There is nothing warm about their return — the lands are cold. Unyielding. Natural, rocky talons stretch far to the sky, hoping to strike the heavens above. Thick clouds cover the light of the moon, making their descent into the world shrouded with inky darkness and a promise of death. There is nothing to light a demon's path.

Forth she goes, thick fur swaying with the nighttime wind — determined, a cold mark in her gaze as she familiarizes herself with the terrain once more. But where a mighty and serpentine warrior once stalked the lands, lay something a little more broken. Her hips sway no more, stilted in their movement from a long-since healed wound. It betrays her — curses her. She is still a predator of cannibalistic origins, but no longer whole and complete.

It angers her — drives her.

The need for blood overwhelms her senses now, taking hold.

“These cursed lands no longer feel welcoming,” she whispers aloud to her companions as she finally stops, turning to face them with visible breath leaking from betwixt obsidian lips. “But we will make it our home once more.” For now. Something had driven her back to these lands, although she isn't quite sure what it is yet. A yearning, a longing... A thirst for revenge? She smiles at them, even if warmth from long ago no longer graces the action. An itch along her spine reminds her of her last memories of this place.

But she's not alone this time. @Léontine, her ever faithful sister — and @Gauthier ♔, a surprising but most welcome companion.

she dogs her sister's heels, ever the faithful companion - even as her ears twist uncertainly behind her to catch the plodding gait of their third. @Gauthier ♔, ludivine insists, is useful. he is part of their cadre now. it twists her stomach to share her precious kin with another, especially a man, but she grudgingly allows him to follow. not without the occasional attempt to send him packing: throwing their trail off, if he should wander to hunt; pissing on his food if he leaves it unguarded for too long; casually bumping into him ( whoops! ) while on a narrow trail.

nothing seems to work.

and so here they are, in amaryllis again, with a growth that she considers cancerous.

@Ludivine turns to them and she sees the brief, wicked gleam of her fangs as she speaks. her breath curls in front of her dark lips, a cloud reminiscent of a dragon blowing smoke, and she scoffs at the words. it was never welcoming, the dog insists, stretching her paw out to curl long fangs against the stone. lest you want us to bow beneath the cunts on the ridge. the words are harsh but the tone is indifferent, almost unaware she's speaking as her eyes drag across the walls and ceiling of the labyrinth. they both know, for all her bravado, that if ludivine would suggest living beneath the so-called dieudonne atop the bluffs, she would without question.

but all three of them know that she would never.

a silence spreads, then, as léontine finishes her brief assessment of their temporary refuge and, finding it suitable, thrusts herself down onto the floor just shy of her sister's feet. she rolls, stretching luxuriously, little more than a housecat on the master's bed. she ends up on her back, spine curved so she can leer at the devorre that is no doubt just behind them.

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midnight mass
a crimson pool so warm and deep
lulls me to an endless sleep

He had never expected to see this wretched scrape of hellish terra again. Never expected to cross through the passage, to cast an eye over the sea that had swallowed and chewed and spit him on distant shores, half-dead, choking on salt and seaweed. Never expected to be dragged, drenched bruised skins and heavy bones, into the care of those he had never expected to see again. All expectations had been cast for this, doubt and chance and – slight misery, for this great and terrible return.

Reluctance drove against him with each step and breath as they traipsed nearer in every drawling day. The weather had often worked against him, carrying off their scent when he would linger too far, odd noises that would terrorize him in his sleep, meats that would spoil the seeming moment he’d turn his back to it, toils of treacherous paths that would leave him scraping for footing cliffside. Yet for all his disdain, there was nothing else behind and everything in the forward.

These cursed lands no longer feel welcoming. He lifted his head and paused, eyes passed over Ludivine’s teething grin lit with acrimonious glee, the spite and the venom and the ire that comes alive with each cut of her teeth against the curve of her lips. Aside, it was never welcoming. Léontine’s apathy, ringing true as ever. Lest you want us to bow beneath the cunts on the ridge. At this his lips prickled with distaste, long shirked of his hound obligations to the cannibals of the Bluffs and far from an intention to return.

Their voices dulled to a distant, tinny echo in the labyrinthine caves, swallowed by the deep dark full of damp, smothered quiet. Lingering still in the mouth of the cave he looked off to the forestry that surrounded their camp, attentive to the shift of the shadows and the sway of the brush. He knew of Léo’s disapproving glare forever burrowing a hole in his skin and shrugged it with patience, paying little mind.

Home. It didn’t fit, even in the solace and the settling chill, the familiar paths he had walked too long before. But it would, it would have to.

Gauthier seated himself there in the soft muck against the sandstone, watchful over the unfolding of night outside, the clouds pulled over moonless skies. What next? he mused, his breath curling finely across the mangled flesh of his cheeks, Ludivine held in his peripheral.

@Ludivine, @Léontine

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The tension between her two traveling companions hadn't gone amiss to the French babe's eyes — but she'd done her best to ignore it. Like a mother hen ignoring the squabbling of her chicks, allowing them to position themselves inside an arbitrary hierarchy for the length of the journey as it suited them. The tension could be cut with tooth and nail — but soon, there would be better blood sports to feast on.

