mall-caps;">Out of Character
No sorries! I am too happy to be roleplaying with you and Gabriel again. ^_____^ <3



mall-caps;">In Character
    The coyote watched Zana retreat, surprised that she was so silent and sudden. Again, the Lykoi elder thought the youth seemed moody and unhappy; she wondered what the cause was, and added it to the growing list of questions she had for Gabriel. The pair remained quiet as they listened to Zana until she could no longer be heard, and after a long while, Gabriel finally spoke, his thoughts on the same page as her own.


   The ashen hybrid was on her feet and following Gabriel without hesitation, trotting quickly to catch up to the golden Aquila. She snaked closer to him and rubbed her shoulder against his gingerly, bumping him with her muzzle at his neck once before she put space between them, matching his pace with her own as they walked. For a moment, she was distracted by what she could see of the territory—it seemed to be nothing more than empty grassland as far as she could see. There must be more, she thought, else Gabriel wouldn't have settled here. Inferni couldn't well survive on the small rodents that likely made the fields their home. She could vaguely smell the coast, and her nose lifted to the wind, inhaling the familiar scent of salt and sand.


   The coyote considered for a moment, and then cracked half of a smile. "I don't know where to start," she said, shaking her head. There was another hefty pause as the coyote's eyes drifted to her paws and the ground beneath them, watching her step carefully. "I saw what happened to the old territory, so I don't have to wonder why we're here," she offered, never guessing Gabriel was the direct cause of the flames that had consumed all of their former homelands. Upon first encountering that flame-devoured beach again, the coyote had been depressed almost to the point that she was ready to give up—but that faint scent on the wind had drawn her here, to find Gabriel and Inferni alive and well.


   "How have you been doing?" She supposed that was certainly the most important question she could ask—Gabriel was the only one of her children left, or so her nose told her. They had scattered to the wind again, the bonds holding them together shattering during her absence. The coyote knew it was her fault, too; without her, what would keep some of them in Inferni? Some were loyal to the clan, and others were loyal to her. Perhaps they would return, just as she had—but they might take just as long as Kaena, if not longer.

In Character
    The family's numbers were in constant swing, like anything else—at times they made up most of Inferni, and at other times there were only one or two Lykois left in the world. They had done well since Gabriel's litter, naturally—six Lykoi-de le Poer children made it to adulthood, and they were nearly four years old now. Their birthday would pass in the late summer, when the trees were just starting to yellow and wither on their furthest leaves. Kaena thought about Ahren for a moment, and the last time she had seen him. It was a long time ago, on the beach—he told her of the port far to the south where she might write him. She hadn't. That last meeting had felt like closure, and it had given the Lykoi a shaky kind of peace.


   It was fitting that Gabriel had started that fire and a new chapter in Inferni history. Ahren had burned his father's cabin, an act of flame which had severed him from Chimera and ushered him into Inferni, however temporarily. The de le Poer legacy was wrought from flame and embers, and Gabriel carried it as surely as he carried her own, carved into flesh and written with spilled blood. He laughed, and the elder Lykoi's mind wandered away from the past again, brought to attention by Gabriel's words and his touch. His affection sent opposing thoughts careening through her mind; at once, she was too happy to receive his attention and again disheartened by how quickly she had walked away from him and his siblings in pursuit of Eris.


   The younger hybrid spoke of the family, and the Lykoi cocked her head to the side, a smirk crossing her scarred face. "We're an unruly bunch, huh?" she half-joked. The Lykoi fell silent for a minute as they walked, passing by a few large, storm-gray rocks. Her paws fell rhythmically, and she had not felt so spry since she had started tracking Astaroth. "How many of us are there now?" she asked, picking her words somewhat carefully. Her thoughts turned to Eris's half-siblings and littermates, Arkham, Rachias, and Andrezej. They were all adults now, and Kaena had missed the formative months of their lives. They would surely resent her, if they were still here at all.

mall-caps;">In Character
    Though they spoke, Kaena did not allow herself to be taken completely away from the scenery. All the while, her head swiveled away from Gabriel, inspecting the territory and the trail as they walked along. This was home now, and she would be silly not the start learning its details now. Mostly they had just passed over plains land, dotted with the occasional rock pile. The path they walked was well worn, and seemed too meandering and curvaceous to be a path created by a canine. Perhaps it had been a hiker's trail long ago, or a deer path.


