Come doused in mud, soaked in bleach

During her explorations, Lurid often went places that would be too dangerous for Kichi to follow, this was one of those days. She had left him with Ilyn watching over him and as she moved eastward, Lurid knew he would be safe. There was so much to learn about this new land, and she felt as though it took her years to simply discover the northern territories. She didn't mind, but now she moved toward the east, wondering what lay on this side of the continent. Skirting the foot of the mountain, Lurid would look up every so often, watching birds dip up into the clouds at the mountain top. Smiling to herself, the wicked woman found her way up to the entrance of a cave that she had discovered the day before. Not knowing what was in there, she waited until the morning to come and take a look.

White paws carried her toward the crypt, though she had no knowledge that it was in fact dead storage. She could smell mildew from old wrappings and the dry scent of bone was heavy in the air, but the dead wouldn't give up the secret of their species. Pressing further in, the scent of wolf began to grow in her nostrils and her head tilted with curiosity. There was another wolf here somewhere, and if they were brave enough to adventure through the tunnels and catacombs of the crypt, then Lurid definitely wanted to meet them. Of course, she knew what kind of creature stalked about in crypts, and she grew even more curious at the thought of finally bumping into another monster. The moonlit goddess moved with all the confidence of a slowly drifting continent through the darkened tunnels and even into the vaults. Something about the cave system, the bones and skulls lining the walls, and the fact that getting lost would be painfully easy, made Lurid remember her home. She missed the caves of Mirovis, the security, the populace of her old pack. Her tyrant of a father would have loved this place and would have sought to claim it, Lurid found she quite liked the place as well.

Further and further she moved, making sure to leave her scent on the paths she moved down, rubbing her thick coat along the primal faces of an ancient species to leave a solid trail that wouldn't fade. She would not be another pile of wolven bone laying in some tunnel, she knew how to navigate cave systems, knew how to find her way to the outside again. All the while, the scent of a lone male grew stronger and stronger. While she had been preoccupied with Kichi, it was her heat season. Lurid wasn't about to have pups of her own blood and flesh just yet, she would wait until her empire was born. Lurid followed the blood-scented trail as she wandered through and studied the bones of the crypt like a tourist on vacation, looking over every detail she could discern in the darkness. The light had long faded from the outside, but there was barely enough to make out shapes in the dark, she knew she could still be seen with her lightly colored pelt. With enough time, her eyes would adjust, progress would be slow in the meantime, however. Was that wolf even still here?