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 Posted: Sun Jan 04, 2026 11:02 pm
Quote: Biting Chill ( 18 ) : The cold is strangely harsh, and even the still wind is vicious enough to sting. But the cold isn't the worst part of tonight--it's what comes with it. Out of a swirl of blowing snow, a massive, wispy wolf takes shape, enormous and snarling, with fur spiked like jagged icicles. Its eyes glow with a cold, wild intelligence, and before you can even react, it lunges as though you’ve trespassed deep into its territory. Every strike it makes feels like the bite of winter itself. Wherever its claws slash, wherever its jaws snap, frost cakes over. Even if you're lucky enough not to take massive damage, the cold seeps bone deep. When you manage to land a hit, the creature bleeds a strange, clear blood--icy water that freezes instantly into slush on the ground. The more damage it takes, the more its form flickers, shredded like wind-torn snow. The wolf fights with the relentless instinct of a dire beast, but it is not invulnerable. It will never run. It will fight until its body is broken and flickering, then--finally--a sudden gust will rip through the air and carry its dissolving body away. Howls echo on the wind. The rest of its pack probably isn't too far behind. Benjamin wasn't a very religious man, despite coming from a town on the outskirts of a large city back in the Midwest. He hadn't ever really been a church-every-Sunday type, not since he'd had to drop out of high school to help support himself and his mother. after his father had died. But that didn't stop him from praying every once in a while, when the occasion called for it. Like now. When out of the ice and snow swirling around him on his way home from work, emerged a white wolf damn near the size of the semi-truck he'd just finished driving for his job. "What in the ever-living <********>," he cursed, his heart throwing itself into his throat as he stumbled back from the snarling beast, scrabbling for purchase on the snow and ice. Oh, if his mother had heard him say that...
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Posted: Mon Jan 05, 2026 6:50 am
Carterhaugh felt as if he was beginning to recognize the signs of the frost-wolf’s imminent arrival. There was a change in the wind, an especially strong chill in the air, a sense of foreboding. His wisp had even briefly appeared to nudge him encouragingly, as if it too wanted to help him prepare for the battle ahead.
Maybe he was imagining all of it, but he had run into the damn thing more than once now, and it felt sort of familiar.
Before, though, he’d managed to find magical backup. Odainsaker, then Fang. Now, he found himself interposing between the wolf and a terrified civilian, a man who likely had only the vaguest inkling that “magic” was a thing that could possibly exist.
“Stay behind me,” he said, voice firm but not unkind, as he called on the sunlight magic he’d found at his wonder and flung the bright, glowing ball at the beast.
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Posted: Mon Jan 05, 2026 7:34 pm
"What? Why? What are you gonna do?" Benjamin blurted, looking at the crazy guy who had just put himself between Benjamin and the batshit insane ICE. WOLF. that Benjamin could not emphasize enough was LARGE AND TERRIFYING. What did this lithe skinny little thing think he was going to do? Especially in such a ridiculous outfit? Wait, was it even a guy? ******** hell. Whatever the... the... weirdo in front of him was, Benjamin didn't think that they'd be able to do a damn thing to the GIANT WOLF MADE OF ICE HOLY s**t WHAT THE ******** just wished he had anything to help fight with.
Then sunlight burst from the guy's hand and oh, okay, yeah, maybe the guy had it handled a little bit. It hit the wolf directly in the chest and it howled, bleeding a strange ice-water blood.
Sure. This might as well happen, he guessed.
Deciding that since the thing was distracted, he wasn't going to sit around on his fat a** and wait while the guy in front of him did all the work, sunshine or not. He hauled himself back to his feet and rushed the thing, shouting furiously as he swung his left fist to the face of the beast.
As he did so, something in the air shifted. His fist glittered with something so quick he didn't notice anything until he was jumping back from making the wolf stumble and snarl, pawing at its snout, so that the weirdo could get another beam of light in or whatever, he just knew he didn't want to get hit by that thing.