   In her youth, Kaena had thought the Lykoi blood was not long for this earth. After the mess of her stepmother, half-brother, and her father, she thought she was the only one left, and in her recklessness and anger she had vowed to be the last one. Zulifer had changed that for her, and it was all downhill from there. There were probably twenty Lykoi descendants, perhaps more—if seven lived here and there were thirteen born of her own body still breathing, then there were more than twenty. She listened intently to Gabriel, surprised—so Vitium, Ahemait, Samael, and the Aquila himself had given her grandchildren, nine that Gabriel knew of.


    It was at once elating and disappointing to learn Ahemait and Stygian had formed their own clan—it meant they likely would not return here, but it also meant there was an outpost of Lykoi elsewhere, perhaps an entire branch of family to develop on its own—and Kaena knew Stygian brought something damn special to the bloodline. She remembered his father clearly. Hollow Nothing had been a force to be reckoned with, and Stygian was just as dark-hearted as his father. It was a surprise to learn that Corona had been here for any stretch of time, and the Lykoi frowned at that. Again, she'd missed her daughter—Ahren had taken her to Chimera in her youth, and the Lykoi had always felt distanced and separated from her sun-furred daughter.


    The next part of what Gabriel said made the Lykoi's pace slow to almost a halt for a moment, her ears folding back and her head dropping a good foot. In pursuit of that fucking devil-child, she'd lost the whole rest of the litter—she'd never even really known them. They were too young when she'd left, perhaps three or four months old, and now she never would know Andre. "How did Andre and Sam die?" Her voice was low and hurt, wavering as she said their names. She knew better than to ask where Rachias and Arkham had gone—if the tawny hybrid knew that, he would have said it. The muscle in her chest felt heavy, and ached dully—all she had given up and lost for Eris, and the devil-child couldn't have even bothered to stick around for Kaena when she was dying.

Out of Character
   Slight powerplay with the grabbing and such, hope it's okay. If not plz kick me and I will edit this post. :o


In Character
    The coyote had misunderstood him, then—Samael was alive? Her ears almost perked at that; if she had misunderstood him about Sam, perhaps then Andre was still breathing somewhere. That was a stupid hope, and as soon as the thought entered her mind she cursed it. She listened to him, and then nodded, too shocked to say anything at that moment. It made sense, then, that Samael would be presumed dead—if the disease had claimed an entire pack, one Lykoi child would make no difference. But stranger things had happened, as her presence before Gabriel in that very moment might attest. The coyote herself did not speak, soaking in the loss of the prince of fear quietly. Either way, alive or dead, he wasn't here, and his absence was another hole in her heart.

    Ahren? The name startled the coyote, and she looked at Gabriel hard for a moment, wondering if she had even heard the name correctly. Again she remembered him on the beach, and that sense that she had missed out hit her. He was dead, too, if Samael had been taken by disease, and there was no coming back from that. Ahren had come back and she'd missed him, just like she'd missed the childhood of Rachias, Andre, Arkham, and Eris. She wondered momentarily if he'd come looking for her at all—part of Kaena loved Ahren still for what he had given her in her children, and that part hurt like hell at that moment. She didn't know what to say to him. His father was mentioned so lightly, in passing—just another piece of history to regurgitate to her. The ash-colored hybrid frowned.

    Gabriel kept walking a moment, the both of them silent and Kaena lagging behind. He stopped, and she walked until she caught up with him, facing him but not looking at him, instead focused on the horizon, looking over the dull jade green fields, patchy and spotted with broad swaths of yellow, all of it waving gently in the wind. There was more silence between them, and then Gabriel spoke. The words jarred the Lykoi, and her eye turned on him in an instant, away from the distance and memories and into his face, blazing fire ignited behind that single hawk's eye. Accusations died on her tongue, and for a brief moment she might have hit him, perhaps in a role reversal like she had so long ago on the beach when Samael was young and well. She didn't dare to now.

    In an instant the anger faded, replaced by an immense sadness, a vast sense of loss overcoming the coyote as she did something inexplicable; she reached forward with both arms and pressed herself close to Gabriel. She clutched him for a long moment, holding him tightly and pressing her head into his neck. Her single eye squeezed shut tightly, and when it opened again there were tears there, filming over it and spilling down the side of her face, wetting her fur. She had not cried in a long time, and these tears were not solely for Andrezej. They were for Samael, for Ahren, for her children, whom she'd surely never know as well now that she'd come and gone while they were still so young.

