After With a Whimper

Sparrow hadn't come back for a while and Archon had gotten curious. It was unlike her to leave the pack in the first place, so Archon hadn't waited too long to follow her. He was used to keeping up with Caelestis. He knew what trouble these mortals could get into. He couldn't say he was worried, but he still found himself following her fading scent trail.

Now, as he returned to Abaven, one thing was clear: Sparrow was dead.

Archon couldn't say he was upset. He didn't feel any pity. He was only assured that a fading light had finally gone out. That left Abaven in Archon's paws. His purpose here had been to study mortals and how they had functioned. He had felt that God was calling him elsewhere before, but now he was sure.

As Archon crossed into the Abaven lands, he was greeted by his companion, Obi Mon Kinobi.

"Your face is sullen, my lord" the monkey commented simply. Archon shook his head.

"Pensive, maybe, but not sullen," Archon said. "Today is a good day. God has given me a clear sign of what to do next."

Obi looked at Archon quizzically, following him as he padded deeper into the pack.

"We should gather Dea and Kerrigan. I'd like to speak to Caelestis, but I doubt she will accompany us."

Obi understood what Archon meant. It was time to leave. He dipped his head and dismissed himself to gather some things before their departure.

Archon found his way to a meeting spot and called out. He didn't wait for everyone to gather to break the news. His message was clear: Sparrow is dead. The agreement is forfeit. From this point on, Abaven is no more.

Anyone who wished to speak was welcome, however, and Archon would wait patiently for them.

The howl took her absolutely by surprise. It ripped through her heart like a wound, and she gasped, breath stuttering. Dead but how? The howler was Archon, the Supreme Leader of Abaven, and his call made it clear that he was leaving the pack. She didn’t know what path his god was leading him down, but she knew the one she must take. Heart heavy, she made her way by the weaving path of the rapids, and to Archon’s side. She dipped her head in a moment both of respect and mourning, before raising her eyes and looking at Archon - only just short of being eye to eye with the man. “Supreme Leader. Archon.” She called for his attention. “I know you likely have duties elsewhere, and disbanding Abaven is right for you - but out of respect for family, of which mine meant the world to me, would you give me this opportunity to hold together what mine once built? Instead of disbanding this pack, would you allow me the chance to try again with it?” Family was the world to her, and perhaps Archon might understand that. His family where children of gods, and from what little she knew of him, it was clear that he held respect for his family as much as his faith. She wanted to ask of him what happened to Sparrow, she wanted to fall to pieces as yet another part of her life fell apart, but she refused to. She stood strong, she had to prove - to herself and to others, that she might be worthy of this chance. She knew what she was asking for was not going to be easy. Without Sparrow, what would remain of the pack? But even if it was as if to hold grains of sand, slipping from her paws, she had to try. she had to try. "Talk" "You" Think

After waiting for some time, the new family member broke through the silence. She pleaded for a chance to make things right. For the first time, his nose wrinkled at a mortal. Pathetic was the only thought he had. He screwed his eyes shut for a moment, composing himself before addressing the woman.

"Shouldn't you mourn your loved ones and cut your losses before trying to assume leadership?"

His tone was cool and level. He didn't know this woman well. He didn't even know her family well, despite living here for some time. His teal eyes searched her for a moment.

"God calls me to other conquests," he said. "With Sparrow's death, that much is clear. Whatever your family has done to deserve such a meek and powerless existence is beyond me."

Archon looked off to the distance for a while, considering the woman's proposition to stay and hold the pack together. He thought about everything he knew about the pack, weighing what it was worth to keep it standing.

"We were initially going to siege Abaven, you know. That was our plan, but Sparrow helped my brother, Malleus, when he was injured. Because of that, my brother asked if I could take over the pack peacefully instead, despite it being against our normal ways. With that, we entered an agreement with Sparrow: Instead of taking the pack by force, we'd live seamlessly with the mortals here."

Now Archon turned his attention back to Shaye. His expression was flat, facts churning over in his head.

