baa baa black sheep (Celestial hunt)

His explorations of the lands surrounding Celestial had slowly expanded until he was spending as much of his time studying the prey around the pack as within. In a moment of honest self-reflection he'd realized that his skills were growing stagnant in the constant repetition of routine in Celestial's lands. Hunt hare, hunt partridge, hunt prairie chicken, repeat ad infinitum. Take the occasional mule deer fawn, or a squeaker or juvenile swine if he were lucky. No teamwork, no challenge. If you weren't a legionary or a healer or some combination thereof, there was nothing for you here.

He'd been up at the redwater rocks when the scent of blood had drawn him cautiously into tracking the source. From the old/new blood scents mixing on the track the animal - a desert mountain sheep, one of the ones they called "bighorn" - had been bleeding for quite some time. He'd trailed the sheep down from the rocks to the oasis nearby, where he observed a ram resting, head down, next to the water. It was a fine, sturdy young ram, but it had clearly come off the loser in a clash with another ram. One horn had snapped off at the base, dangling beside his face in what looked like a terribly painful position. Blood continuously dripped from the break and painted the sand around the sheep, a bright beacon to other hungry predators.

Mask withdrew quietly, not wanting to disturb the ram into making a run back to the rocks. With the amount of pain it was in and the bloodloss, even the ram's sturdy size shouldn't give a group of hunters too much trouble. If he could gather some of the pack before the coyotes got the same idea...

Once out of sight and hearing of the ram, he broke into a fast lope that carried him swiftly to the distance border of the plains, before throwing up his elegant head in an urgent call for the able-bodied pack members who still remained. He then waited quite impatiently, though outwardly he appeared calm and poised. He'd had to waste quite a lot of the day going through the wash, and they still needed to go back all that way before finding the ram again, assuming nothing had happened in the time he'd been gone. He could only hope that the pack gathered swiftly enough that they could make it.

OOC: they're starting at the northern border of Vericona Plains but the hunt itself will take place at the oasis. Be careful, there may be other predators around...