His gloves felt different. Clothes, too. Brow furrowed, he looked down at himself, startled to realize he was clothed in something very different than what he'd left the house in that morning. The ******** class="quote">Noir Songbird
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Posted: Mon Jan 05, 2026 7:41 pm
"Kill it for the third time, ideally," Carterhaugh replied, all confidence and surety. He could handle this wolf--even if he was alone. It wasn't quite so terrifying and blood-freezing the third time around.
He readied another round of magic, when to his surprise, he was no longer fighting alone.
"What are you--" He started, distress in his tone and his eyes, because if this civilian was going to get in the middle of things--! Carterhaugh didn't want to be responsible;e for someone else being hurt.
Except...the man in front of him changed.
Oh.
Carterhaugh had never before witnessed someone else becoming a Knight, the sudden shift from ordinary person to magical warrior against the darkness that stalked their world. He did now, and it made his heart skip, a moment.
And then he grinned.
"Well! Look at you! Looks like I won't have to fight alone after all!" He fired off the second shot of his sunlight spell. "Just keep hitting it--it'll start coming apart! And don't let its teeth or claws get you!"
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Posted: Mon Jan 05, 2026 8:22 pm
Well. Alrighty then. He supposed he could listen to the weirdo magical guy about this, given the fact that he was apparently one now, too. He could feel a strange sense of knowledge tickling at his brain, things he definitely should not have known, but... He was a Page, now. His name was Missouri (and wasn't that a hilarious kind of irony, he thought a little bit fondly to himself). The rest he could figure out, or ask the guy beside him, or whatever. With an almost manic grin, he hauled back his fist and plowed it into the wolf's face again right after the spell his new (friend?) cast, just barely dodging a bite. One more punch, and it dissolved into the wind. Letting out a low whistle, he turned to Carterhaugh with raised brows. "Well. The ******** was all that?" he asked cheerily.
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Posted: Mon Jan 05, 2026 8:41 pm
The new Page certainly had plenty of enthusiasm, Carterhaugh couldn't fault that. Running right into a fight was better than Carterhaugh himself had been, then, and it wasn't as if he had much more in the way of a weapon--maybe the much fancier glove on one hand? That was interesting.
The wolf went down, as predicted. And maybe Carterhaugh hadn't done it alone, but honestly, having a new Page by his side was way more satisfying, in a way.
He was still grinning proudly when he turned to face his new comrade in arms.
"That," Carterhaugh said, "was magic. Things like that are all over Destiny City. This place is...unique." To say the absolute very least. "And you are now a Page of Earth, but you probably know that--or at least part of it. I'm Carterhaugh, a Squire of Earth, which basically means I've been doing this for a little longer than you have and I got a magical promotion for it." The familiar greens and browns, the golden symbols--that almost made this more special.
"Knights like us usually Awaken in a moment of need. And I for one am very glad to have had some backup."
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Posted: Mon Jan 05, 2026 9:04 pm
Missouri nodded. "Yeah, I kinda figured it was magic. I mean, plenty of people are quick-change artists or whatever, but I sure ain't one of them! Especially not to do it without knowing what ******** I'm doing." He glanced between them, noting the similar outfits. Okay, yeah. The symbols, the colors. Made sense. "I'm glad I had backup, too. I don't think I woulda tried just beating its a** without someone else here," he said with a belly laugh. "Uh... So... Can we go somewhere, and I can ask you more questions?"
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Posted: Mon Jan 05, 2026 9:20 pm
"Oh, I'm not good at that sort of thing either," Carterhaugh agreed with a laugh. "But you got right into it. I'm impressed."
There was howling in the distance.
"Yeah, let's find somewhere else to talk. I'll give you as much of the rundown as you'd like," he offered, beckoning for the man to follow him.
(It was too bad he couldn't just go to his Wonder, but he'd learned there were time limits on such things. Alas and alack.)
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