"Even living here, no other member garnered any sort of favor with us. The agreement is over. I'll extend one last kindness to you, but don't expect the same if we are to meet again. Do what you will with the pack, its land and members are yours for now. Besides, it may prove beneficial in the future."

Archon kept his eyes level with Shaye's. There was no malice in his voice, nor hate in his gaze. He was interested to see how this woman would react. He knew his words weren't kind, but he was being up front. How would she handle the cold hard facts?

OOC: I'm too lazy to check what thread went where but I'm just assuming Caelum's dead or wandered off to die by now and Zeph would be missing or dead because of that. Mostly I want grumpy Cael, ok, I admit it. Here we goooo!

To say that the name "Abraxas" didn't bring a flood of distressingly mixed emotions to the surface would be a bald faced lie. One she'd tell completely willingly to disguise her inner turmoil, but a lie nonetheless. The war between her knowledge and different experiences was a fierce one. On the one hand, her family had lost their home twice to these wolves. On the other, well, she'd at least gotten along with two of them... But just cause someone could be gotten along with didn't mean they were really good, right? Reconciling the help she'd received as a kid from Malleus, and the sort of almost mayyybe friendshipish type thing she'd developed with Archon with the fact that their... leader or whoever - she was still fuzzy on the exact details but it hardly mattered either way how these conquest hungry monsters were related anyway - had so violently taken out the alpha of Dragoste. It was all just... so... Damn stupid! She hadn't seen her parents in a while and it was stressing her the hell out. One minute they'd gone on a family outing and been enjoying each other's company, and then she went out to explore and came back and there wasn't a trace of either of them! Cael knew her mom used to wander around a lot before having her... Ah, but no matter how much she wanted to believe they were doing some exploring of their own, she couldn't. So when that howl came ringing through the lands, Caelestis was already in a truly foul mood from worrying about those elderly folks she'd misplaced. Still, she was shaken enough from her sulking to go see what that howl was all about. At first he didn't want to believe that Sparrow might actually be dead. Sure, Cael basically never saw her pack mates but... she'd just always assumed they were there and wouldn't disappear or die. Tip toeing through the thicket, Cael meandered towards the source - the rapids. She never spent much time here, even when she was at home. It wasn't hard to find the point with the most cover that was closest to Archon though- annd whoever he was talking to. Cael didn't focus too much on the woman, she was rather busy listening to Archon's speech. She hadn't heard the beginning of the conversation but she heard enough. He was giving the pack to the woman and... Sweeping onto the scene with a stoic expression, Caelestis ignored the woman and focused on Archon. "Funny how you can just fuck with everyone's lives and split. Wow. I'm just speechless" she seethed, mismatched eyes narrowing more the longer she eyed him and making it apparent already that she had plenty to say. Mostly she wanted to scream and maybe try to leap at him and rip his nose off or something equally violent. Even as she started to think of it though, that awful little feeling in her chest had her feeling torn. Her ears fell flat against her skull, tail lashing irritably as she huffed dramatically in her frustration. Why couldn't she just hate him? That would be so much easier that this crap. "This is why it didn't work, you know," she snapped after a moment of silence. Her eyes flared with emotion like a fire growing in intensity as a breeze delivers the oxygen needed for it to grow. "No one wants to try for somebody who looks down on them on such a fundamental level they don't even know when they're doing it anymore. Anyone who does is insane." There was so much more boiling beneath the surface, waiting to spill over, but even as her irritation reached a fever pitch Caelestis found herself bottling most of it, eventually finding herself so royally pissed off by everything that she had to turn away before she lost the composure she was fighting so hard to maintain. Walk. "Speak!" "Think."

Trotting back towards pack lands to check in on her packmates, Peggy was surprised and irritated to hear the so-called Overseer summoning them. He didn't usually - usually made Sparrow do his dirty work for him while he sat back and watched them judgementally. But then the content of the howl hit her, and she stopped midstride as though she'd hit a wall. Sparrow was dead? He was disbanding her family's pack? Grief mixed with fury crashed through the young woman. They had told her, told Sparrow not to trust the Abraxas, and now she was dead and he was breaking his brother's promise to the alpha. Logic said that he'd killed her as an excuse to break off the contract.

