Population Control

Alastor had seen Manea kill a deer of her own as he went sprinting past like a bolt of black lightning, a noir flash through the fiery autumn woods. He pursued the fleeing deer, snapping jaws and snarling aloud to get the group to break up into fewer and fewer deer, until he had one in his sights. A fairly large buck with a decent rack of antlers, doing its best to stay ahead of the powerful mass of lupine muscle and teeth giving chase. Alastor's abyssal eyes narrowed as he locked in on his target. Bloody teeth gleamed in a macabre grin while he pushed his body harder, leaping over a fallen log and narrowly missing a snap to the deer's legs. Suddenly the trees began to thin out, and then both predator and prey were out near the hot springs. The wolf and deer galloped around the pools of scalding water, the deer bounding this way and then that to try and shake Alastor off its tail. Unfortunately for the cervid, its hunter was tenacious.

Alastor ran up on the deer, and as they passed by one of the larger pools of water, the ebony behemoth leaped onto a small boulder and kicked off to tackle the deer, landing square on its back and wrapping his forelegs around its neck to pull them both tumbling down into the hot spring. Hot water surrounded Alastor all at once, and the dire brute, instantly held his breath, doing all he could to keep from ingesting the water. The deer, on the other hand, was already kicking and flailing to try to get away. Alastor released the deer to swim up to the surface, emerging with a deep breath of fresh air, his face dripping wet. He spotted the tips of the deer's antlers poking from the surface when the animal righted itself, but as soon as it popped its head back above the surface, Alastor was making his move. He leaped for the deer and grabbed its antlers, shoving down with all his might to force the buck back underwater.

The buck kicked and thrashed to try and break free, but the pool of water was one of the deeper ones, and it could only just reach the bottom when Alastor stood on a rocky ledge and held its head under. Alastor snarled with the effort, using his weight to keep the deer under the hot water, giving it shakes and jerks whenever it tried to bring a hoofed leg up to the ledge to save itself. Bubbles erupted from the screaming cervid's mouth, but no sound came other than the popping of its air bubbles as they left the prey animal's lungs. Gradualy Alastor felt the fight leave the buck, its wide eyes going glassy and staring up at him as if pleading him for mercy. Alastor merely grinned. The deer received none.

Once the struggling had stopped, Alastor held the deer under the water for a few blissful moments more, watching the last of the air bubbles cease, and then a minute later he let go, the buck's body floating lazily in the hot spring. He was panting hard from the run and the scuffle, but he had triumphed. The rush of adrenaline made him feel alive, and seeing the lifeless corpse he had created made him feel giddy and energized. Deciding he didn't want to litter this popular bathing spot, Alastor grabbed the buck's antlers again and hoisted the drowned animal out of the pool, tossing it across the ground while he climbed out as well, his dripping wet fur clinging dark to his body, emphasizing every outline of muscle in the brute's powerful, apex form.


"Alastor"