She had found a decent cave within the canyon after her day of travel and exploration and after hunting a bit of dinner she had settled down there for the night, deciding that would be better than trying to go all the way back up to Boreas in the middle of the night - especially not with the number of predators she had run into. It seemed like everywhere she went around here she was running into some kind of predator. Saber cats, wild dogs, a bear... what next? As if to answer her question, she woke up to the distinctive sound of hyenas and their weird laughing bark.

She blinked open her eyes and looked up toward the entrance of the cave where she had left the remnants of her meal from the night before. She was curled up toward the back of this small cave so it seemed like maybe they hadn't noticed her yet or maybe they just didn't care. It was hard to tell how many of them there were from where she was laying but she certainly wasn't going to lay around until they noticed her. Acantha got up and shook out her pelt before letting loose a deep growl with her hackles bristling and snarl pulling across her lips. That got the attention of a couple of them and their heads popped up, a couple of them skittering away as she ran forward toward them. There was strength in numbers though and they immediately started attacking back instead of running off like she hoped they would.

Acantha Elpis Stavros

Against her better judgment, Emersyn had left the sanctuary of the Hallows castle to start retracing some of her steps from her days of fleeing her pursuers. She had to know how many of them were still following her, or if any of them had been through the area looking for her. While she appreciated the offer of safety and protection with Indigo and his band, she didn't want to even consider accepting it without knowing the magnitude of the threat that loomed over her. Em passed through the arid canyon she had tried to lose the bounty hunters in, finding no familiar scents, but there was a recent one somewhere close by. Her hackles bristled. Was someone still here looking for her? If so, she'd have to dispatch of them quickly and quietly. One less hunter meant more time on her clock.

Em followed the strange scent until she found a cave with a clan of hyenas snapping and growling at something inside. The stranger's scent led into the cave, which meant whoever it was was now trapped in there by the scavenging canines. For a brief moment, Emersyn considered just letting the hyenas tear the stranger to shreds on the off chance that they were a bounty hunter after her. But the more she thought about it, the more she realized that if she was wrong she'd be condemning an innocent to a gruesome death. Rolling her eyes with a groan, Emersyn brought up her fighting instincts and ran at the hyenas, growling and snarling as she rushed the small group, lunging for the nearest one with a violent server. Her jaws grabbed the smaller canine's scruff, tossing it about like a rag doll before hurling it into the side of the cliff with a rough smack, the scavenger laughing in fear and scurrying away. One down, only a fuckton more.

"Hey, you! Start biting!" she shouted into the cave as the hyenas began to turn on her, a couple taking snaps at her injured leg and getting her fangs in their scruffs as a result, pained yelps joining the violent growls and maddening laughter.

"Emersyn"

Acantha jumped back from one of the hyenas that went after her after she tried to just scare them off, leaping out of the reach of its snapping jaws. That sent her into the reach of another one that snapped at her shoulder, making her wince before she reached and grabbed it by the scruff, tossing it into the wall of the cave beside her and causing it to give a satisfying yelp. She was still only one wolf though against a group of these hyenas and as she backed away to revaluate her opponents she saw them all facing her now, the couple that had run off returning to their clan.

Just when she was considering trying to make a break for it another wolf appeared outside the den, a black and dusty purple hued woman that matched her in height and seemingly in fighting prowess. She smirked at the command the stranger gave her, scoffing as she called back, ”Already on it!" before diving back into the fight. Now that another wolf was with her this was a whole different situation. She whipped her head toward the closest one, her jaws snapping down around the side of the hyena’s face, its laughing screeches echoing around the cave as she drug it back toward the entrance of the cave before tossing it hard out into the open space outside the cave.

Acantha Elpis Stavros

With both wolves fighting the clan of hyenas from either direction, the laughing dogs had nowhere to run and two fronts to fight on. The stranger in the cave seemed to be holding her own now, thrashing through the hyenas with relative ease. Emersyn was also making quick work of the annoying scavengers, tossing another aside and watching it scamper away when another lunged at her, snapping its jaws at her neck. She recoiled in time for the attack to miss, and instead wrapped her jaws around the hyena's scruff. With a snarl, she began to savage the hyena, flailing it back and forth in her grasp before tossing it into the group, sending the hyena crashing into another one of its friends.