She put on a burst of speed, fully intending to confront the bastard before he managed to slink off like the coward he was, and so she managed to catch Caelestis' speech to him. Peggy's eyes flicked towards the stranger who was already there for a curious examination - her cousin, though she didn't know - before her attention was focused entirely on the situation unfolding.

"She's right," Peggy said with a sharp note of bitterness to her young voice. "Why would we have wanted to do anything for you? You never did anything for us, and you were never really interested in us as a pack. You just wanted to screw it up for us and now you're bored so you want out. That's the real reason you're looking for any way out of your brother's agreement, why you're trying to dissolve Abaven. I guess we can see what an Abraxas' word really means. Why couldn't you have just left us alone?"

Sparrow was dead.

Lark had known it before anyone, having traveled with her to collect herbs in the Stone Steppe. Everything had happened so suddenly, giving neither of them a chance to properly react, but it was Sparrow that had been attacked first and he hadn't been able to do anything to stop it. Or, he couldn't keep the thoughts from forming in his head, maybe I could've done something to save her. Maybe it really is my fault after all. He couldn't keep these thoughts from assaulting him, barraging all his senses and rendering him almost completely stunned, unable to comprehend what had happened - or what he was supposed to do now.

Once he was certain she was gone - though he knew little about healing, he had no doubt in her mind that nothing could help her. No, she was gone before anyone could so much as react, and after finding her Lark didn't have the heart to return to Abaven. Not right away, at least. Surely his children would notice his absence, though he couldn't stay out long. He needed to check on Lillie. He was returning home not only with bad news, but with no herbs for her, either. How ironic, that she had died trying to help the one wolf she disliked most in this world - or had she truly hated Lillie? Lark decided it didn't matter much anymore,

Somehow, Archon had found Sparrow even before he had returned, and his call was a clear announcement of her departure. He'd already been heading back to Abaven's lands, and he dragged his paws with each step, approaching the gathering silently. His head hung sullenly, not bothering to acknowledge anyone here. The scents were familiar, and very briefly his eyes found Shaye, someone he remembered from his childhood but didn't know much of. Why was she back? Was she only returning because she'd caught wind of Sparrow's death?

He only caught the tail end of the conversation that was happening, but bit his tongue and let the hurt and anger stew inside of him like a unpredictable storm slowly brewing. "It's not worth the argument," he snapped suddenly at Peggy, wishing he could feel anything besides the overwhelming grief that threatened to topple him over. He felt powerless to its effects, and his voice trembled. "Sparrow wouldn't have wanted us arguing like a spoiled whelps, so let it be. Let the man go if that's what he's doing. Fuck it." Lark could only assume that he was leaving, based on what Arpeggio had said, and he was far too tired to figure it all out - and he was reminded suddenly of Peggy's mother scolding him in a similar way, once upon a time, but instead of feeling nostalgic he simply felt nauseous over the memory. Oh, what he wouldn't give for life to be that simple again. "Vaffanculo," he shot finally, matter-of-factly, in Archon's direction an with a sneer before his hazy gaze focused back on the dirt at his paws.

