Gold

Phenex moved effortlessly through the land. His gait was smooth and his steps measured. His legs held not the elegant length of others but a strong stoutness that carried him forward with ease. His dark paws blended in well with the fertile ground that he moved over.

He was following a scent, one he had caught a whiff of at the Abraxas meeting place. Phenex had been hours short of actually making it to the meeting, though he had travelled for nearly a day nonstop when he felt Amon’s call. After he met with Amon that night Phenex investigated the meeting place, finding both familiar scents and not. One in particular was curious - a new scent attached a strange gate.

He had tracked those paws through the sand for awhile, trying to make sense of what made it lope so oddly. Was this wolf injured? Surely not. If he was so injured then he would have been eliminated. Abraxas either worked through their injuries or died, there was no in-between.

A healed injury then? That would make more sense. Their demigod blood made them more resistant than others. Maybe this male was stronger than Phenex himself, if he had survived through an injury that had left him so disfigured.

Phenex’s curiosity burned hotly. It was what propelled him even now - not the sweet smell of berries or the new scent of a non-Abraxas.

When he finally rounded a large bush and laid green eyes upon the pair he did a double take. His nostrils flared to check which wolf was which, which had Abraxas blood and which did not.

As Phenex identified which was family and which was not he felt his lips curl. That was family? That monstrosity? That deformed frame had come from their demigod lines?! What terrible blood had one of his relatives mated with to create that, and why had it not been euthanized as soon as it left the womb.

Even his nightmares had not dreamed up something as horrible as this.

Phenex and this relative may share a similar coat pallet - their eyes were even mirrors of each other - but Phenex still felt revolted.

With a blank face and a mildly haughty air Phenex also stepped forward. His eyes did not dart towards the non-Abraxas’ but kept to those eyes that looked so like his own.

”Greetings indeed,” he said, ”Fellow Abraxas’, I am Phenex, brother of Amon.” Phenex’s eyes raked down the other’s frame, lingering on the stopped and weak back, ”From whose loins did you emerge, deformed one?”

Phenex never had well developed social skills and had an abrasive tendency to forgo any filters between his brain and his mouth.