Her gaze remains trained to the world outside the gaping maw of the cavern, tail flicking along stilled haunches as she waits for her companions to draw closer to her side. Only then does she look away, trained to @Léontine as she drops dramatically at her side — enough to draw a toothy grin to Ludivine's face.

“C'est vrai,” Indeed, she confirms her dear sister's words with a chuckle, thick with the venom of a woman scorned. There was no warmth in her laughter. “Perhaps they will come to regret letting me live,” she hums thoughfully — hatefully. A lesser being would have been grateful to be spared, but for such a proud cannibal? It was nothing more than an insult. To be slain by those that carried such darkness in their hearts would have been a fitting end for the carnivorous feline, but instead she was thrown to the vultures to wear her loss like a scarlet letter. How vile.

Her gaze shifts as their last companion joins them, his prowess suffocating the very air around them. @Gauthier ♔'s question seems innocent enough, but it hungers to drown in blood.

“Make our mark on these lands,” she replies, gaze once more drifting to the horizon, “even if we must do it by force.”

@Gauthier ♔ ignores her as always and instead of being annoyed, her glower turns impish. her eyes slant and her lips twist up into a smirking dark line, before her gaze shifts to @Ludivine. do you miss zem? she croons at him, voice dripping in a forced french accent as she speaks common; she'd heard the other dieudonne speak the same, but she's never had such a heavy accent. with practice, it faded enough that she can speak without it. she prods at what she hopes is a half-formed wound. he doesn't seem the kind to be affected much but she likes to try, if only to incur an exasperated sigh. he sits just aside of her sister and the maroon woman flops onto her side and then stomach, resting her shoulder gently against ludivine's leg, lest she moves. perhaps they will regret letting me live, she says - and though léo knows that her sister is sour that she was gifted such a thing, she can't help but be.... grateful. it is not a feeling that sits well with the hellhound and she frowns, ears tipping back to her skull. she says nothing on the topic, knowing there will not be a consensus between them - that they stand on opposite sides of such a topic - and instead lets her gaze drift to the stretching country of amaryllis. where to first? she says at last, draping her head over an outstretched leg, tail tip twitching. will you take the cove again?

midnight mass
a crimson pool so warm and deep
lulls me to an endless sleep

They would regret it. Her response in trait denotes the pitiless scorn she holds in her heart for what they had done. There was a taste of it in his mouth once, digging through the badlands while the vultures circled overhead. Acrid and curdling, as he accused Louve of devouring her family, if not planting a shallow grave he could not find. But he is a poor subject to apologies - terrible, really, given his track record of doing things finer saints would be horrified by. Were they all so horrendous after all, his crimes? Weren’t they so few? Weren’t most lands bathed and built on blood?

Do you miss zem? A feigned curiosity, riddled with amusement, swelled the hall. Her dulcet french tones pluck the strings of a forgotten chord. Gauthier turned an eye to @Léontine, hearing the smirk before he even witnessed it. He had learned the best response for her is the least defensive. If anything, it was what got deeper under her skin than anywhere on him she could ever touch. A grin, musing and cold, met the question with little defense. There was no love left for Amaryllis, for the rains, for the fields, and certainly not for the Wolfbron Dieus in their high towers.

And why should he? He had only been a number in their game. And not assuredly a lucky one. Oh, very much. dipped thracian timbre, dripping with sardonic fervor.

They had arrived to make their mark on these lands, Ludivine confirmed, with a twinge of bloodlust still quivering on her lip. Though he had little desire anymore to prove himself to anyone (but one, perhaps) his silence is an agreement. Her ambition was all too delectable to not be an audience to, and it was well enough of a contentment. The consideration that he would die in this awful place was a distant, yet harrowing and recurring, nightmare.

He shuddered subconsciously and blamed it on the chill.

Where to? an echoed thought, and the too familiar cove lent to prospect. Though the nights on the beach hadn’t been that awful, his only consuming first thought was a crackle, a roar, and tumbling into the rolling, relentless waves that pulled him into their dark depths. Gauthier looked back to @Ludivine, equally curious and patiently quiet.

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They bicker like children — but soon enough, they'd unite as one. She was certain of it. Her gaze lazily watches the land outside the cavernous maw, curious if any should fatefully wander by. It's been a while since they've proved themselves through bloodshed, and perhaps a hot feast would be enough to settle tempers some. She's drawn back to reality as @Léontine speaks to her once more, curious as to their next plans — the cove? But Ludivine's skull is already shaking before the words are even completely out of her sister's mouth.

“Non,” she replies instantly, a quick look in @Gauthier ♔'s direction. “Too much sand, wind, and salt water. Besides, that is our past now.” A lingering meaning, even if she doesn't speak it aloud. A time when Gauthier had held a chain against her throat, her nothing more than a loyal hound to her tsar. In truth, there would always be some semblance of god worship shared equally between the two of them. But she had been much more naive back then, oh so willing to fall in line for the offer of a home. Something she'd never had a taste of before. But this was different.

She would be the one with a crown this time.

“Let's go further inland... Find a place that's warmer, and filled with more prey.” A twist of her words — prey, a subtle meaning beneath the poisoned letters. “But for now, we rest.”. Rest, to kill another day. She settles herself along the cool ground beside her sister, content to sleep the night away and start anew. Her gaze lazily lingers on Gauthier for a few moments, as if beckoning him closer, before she finally allows herself to drift off.

exeunt Ludivine