Lady_Ourania
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He did not wait to see if the soldier understood and acted accordingly, the snowy shapeshifter already crawling up the slope when a bid for information pattered swiftly up behind him, tugging at his ear like an infant that knew no better. Tell him, he said, as if the answer was not scorching enough to the retina, lumped before them in all its putrid grandeur. Even with senses inhibited by his race's singular, helpless form, it seemed unlikely that he had overlooked the nonentity bearing down on him through the blubber-dense dark, wanting to dismantle. And yet here was the suggestion that it be vocalized as well, a narration to give substance to the shapeless, to grant design to the amorphous. It had not crossed his mind until that very moment that the boy might have hit his head a little harder than was healthy when he'd paid a unintentional blood oath to the front steps. And if he genuinely expected a response, he would be bitterly disappointed by the lack of a comprehensible one, canine mouth and tongue not built to carry anything beyond growling syllables.
There was a diffused sense of light on the upper level, a detail that made no difference to him but would provide Arden with something to judge the area by if he sought to appease wariness. Gideon ignored the state of the hallway, already moving on to a door that he realized with a cold knot of alarm was wide open to whoever might have strolled by. Kishara's door, the one he had walked through countless times before, had ridiculed as a sliver of a barrier that divided sacrifice from refugee. His door. The wolf's claws stirred brittle brown worms that had once been spry stalks of greenery, crumbling them as he pressed deeper in, gaze flicking across the ruins. The plants had withered into husks of their former, lush glory, struck by the drought of their keeper's influence and ushered on into lethal desiccation by the death of an era. The slim goddess herself was nowhere to be seen amidst the tragic autumn landscape, her absence simultaneously relieving and unsettling to him. She would not have appreciated the upheaval of her estate, and he could already pinpoint the inheritance of small carcasses Gaia would be handed upon her return, birds and rabbits and all manner of beasts that had retreated from the unforgiving outside only to be followed by a harsher alternative. The unusually still environment allowed him to pick Alexander out easily, the aoide curled over himself, knees drawn and arms hugging protectively. When Gideon rumbled a soft note to warn the nervous creature of his presence, the face came up swiftly and wet with tears, frail wings quivering to an erratic rhythm. "Gideon..." His name was a choked sob on the other's lips as he began to unfurl by slow degrees, sensing safety in his appearance. "Gideon, what happened? Where is my Lady? Why is this place... why is this happening? |
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