   The Lykoi held her son for a long moment, inhaling his scent deeply and holding onto it, shaking sighs rattling her body as she grew number, her pain subsiding enough for her to speak. He had done it for a reason. She knew that much—Gabriel was not a mindless killer, and he certainly did not hate his blood enough to kill for that reason alone. "Why?"

mall-caps;">In Character
    There was nothing left in Kaena; she felt rather hollowed and scraped clean, picked clean and dry by time and birds. Andre was gone, and she would never know him. The same with Rachias, the same with Arkham—indeed, the very same way that parts of Gabriel's childhood were gone, taken from him when Baneesh had died on the old beach. She stayed close to Gabriel for another long moment, and heard the reason why he'd killed Andrezej. That brought a different sort of pain to her, and as she drew back away from her embrace, she reached out to touch his fur lightly, running her fingers through the shaggy gold, charred at its edges and dusted with black. She did not know even his daughter's name, but she understood.


   In the same situation or even just a similar one, Kaena might have dealt the same punishment. Certainly, Kaena would have ousted him from Inferni, banishing him from even the hybrid clan for his crimes against his own blood. Vitium flashed through her mind, and Kaena almost missed her son, regretful that she'd had to exile him but still standing by her decision to do so. It might have been the same for Gabriel; certainly, she would have killed her brother in a heartbeat to save any one of her children. Kairo flashed clearly in her mind, and she visibly shivered, folding her ears back flat against her skull. She hadn't said his name in years and years—part of her feared his ghost, feared he might come back still, even eight plus years after he was dead and buried, his bones beneath the dirt.


    The coyote rubbed the fur beneath her eye, sighing at herself softly. She hated to cry, no matter how badly she felt on the inside, and she hated others seeing it even more. It was weakness, and the coyote loathed to show such things, even to her child. She looked away, again into the distance, remembering everything she could about Andrezej. She wanted to remember him as he had been in his youth—small, utterly defenseless, sweet-smelling. He had become a monster, if he was willing to do to his sibling what Kairo had done to Kaena so long ago.


    "You did what I would have," she said after a long pause, turning back to Gabriel. Kaena would not say Andre deserved it; she hurt for him too much. The coyote wondered if she had been in the position to mete out justice if she would have delivered the same fate to Andre. Could she condemn one of her children to death? A half-sibling, certainly—she felt no sadness for Kairo's death. But her child? The ashen hybrid was unsure, and she was relieved that she hadn't been here to make that decision. It was Gabriel's burden to bear, though easier, as Andre was only his half-brother, not his child. "I'm sorry you had to," she said, her voice still low.

___ Omg one week is way too long to be absent. I feel so out of everything.


___ She did not condemn him, but he did not believe her statement either. If it had been her decision to make, she would have chosen exile. Vitium, after all, still lived. The proof of that had come to his doorstep believing that they had a right to exist. They were granted the privilege of remaining on Inferni soil simply because Gabriel believed in blood. He believed in that above all else; regardless of whether it belonged to family or needed to be spilled.
___ Gabriel did not believe her because she did not meet his eyes. He did not believe her because he remembered that day on the beach. Still, he did not speak this. The corner of his mouth turned down slightly, and one ear turned back, but he showed no other sign of this discomfort. “It came during war,” he said, as if that might explain it. This too, felt like a lie. “Something happened to him after you left,” he amended, realizing that this was the truth. All of those children had changed; so much so that he had not recognized them when they had come again. They had chosen another world, one that did not involve the coyote clan or the brother that had raised them. And remarkably, Gabriel thought that this was for the best.

Dude, it's hard. Things like to move at lightspeed when you're not checking back every second. D: Then, of course, when you do hang around all day, things seem to move in super slow-mo. XD



    Even she was not so sure she could kill her own child. Maeryn had been enough—the girl was a mistake, an accident. In a fit of despondent rage, Kaena had decided she looked too much like Zulifer. Hell, when she'd first sought Kerberos, it was to kill him, not to take him back. Not only was he the child of her dead love, utterly reminiscent of the black wolf she'd first fell for, he was tainted by the devil, Salvaged Eternity. Only, when she'd seen him again... even when he'd come after her to take her life, she didn't want his. She would have taken it if he'd forced her—if he'd made it abundantly clear one of them had to die, she wouldn't have hesitated to save herself and condemn her child. Otherwise, though... she did not know a limit of love for her children.


