Going Out Tonight, She Changes Into Something Red

In the days between when he got the injury from Ezra and now, he had split his time between his duties around the pack, trying to mend and build the relationships with his children, and sneaking moments here and there with Aranea. He'd use his healing leg as an excuse to see her so she could check on its progress and rewrap it if needed. More and more though, he noticed her going out of The Hallow's lands to search for supplies. It made him slightly uneasy considering the state that the weather had been in as of late and even more so with the whispers he had heard from Artorias' altercation with a wolf even larger than himself. In seemed like Ardent as a whole was growing more and more unsafe and the fact that the small healer was out on her own wasn't something he liked. He didn't want to be over bearing so he didn't stop her, but it did give him another reason to check in with her occasionally just to make sure she made it back to the castle alright.

Throughout the day he continued to look for Aranea as he tended to do now, but each time he looked for her he came up empty handed. At first he didn't think anything of it, but as the hours passed and the sun began to set the more worried he became. He hung around outside of her room for quite some time waiting for her to return and still nothing. He could just feel deep in his gut that something was wrong and he wasn't going to be able to rest until he found her and assured himself that she was okay. After quickly making sure that his children had at least found their way to their rooms and letting Resin know where it was going, he ran out of the castle and started tracking the healer's scent. Her trail was difficult to follow through the snow that had recently fell, but he managed to find faint traces all the way out of the castle grounds, past the Shimmering Shore, and eventually led him down to the Falls that he had visited not all that long ago.

As he got closer to the Lazuli Falls, the metallic scent of blood started to drift toward him on the breeze, mixing with Aranea's now familiar scent and making his heart sink into his stomach. His lope changed into an all out run while he quietly cursed himself for not coming to look for her sooner. It was pitch black out now and the only reason he was able to see at all was the moon reflecting off of the snow. He skidded to a stop near the edge of the now frozen pool, sniffing the air and looking around for where her scent was coming from. After a moment of looking around with confusion he finally thought to look up and saw her pale form laying on a ledge below the top of the cliff. "Aranea..." he breathed as his eyes went wide with shock, his ears flicking back with worry. Immediately he started to work his way up to the top of the cliff, already wracking his brain to try and figure out how he was going to reach her.

Once he got closer to the top of the cliff, another scent caught his attention and it made him slow his steps, his silver eyes searching the darkness. He ducked down behind a rock near the top of the cliff as a huge, hulking form of an over grown dire wolf came out of the darkness enough for him to make out its shape. "Shit..." he muttered to himself, gritting his teeth. His only saving grace right now was the fact that the smell of Aranea's blood seemed to be distracting the beast and helped him keep some sort of stealth in the situation. He watched the behemoth of a wolf lumber closer to the edge where Aranea had fell and Ulric knew he was going to have to do something fast to keep it from getting to her. He crept out from his hiding spot, using the holes in the snow that the larger wolf had made so that he could walk up behind him quietly - avoiding giving himself away with the sound of crunching snow.

When he was maybe a foot behind the larger dire wolf he rushed froward and leapt up with a vicious snarl, latching his teeth onto the beast's scruff and beginning the struggle to yank him away from the edge. It was the first time in his life that he had to fight someone larger than him and right away he could tell than any normal tactics he might have tried were not going to work here. The element of surprise he had benefited him long enough to pull the extra dire wolf away from where Aranea was laying a handful of feet below the edge, but soon the snarling, snapping wolf got his bearings again and was able to pull out of his grasp pretty quickly. Ulric stumbled back, feeling one of his feet slip a bit on the ice that coated parts of this elevated land mass.

His opponent spun to face him and lashed out with wickedly large, sharp claws, catching Ulric's right shoulder before he could dodge out of the way. They sliced through his skin, but since he had been in motion to duck out of the way he avoided any more serious damage for now. He righted himself again and growled deeply as he faced down with the larger wolf, looking for any opening or opportunity he could find to get a hit in on the brutal wolf. They began slowly circling as they both seemed to be sizing each other up and Ulric started shifting the path a bit till the wild wolf walked on top of one of the small, frozen rivers unknowingly. His massive weight sent his paw crashing through the thin layer of ice and that's when Ulric made his move. He leapt at the extra dire wolf again, this time biting deeply into the side of his neck near the wolf's throat. A roar of pain filled his ears and he was yanked off of his feat as his opponent tossed his head in an attempt to shake him off. Ulric held on tight, letting his hanging weight do even more damage to the seemingly bulletproof wolf.

As he tumbled onto his side, part of his body hanging in the air from still dangling from the dire wolf's neck, the stranger stepped hard onto Ulric's side, his abnormally sharp claws stabbing into the Adravendi man's ribs. The sudden sharp pain made Ulric gasp as the air was knocked out of him, making him release his neck and fall all the way to the ground with a hard thud, his shoulder taking the worst of the impact. The paw that had been digging into his ribs lifted and tossed him away, making him roll and tumble across the snow a couple of times before he came to a stop a few feet from the edge near where he had climbed up in the first place. His right shoulder was still bleeding from the first initial cuts he received and now he had deep lacerations around the ribs on his right side to add to that along with bruises all along his left shoulder and hip. He couldn't distinguish one pain from another enough right now to tell, but a couple of his ribs were also cracked from the pressure they had received. He struggled to pull himself up onto his paws and before he could get fully upright he saw his opponent charging toward him again, the monster's throat and chest now slathered in deep red from the bite he had given him.

In a panic, Ulric scrambled and threw himself to the side at the last moment, crashing to the ground again and making his teeth mash together against the pain as he landed on his already wounded right side. However, it was all worth it when the larger wolf started scrambling to try and change directions or stop and could do neither thanks to the ice that Ulric had nearly slipped on at the beginning of their fight. The massive wolf's paws slipped out from under him and his momentum carried him right over the edge of the cliff. Ulric listened as heavy thump after heavy thump reached him until everything went silent again. He crawled toward the edge while breathing in hard, shallow breaths, looking down into the darkness till he was able to make out the faint outline of the dire wolf's broken body all the way at the bottom. A heavy sigh of relief left him and his head fell to rest on his foreleg for a moment, gasping in breaths while he tried to catch his breath.

The reason he had come up here to begin with suddenly came back to him and he pushed himself back to his paws, hurrying over to the ledge where he had seen Aranea from the bottom. He fell back onto his stomach on the ledge above her, looking down at her with a breathless whine. "Aranea? Are you okay?" he managed, knowing that she wasn't but just hoping that hearing her voice would lessen his worry a bit.

WC: 1582
Total: 2295 / 2500

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