On Earth as it is in Heaven [CHALLENGE]

Artur was dangerously bored and restless, confined to the lands nearest the pack. His mother had promised to bring them on a tour of Boreas, learning the scents and locations of the other packs and going to the Battlefield to learn the etiquette of fighting there, but between her injuries and her illness they had never gone. No one in the pack cared to bring them, and Aurielle seemed to barely care about running her pack let alone helping the near-yearlings, and Amos had jumped ship. Paladin cared as little about the pups as Justice did, and Regulus and his mate and other pup never interacted with the pack at all. In fact, many of the more boring tasks in the pack fell on the pups, like sentry duty. They had all of the responsibilities of adulthood, and none of the perks.

Artur was tired of it. Tired and chafing under the restrictions placed on him, he'd decided it was time to break those rules and do for himself what the pack's adults were either unwilling or unable to do for them. To that end he'd bullied and harrassed his younger siblings into agreeing to go on their own tour of Boreas. The first stop was, of course, the battlefield, partly because he was wary of going to pack borders and having them decide that the pups needed to be escorted back to Celestial. Caelia was wary of breaking the rules, but she'd been intrigued at the idea of getting out of pack lands and had agreed. Viviane had caved quickly under pressure. Geo had taken more bullying than the others, and had spent the trip reminding them that if there were any guts he would barf, after which Artur had darkly pointed out that he wanted to be a healer and he'd bet people's guts fell out all the time at fights and if Geo was going to be a healer he'd be expected to put them back in so he'd better get used to it now. Cairo hadn't been invited, and Artur had forbidden any of the siblings to even mention it around him. Cairo would tattle.

He was hoping to get a fight while they were there, but as the gaggle of pups straggled into the battlefield in various states of excitement or dread, he spotted a huge group of wolves surrounding something and his interest was piqued. Bullying his siblings into coming along he'd pushed and squirmed his way to the front.

From the words that were yelled back and forth between the multitude he quickly got the impression that one guy had challenged another, who wasn't there yet, and because he wasn't there yet the guy had decided to challenge a different guy instead, one smaller than not-quite-yearling Artur with sunburn scabs marching down his back under his pale fur. At least, he hoped the were sunburn scabs. The challenger was a scruffy leader of a rogue band, barely better than a loner, and Artur frowned in disapproval. It was inconceivable that they be allowed to harass packs with impunity, and if he were an alpha, regardless of if the pale scabby wolf was a member of his pack or not, he'd have stepped in to put a stop to the challenger's delusions of grandeur. It was disgraceful.

A pack wolf had stepped forward to seek to try to claim woman with hanging teats, packmate to the pale wolf, and Artur's youthful frown deepened, and when that man's packmate stepped up to seek to claim a quiet-looking yearling from the first pack as well, Artur's hackles raised. Not out of protectiveness for the woman and the yearling, but out of pure disgust. Could the two burly looking males not have chosen more worthy foes than a woman and a child? There were far more better to choose from among the gathered wolves. It was a disgrace to their pack, that they were so unskilled they must pick at weaker opponents. A woman from their own pack apparently agreed, because she pushed her way forward to shout angrily at the two males and threaten them if they did not step down from their battles.

"This is utterly ridiculous. When will there be blood?" he complained loudly to his siblings. "All this talk and threats. I thought this was a battlefield. I came to see guts spilled, not talking."