    The coal-dusted man spoke, and Kaena's gaze returned to him, that single golden eye murky with an indiscernable emotion. Her son had followed in her footsteps, then, and made war with the wolves as she had. "The war?" Curiosity showed across her features, and she looked at him before he spoke again. Then the Lykoi looked away sharply, her head lowering. She wanted to ask if maybe she could have saved him—but the positive answer hurt too hard to think about, so the Lykoi remained quiet for a moment, contemplating her dead son. "Do you know what that was?" she asked, not knowing if it was simply one of those unexplainable, subtle changes, or if some event had provoked the young Lykoi to betray his blood.


    The hybrid studied Gabriel, her mind drifting. How was it that the children she had kept by her side, even retreating into isolation to raise had slipped away, leaving their blood and clan behind forever, and this child—driven away in youth by terror and bloodshed—had returned to her, served her diligently, even taking the reigns of the clan and founding it all over again here? He hadn't done it for her; she was neither stupid nor sentimental enough to believe that. But it was nice to imagine it had been at least partly for her—and maybe she'd find that was the truth, someday.

     Neither Kaena nor Kerberos had ever spoken of Maeryn. She was, in many ways, the child that had not been. The eldest children of the Lykoi woman were both gone. Gabriel alone had survived; he had held stubbornly and steadfast to the often faltering Inferni clan. It was his birthright, and though he did not understand the same sort of empire his father had, he knew that this meant something. Inferni was destined to stay in the hands of the de le Poer/Lykoi family. There was no other place for them to go.
     They were very much the wayward children of the earth. “The wolf pack to the south, Dahlia de Mai. Asphyxia attacked a woman from there, and her brother decided that taking revenge on her alone was not enough. So I struck back, and things evolved from there.” He shrugged, no longer giving such thought to that battle. It was no different from the war with Clouded Tears or Aremys. Each of these were passing moments in his memory; scars alone remained. “No,” the Aquila answered lowly. “He just turned one day. He attacked Rachias, threatened Faolin…he tried to kill Arkham. Then he attacked me. I had no choice but to exile him.”

mall-caps;">In Character
    The coyote's bright golden eye looked away from Gabriel for a moment, watching the rolling waves of long grass as the wind brushed across their territory, carrying the salty smell of the sea. She listened to him speak of war, not recognizing the names of the pack or Asphyxia, but she memorized them regardless. Chances were, Dahlia de Mai was still in existence, and the coyote had no idea how to regard them. Her son had referred to it as a past event, as if it had already come to its culmination. She accepted it readily, finding it no stranger than if he had told her a relative had returned for a visit. The coyote shook her head; quarrels and spats were unavoidable. Sometimes they were even necessary to keep people from going crazy. When she had her war with Salvaged, it had only been the two of them. There was no need to draw Inferni or Jaded Shadows into it, and though Kaena was the Aquila and she could have brought down all of Inferni on his pretty little head, raiding Jaded Shadows for his blood. She hadn't, and neither had he brought his wolves onto their territory, though they were neighbors, less than a mile separating points of their territory.


    "Would you still consider them hostile?" She needed to know this, in case she encountered a wolf who claimed to be part of that pack or smelled like it. The hybrid would inspect them, later—she would keep a good distance between herself and the borders, naturally, but she would get to know their smell, and any other pack's scent she encountered. It was necessary to ensure her survival—it was not so easy now; she did not know any of the wolf packs by name or scent yet, and it would have been dangerous to plunge in headfirst without first inquiring about Inferni's political climate.


    He spoke of Andre, and the coyote frowned. Perhaps there was still something, some event that Andre had never told anyone—maybe he would have told her? The coyote dismissed the thought; if he hated his siblings enough to threaten their existence, he wouldn't have given a shit about her, either. She made a pained expression, her head bobbing. "Then... he came back worse," the ashen hybrid added, disgust in her voice. It certainly wasn't Gabriel's fault—in his position she would have done the same. She would have given him the chance to live, albeit separately from the clan and family that had spawned him. It was the same with Vitium. Her ash-colored head shook, a rattling sigh escaping from her charcoal lips. "Maybe I could have done something." The statement was morose and full of bitter self-resentment, though the woman did not seek comfort. There was nothing that could heal that searing wound in her heart where her child had existed. Andre had made his own choices, certainly, but maybe if his mother had been more than a vague memory to him, he wouldn't have changed so.