She looked up at the man who was still more stranger than anything else to her. A man who had sought to control Abaven, and instead had watched it die. Shaye felt a bitterness in her stomach for what could have been. She had come here to find family. She had found Sparrow, and would have loved a chance to get to know the woman again, to spend time with her family. Instead, Sparrow was taken from her, and this man would take away the rest of her family’s pack. “I seek to respect the dead by asking for this leadership” she explained, sorrow in her tone, but only strength in her eyes. She did not want to see Abaven die. She wanted it to live, as she wished Sparrow had had a chance to live. He admitted that his God had called him to other things, called her family's like a meek existence. She did not let her emotions show. Knowing how this pack must look to the man,how quiet and empty its borders had seemed. “Thats who Sparrow was. She couldn't’ turn her back to someone who needed her.” it was who she remembered her cousin being. It only worked to remind her that she could not turn her back to the pack Sparrow had tried so hard to keep alive. “I would do this for her.” what else could she do? She couldn’t let Sparrow’s life work fall to ruin. She nodded her to head to him as he told her the pack was hers, through they had no favour with his family or the Fallen God. “I understand.” she said simply. The pack was hers, but before she could truly begin to digest this sudden and strange turn of events, a woman appeared before them, anger blazing in her eyes and in her words. It was clear she had no respect for the messenger of the Fallen God. In fact, she sounded down right vengeful. She wasn’t the only one, another of the pack would run into view, her anger as quick to rise as the first wolf. The third wolf to appear was one known to her, and Shaye looked to Lark with haunted eyes. He had lost far more than her, having stayed in Abaven, having lost a sister instead of a cousin. Her heart went out to the man. It seemed all the wolves contained a lot of aggression to their overseer, and with Sparrows death, they would let it all out upon him. "Talk" "You" Think

Archon had said his bit and was more or less done. He would end things here on neutral terms. Surely he could use them later or find another way to use them to appease the Fallen God. Maybe they would simply fall from his memory, left for whatever other Abraxas wished to mess with them.

Then Caelestis burst in. Briefly, Archon's expression betrayed his unwillingness to hurt Cael, but he reeled it in. He didn't want to hurt her. Why couldn't she just become a believer already? His eyes set on hers, listening, not reacting. He fell into a carefully calculated response, just like he was used to doing. Caelestis may have seen his true self before, but she wasn't getting past his shell in front of anyone else.

He was about to respond before another wolf came in. Had he met her before? Did she even live here? Archon almost cracked as smile as she tried to scold him, but he held it in. He took a deep breath in to hold his composure, even though his mind was racing with the exhilarating feeling watching the mortals fall apart.

"You're right, I am here to screw things up for you. Although it's hard to mess anything up in a pack that barely exists in the first place. You wouldn't try for me, you say, but can you even pretend you were trying before?"

Now Sparrow's brother came in. The corners of Archon's maw tugged upwards no matter how hard he tried to suppress them. This male seemed to have the most sense among them, even though he was probably suffering the worst! Archon took several deep breaths to calm himself. This. This was what he had wanted to observe: the raw mortal beings. He could have gotten intoxicated off of the feeling, but he knew he needed to stay rational.

He took another deep breath.

Archon couldn't help but feel a need to push them further. If he had known it was this simple, he would have seen if someone could have died earlier.

"You can act all righteous, but you're relying on more or less of a stranger to take over for your you now. You didn't want to act under me- that's fine- but every time Sparrow waited anxiously for a meeting, every time she was so sure everyone would show up and support her, where were you? When she asked me to help her kill a meal for a meeting to celebrate the yearlings, saying how nice it would be to celebrate together, only to have the kill get cold before everyone bothered to gather. Did you all miss the disappointment in her eyes, or were you all too busy spiting me to notice how much you were hurting her?"

Archon let out a breathy laugh, breathing a little heavier than normal to prevent himself from having a full on laughing fit at all the indignant mortals trying to glare him to death.

"I guess as long as she smiled for you, you all were happy, despite how much she must have been hurting," Archon said, his laughter fading in an instant. "Well, she's dead now, so I guess you all can't apologize for that. We'll see how you do with this one."

Maybe when it was just Shaye, Archon and Abaven would have left on neutral terms, but after seeing this, Archon understood some of the Fallen God's wrath and he had half the mind to show these wolves true suffering.

He cast one more glance at Shaye. This was her pack for now. Archon would be sure to see how she did.

With that, he was done. He just needed to gather Kerrigan, Nura, and Dea and go tell Malleus of his new proposition.

-exit Archon-