With a hard swing of her paw to one more by the entrance, Em had broken a path through to the trapped wolf. Growls and snarls broke through the chittering chorus of laughter while she pushed the hyenas back. Once the two wolves had been united and fighting together, that was all it took to break the hyena's morale. The remaining uninjured canines chitters and screamed as they scattered through the canyon in all directions, running for their lives. Emersyn gave a final parting snarl to the pesky critters, then turned to look over the other wolf. She matched her in height and built, but where Em's fur took on a darker palette, the stranger's coat was a luxurious pristine white and gray and her eyes looked like faceted aquamarine gems.

"Are you hurt?" she asked the other wolf once she had caught her breath, giving her a nod of approval. "This clearly wasn't your first fight. Where did you learn?" Emersyn wasn't one for chit-chat most of the time, but she was also probing to see if this wolf really was a hunter after her, or perhaps someone she might come to know again in her travels.

"Emersyn"

They both took turns knocking around these damn things and flinging them out of the way, one hyena finding the place of the last as they tore into them. However, as soon as the two women stood side by side and started attacking the clan as a unit the hyenas started to wise up and eventually gave up the fight, scoffing as the last of them finally scampered off down the canyon. "Good riddance," she muted as she watched them go before turning her aqua gaze toward the dusky, purple hued wolf beside her, her gaze finding the stranger's dual toned eyes - one sapphire blue and one a more green-hued aqua. Acantha was nearly tempted to flirt with the objectively beautiful fighter, but she restrained herself for now. She'd come to find that not all women appreciated another woman approaching them like that, though she didn't fully understand why.

"Just a few scratches, nothing concerning thanks to your help," she replied to her first question, giving a little roll of her shoulders as she mentally checked to make sure that was actually the case. When the question came of where she learned to fight Acantha chuckled softly, offering the other woman a smirk. "Far from my first fight, that's for certain. My father ruled a pack and I grew up training with his warriors. I was to be the head of the guard until my foolish brother sabotaged everything." She turned away from the stranger for a moment, walking over to the tattered remains of the deer she had left here, nudging it with a sigh as she decided that the hyenas had already gotten any of the remaining good meat off of it before she woke up.

"What about you?" she asked as she looked back up at the other wolf that was still nameless to her. Realizing that, she added, "I'm Acantha, by the way. A pleasure to meet you."

Acantha Elpis Stavros

The other fae stated she was fine beyond a few scratches. Em nodded her head, glad to hear that news. Now without the threat of imminent biting, she could see the wolf for who she was. Her fur was simple, yet refined in its simplicity, and her cyan eyes reminded her of the clear waters of a tropical ocean. She was gorgeous and a decent fighter to boot. Emersyn could respect the power—amongst other things. As she had suspected, the burly woman explained that this was far from her first tussle and that she had grown up in the heat of combat. Em's duo-toned eyes widened with recognition; the two of them shared a commonality in their pasts, it seemed.

"Well, that explains the fighting prowess," she remarked with a low chuckle of her own. She idly watched the other fae examine the remains of some prey animal carcass. No doubt that was what the spotted scavengers had been after. Hopefully Acantha had gotten her fill from it before they showed up. "Emersyn, and the feeling's mutual," she introduced herself in return, giving Acantha a half-cocked smirk. "I was a pit fighter. Or gladiator, some wolves call it different things. Same deal though, fought for bloodsport since I was very young." Neither fae seemed to want to divulge more than was necessary, so Em let that topic die there.

She looked back at the ravaged deer carcass again, then back to Acantha with a curious look. "Sorry about your breakfast. Need any help catching another, or are you just heading out now?" The other woman didn't smell like a pack wolf, so if she needed help getting a meal, Em was more than happy to help.

"Emersyn"