Kitsune went eagerly to Iho, keen to share with him the importance of the pack meeting she had just been a part of. Almost vibrating with her desire to ask him his advice on weapons and armor - and even the possibility of winning an animal over to her side as a companion. Certainly, she wasn’t giving the world around her the care she ought to.

Stepping close to the swamp lands was required to get to where Iho was spending his days. Of course, he was situated on the dryer end of the territory, close to the pack. There were still patches of wet earth she squelched through if she wasn’t careful, and she had just stepped into one of those deceiving puddles with a grimace, when something moved right next to her leg. She let out a startled squeak as the anaconda began to wind about her leg. “Get it off, get it off!” she cried - very unlady like.

"Speech"

The wintery season of Boreas reminded young Kumiho of his home across the sea. The cold, dry air tasted clean and refreshing, and a thin layer of snow lingered on the frozen ground constantly. Iho had done his best to prepare his little den for the cooler weather, stocking it with beaver pelts he'd hunted from the nearby river ways as well as the mammoth fur Kitsune had brought him some months ago. With every passing week, his den began to feel more and more like a proper home. The thought of leaving to continue on his journeys still lingered in the back of the voyager's mind, but he'd made a promise to Kit. He would hang around for a little while, at least until she was old enough to go exploring with him, or until her duties as a princess inevitably forced her to spend less and less time with him—or abandon him completely. Iho didn't mind that eventuality though. After all, she was a princess, and he was just a wayfaring stranger.

Iho had been gathering some deadwood to make a fire when he heard the shrill cries of a very distinct voice shrieking from nearby. Charcoal ears stood erect atop his skull, glacier blue eyes widening in panic. Kitsune! Dropping the wood with a clatter, the arctic wolf raced into the swamplands, following the little girl's screams until he spotted her dark ember-kissed coat flailing in a pool of water. He didn't understand what was happening until he got closer and saw the giant snake preparing to coil around her. Iho's eyes narrowed and lips peeled away from pearly white fangs as the wolf snarled and hurled himself straight into the water for the broad head of the anaconda. Teeth and claws met scaly flesh in an explosion of murky water, thrashing about with the snake to try and distract it enough to release Kit.

"Speech"

She had never seen a snake so big in her entire life. Its meaty body lay all around her, its tail sliding over her feet as its eyes watched her. After her initial shock, she held very still. Staring at the strange creature. If she jumped over its body to the right, would it be speedy enough to catch her? She didn’t know how fast an anaconda could strike.

The next thing she knew, a horned bluish wolf was striking at its head. The distraction was all she needed. She dove over the side of the snake, departing the dangerous central point she had found herself in. She didn’t run, of course. Instead, she turned around and lashed out at its body. Digging her fangs and claws into the side of its scales with a vicious growl. “Iho, are these guys poisonous?” she asked, knowing his worldly knowledge would be broader than her own.

"Speech"

Thrashing and splashing about in the murky water, Iho snarled and wrestled with the writhing mass of tightly coiled muscle that was the anaconda. The snake hissed its displeasure, trying to wrench its head away from the wolf's jaws while its long body whipped about. Out of the corner of his eye, Iho saw Kitsune leap out of the way, much to his relief—only to take that relief away again when she jumped in with puppy teeth and tiny claws to aid him. Dammit! The anaconda tried to whip the wolf's paws out from beneath him, but Iho managed to sidestep just in time, keeping a hold of the snake just behind its head.

Kit's words reached his ears, but he couldn't answer at first thanks to the mass of reptile still in his mouth. With a sudden lurch of its powerful body, the giant snake whipped Iho's legs out from beneath him, causing the larger wolf to go splashing into the shallow water. The snake broke free of Iho's hold, turning its anger back on the wolf it intended to be its prey and her older protector. "Venomous," Iho corrected Kit in an almost humorous way given their situation. "If you bite it and you die, it's poisonous. If it bites you and you die, it's venomous." He yelped and rolled out of the way as the snake lunged for him, just narrowly avoiding being caught up in its constricting coils. "And I have no idea, so don't get bit!"

Iho rolled to his paws, his normally pristine white fur dripping with sludgy water. The snake hissed and lunged for Kit, but Iho was already moving on it, grabbing behind the snake's head again and managing to get his paws on either side of the reptile's jaws. With a grunt and strain as he struggled against the snake's might, he was able to pry its mouth open enough to note the lack of fangs within its wide maw. "Nope, not venomous!" he confirmed just before the anaconda whirled its body around like a gymnast and caught the older wolf around the midsection. Iho yelped in surprise, but his cry was swiftly cut off as the snake began to constrict around him, preventing his lungs from expanding properly while he gasped and wheezed for breath, still biting and clawing at the snake's head in a desperate gambit to free himself from its death grip.

"Speech"

The creature suddenly lurched beneath them both. She saw Iho go down, and Kit knocked her head against the scaly creature's side. As she shook out her head, Ohi spoke, correcting her. Well, that was useful to know since she was currently biting it. not that her little puppy incisors were doing as much damage as she hoped. Sadly, he didn’t know if it was venomous - and did he ever actually confirm if it was poisonous or not?

“What if I bite it and you die??” she squeaked as the head lunged at her. She backed up and slipped on something in the sludgy water, going down for a second. She jumped back to her feet, coughing up water to find Iho proclaiming its lack of venomous-ness. “Did it bite you??” she gasped, shocked. Yes! Was the answer as the creature grabbed his midsection and began to wind around him. “No, that's mine!” Kitsune cried, huffing with worry and anger.

Growling, she leaped up, clawing her way onto the top of its body. Then, she was racing down the length of it, using her claws for purchase on its slimmery wet body. Heading towards its head. Leaping over its coiled parts as she hit its upper half which was constricting about Iho. she lowered her head, and bashed her little sharp horns against its eyes, once, twice, three times, even as her claws dug into the side of its mouth. “Let him go, let him go, let him go!”

"Speech"

"Then that's, I dunno, voodoo or some sort of black magic!" Iho had managed to reply to Kitsune's strange question a mere second before the snake had him in its lethal death grip. The young arctic wolf was only vaguely aware of Kit screaming out something in anger and horror as the snake crushed him with such an intense pressure. Iho couldn't move his limbs, he couldn't inflate his lungs to suck in a much needed breath. All he could do was twitch helplessly as the anaconda strangled the life out of him. At one point he saw Kit go racing up the snake's thick body past him, but that could've been a hallucination of his panicking brain firing off all synapses in its last moments. In the snake's unforgiving grasp, Iho felt his heart rate slow, his oxygen deprived brain gradually shutting down. Darkness crept into the corners of his vision until merciful blackness overtook him. He hovered in that strange, burning, painful void for a few beats more. Then Iho went limp.

While he slipped out of consciousness, the snake hissed in rage at the little wolf pup currently gouging out its eyes with her antlers. Try as it might, it couldn't fight back and it couldn't constrict two enemies at once, so in order to preserve its eyesight, the anaconda reluctantly dropped Iho to the muddy ground. The snake hissed again as it beat a hasty retreat, realizing it couldn't defeat two opponents at once. Though the snake was defeated however, Iho remained motionless, lying limp and unresponsive on the ground where he'd been unceremoniously dumped.

"Speech"