Down with the Chill

Eligos had been patrolling along the south side of their border with Valhalla when a call came for him along another border in the same territory. He sent both Cypher and Kida racing along ahead while he followed at a more dignified pace. Both young malinois were back in a flash. "Pups!" Cypher yipped excitedly, dancing from paw to paw as though anxious to get back. The more staid Kida shouldered him aside to give a more in depth report. "A single female around your age, smelling of pups and carrying a pack. We think the pups are in there, you can hear them and smell them. She doesn't seem armed and she smells like plants." Cypher stuck his tongue out at her then, and she stuck hers out back, and in a beat the two were in a roiling, yipping melee that Eligos just sighed and left behind as he made his way towards the call at a much faster clip. An unaccompanied female with pups on their border, calling for him? A puzzle, and an alarming one. He didn't want to keep her waiting any longer than he had to, for the sudden appearance and disappearance of the dogs may have frightened her and he didn't want her to leave before he solved the mystery of who she was, and why she'd brought pups to Aerie.

The second question was somewhat answered as he came into range of her scent and breathed it in deeply, sorting through the many factors it brought to him. The first to catch his attention was the smell of pups, that milky warm scent that was inherent to them and to their mother, and the scent that mingled with that was one so familiar that he almost didn't realize that it was mixed with her own, and not just residual scent along the border - Pyrrhic, his brother. And an odd scent that he couldn't quite place at first, one that reminded him of a healer's den and disinfectants but wasn't quite any of that, an uncomfortable scent. Sickness.

He went stiff with alarm when it clicked in his head, just as he was coming to a stop in front of her, a fair enough distance that she wouldn't feel threatened, and he kept his expression smooth and unworried though he suddenly wondered if he ought to have stayed even further back to protect his pack from sickness. But no, this wolf was somehow to do with Pyrrhic, and the pups were the logical reason why.

He let his gaze take in everything - the female, the pack she bore, the pups hidden within it - and for a moment was at a loss for words. "My name is Eligos Abraxas. I am alpha here in Aerie. You called for me?"