his failed mission now.

Gitano had been travelling back from his failed tracking trip as quickly as he possibly could. He barely rested other than when his muscles threatened to give out beneath his scrawny body and even then it was only for a few hours at a time. As much as the teen was fast, and fast he was, his stamina was frail and he could only carry out such spurts of speed for short periods of time. Combine that with the steep heights of the mountain passes slicked down with ice and it made for much slower going than he would have wished for.

Panting heavily Gitano struggled to do more than a fast walk in his current state but he was so close to getting back he couldn't afford to rest now. It had become clear to him that he wouldn't be able to find Karina and bring her back but he wanted to at least get home for Bennet. Should his guides be correct and Kjors should perish the pup would be alone and that wasn't the safest place for a child to be.

All fatigue was instantly forgotten as the tawny ears perked to Karina's call and he was off like a shot again. His muscles screamed in protest and the pads of his paws barely got purchase on the stone but he didn't care. The woman was home so maybe everything would be oka- oh. The scent that filled his heaving nostrils was one of death and that could mean only one thing. Sprinting around the final bend his gold eyes searched wildly for any clue of what had come to be.

Karina standing next to an unnatural pile of stone, blood splatters on the area and paw prints leading away from them all. Gitano wasn't sure exactly what had happened but the scent of a stranger and a mountain cat hung heavily in the air and he was suddenly furious. His guides should have told him more they should have warned him of this! How dare they give him the bare minimum when now a child was at stake?!

He knew not what to do and instead after a few moments of silence other than his heavy breathing he stepped forward, "Karina...."

  

Karina could only imagine the horror scene flicking through Gitano’s mind as he surveyed the carnage, all the sights and smells barraging him at once. When she spoke, her voice sounded hollow, eyes drifting around the grisly landscape as if if completely blind.. as if lost.
 
“Bennet is with her uncle. She’s safe.” They were both servants of the Mother, as far as Karina knew, and She would keep them from harm and She so clearly had already. Though Karina did not fear for her daughter’s safety, she ached for her company. The Second would not grieve with the child as her own mother would.
 
“Gitano, I can’t stay here.” The girl’s voice broke, and tears began running down her cheeks in a renewed flood. “Not one more moment.” She strode forward; at first her intention was to wrap herself in her friend’s supportive embrace, but she then found her paws carrying herself past Gitano, past the grave, and past the gruesome fight scene. Tears hit the ground as she walked, but she could not make her feet stop.
 
She had no other home to flee toward, none other than the home that lay in the heart of her beloved daughter.  So find her she would, or she would die in pursuit. “Gitano, can your guides give us a bearing?” She did not stop to ask whether Gitano would be coming with her, or to explain what she was looking for, or even to turn and make sure the boy was following. Something deeply primal had control of her body. 

   

    
 

Sorry for the delay! Also was just hoping you could fade and archive their first thread together so I could beef up Gitano's lp a little <3
Also based off a random dice roll once the stars come out he would have told Karina South-West

The scene that met his muddy golden eyes was dreadful, every one of his senses begged him to turn and high tail it out of there. The stench of death and decay, the blood in the snow, the smell of the cat who presumably had some paw in this. What was worse was that Gitano knew the man who had been killed, and even worse he knew that Bennet had been here for all of it. When Karina said that the child was with her uncle a wave of relief washed over him, enough that his body slumped as all the muscles he had been holding tense relaxed slightly. The pup was safe, but she still wasn't with her mother and Kjors was still....dead.

The tawny teen straightened slightly and prepared to catch his friend as her tears began to fall but the contact never came. Instead, she walked straight past him and away from the life that they had been leading that had come to such a violent stop. Moving silently behind her he never questioned that he would travel with her, that he would help her get Bennet back. He may not have been sure of the purpose of his journey from home before but know he knew for sure. His guides had brought him to this place to keep Karina safe, and to put back together the family that he hadn't been able to stop from tearing apart.

Her words surprised him and Tano raised his eyes up to look at her form with a start. She walked quickly and with purpose and he didn't have to ask what bearings she wanted to hear. Faltering slightly he replied, "I'll get a better reading once the stars come out. Maybe we should try following their pawprints until then?" Please oh please guides talk to him tonight. If not he wasn't sure that Karina would keep him around until morning.