     In many ways, the hostility between Gabriel and Haku was similar to his mother’s battle with Salvaged. Of course, he had not created that monster. If history told them anything, though, it was that one day Gabriel would be the one to rend the chocolate male and send him to hell. Haku deserved nothing more then to be thrown into the pit alive, but Gabriel would be satisfied ripping his soul from his belly. A thin, peculiar smile, broke across his face. “If they present themselves as such,” he said. This was the closest he could come to handing her a warrant.
     This smile faded as his mother continued to worry herself over the dead boy. Both of Gabriel’s eyes hardened and turned vicious. “He made his choice and turned his back on this clan,” he reassured her, umbrage in his voice. “God has a purpose in all things, and the demon in your son was no different. You could no more have saved him then you could have stopped a fire.” He nearly said that fire. This was peculiar. Until he had been confronted with guilt the thought had never crossed his mind to explain (or even admit) his responsibility in the thing that had destroyed not only their home, but the entirety of the old territory.

    The coyote's face did not change as Gabriel spoke, and there was only a slight movement of her head downward to indicate she had a clear understanding of what he meant. She would avoid them as far as their borders went, but if she encountered one who was less than perfectly polite, she would not hesitate to remind that wolf of the blood that flowed through Inferni like a river, a mutually beneficial symbiote relationship in which one sustained the other. There were times when the Lykoi had been few and Inferni numbered many not of its name, but there were also times when the opposite had held true, where the coyote clan was filled with members of the infamous family and little else.



    Gabriel's words struck something in her, and there was hesitation across her scarred face. She had never held belief in fate or any higher power—but in her age she had seen more and more signs that there was something more powerful than the living, something which crafted them and directed them gently at times and pointedly at others—she had felt it strongest in her first drive to return to Inferni, when she had hunted Salvaged unsuccessfully and returned to Inferni. It was that which had drawn her back to this territory at first to exact her revenge, and later to begin her family. And it was only much later that she'd even realized that—a longer or shorter time away might mean she would have missed Ahren entirely; perhaps if she had waited a year or two to return he would have already been the king of Chimera, unreachable, and she would not have Gabriel now.



    The canine hybrid again nodded. Even so, there was something that had not settled in her. Gabriel's comfort had worked, but it had still left something unsaid, something the Lykoi woman could not reach in her son. There was more than he was telling her, but she let it go and did not pry at him. Gabriel was a multi-faceted creature, and if he kept something from his mother it was for a reason. It was likely something she did not want to know—something that would have caused her unnecessary strife without actual benefit for the knowledge, or so she liked to think. "He brought it on himself," she said after a moment, and decided she had nothing more to say about Andre. He was gone.



    Her thoughts turned almost mechanically away as she forced herself away from the subject, swallowing the sharp ache in her chest as best she could. "You brought Inferni to this place," she said, making more of an observation than a statement. It was more or less a lead-in for him, since she could ask nothing specific about a generalized event of which she had little knowledge. She had gathered that there was a fire, and after discovering this place and some of its familiar scents, she had surmised that there had been a great migration. But unlike the other packs of the former territories, Inferni had not perished with the flame and smoke. Here she stood on its soil. It was different, but it was Inferni the same.

     There was no doubt that one day he would slip up. Someone would find out about the terrible things that he had done. Slaughtered Iskata in a rage. Set Bleeding Souls to burn. Killed his half-brother not simply because he deserved to die, but because Gabriel had wanted to. His only regret was that he did not rip what was left of a soul out of Andrezej’s body. Instead, he had left the bloodied body in the arms of the half-sister who had come to hate him, just as both brothers had. It seemed appropriate.
     She dismissed what had been as she seemed most able to do. Gabriel no longer thought on the matter. He likewise did not think about the fire or the death of the scarred woman. This did not change the fact that things triggered in his brain—the smell of gasoline, a splash of blood on the sand. He didn’t think about Baneesh much either. Not until he saw yellow eyes and crooked teeth and death coming for him. Then, something broke. Something happened and everything went away until hours later, when he found himself alone and hurt and could not reason what had occurred.
     So perhaps, in a way, he was an addict.
“Inferni will always survive. Regardless of numbers, poor leadership, or disaster, Inferni will survive.” He had told them that, well over a year ago, when they had come here.