Oleander had told Ignita he was heading up to the northern side of the mountains to see if he could find the ingredients for a cure. He had a few ideas to try out.

He did conveniently forget to make her promise not to sneak into the clinic and get a peek at the samples. It's been a week since he had them, she wanted to get to them before they disintegrated. Her chance was now or never.

Her belly was starting to show the precious cargo within her. She knew she was risking more than just her own life to examine those samples. She felt a tiny shifting movement within her, he'll be glad to know she can feel them now. He'll be desperate to feel them too. She looked up to the circling peregrine falcon over her head. Waiting for his signal to tell her Ollie was well on his way to the Red Forest.

C'mon Ollie go faster... It's not like the lives of the whole pack hang in the balance.

Galileo dipped twice, there! The signal! She moved gingerly across the col from the obelisk toward the warrens and the clinic. She looked around before she dove into the cave. Walking through the corridors toward the clinic she felt like she needed to hold her breath. Her new pendant swung against her chest as she moved. It strangely made a subtle noise as the links of the chain clinked softly together.

She entered the clinic in a dash, nosing her way through the tables, herbs, and equipment. Where did he keep them? She didn't think to look around the clinic first. Both Bas and Ollie would tan her hide if they found out she did this.

"Speech"

Vesper lounged in her bed in the infirmary, bored and annoyed at her own fretting. She had not expected nor wanted to make ties with the armada. She should be celebrating at their bad luck, not lying here worrying.


A soft clinking sound caught her attention, and she sat up a little, her attention on the door. A little wolf dashed in, and Vesper recognised her. This was that wolf Oleander was always praising. What was she doing in here? “My Lady?” She called out, sliding slowly out of her bed. Ignita was the one planning things on the Col side. Did she need something from her?

The voice set Ignita's heart to thrumming, and she felt several small movements within her noticing her startle.

"Sun's Breath!" She exclaimed, whirling around. "Oh! Vesper, I forgot you're typically in here..." She replied awkwardly and looked about, what had Ollie told Vesper? Didn't Ollie give her a den yet?

"Can you show me where he keeps the samples? I need to see them before they're too decomposed." Would that work? Would the Songbird argue? Did she know that Ignita had been barred from the clinic and especially anywhere near the samples due to her precarious "condition"? The Steward was anything but the picture of the Warlords Consort, she carried herself like a slave caught in the act of sneaking around.
"Ignita"

Basilisk may enter her threads without warning.

Surprisingly, when Ignita heard her voice she looked like a wolf caught red handed. Vesper should well know what that looked like. She studied the wolf before her, this mate of the Warlord. She was an important wolf in the pack. Vesper could call her out for looking guilty, but doing so would pass up a chance to tweak Oleander's nose. Besides, this wolf could just order her around anyway.


“Yeah, they're in his study. Just through there.” Vesper said, not moving from where she had stood at the foot of the bed. She had no interest in getting any closer to the samples. She had gotten close enough when she had been sent to fetch them

Ignita nodded curtly to Vesper and loped heavily to the study, her nose moving the door aside, her eyes darting around the room with alacrity. She looked back to Vesper briefly to see what she would do as she got closer.

A large bucket sat on top of a table. She wondered if that was how Ollie was keeping the samples. She lifted the bucket and beheld the half-withered samples of old meat, a few sticks and leaves, and some bark. She wished she had been on the other side of the woods to obtain these samples fresh.

The leaves were brittle, damaged, and spotted. They looked more like mid-fall leaves than fresh spring growth. The scent was moldy, but not anything overly offensive.

"Vesper, Do you know if he's made any progress on the cure? Has he mentioned anything about what he's discovered?" Surely as the slave of the head healer, she would be listening to his mutterings even if he didn't outright tell her.

She picked up the slab of now dried meat and it looked frighteningly familiar. There had been an influx of new meat since spring started and she thought it was from the influx of prey after a long winter. Since it was her first spring in Armada, when she had noticed it had tasted a little different as she chewed on the store's meat, she had chalked it up to a spring flavor. Could they have been bringing in blighted meat for weeks already? The increased influx from hallucinating prey that looked healthy at the time? There was a slight orange tinge to the meat, imperceptible to the unpracticed eye. She had spent hours through the winter painting and practicing cataloging colors.

She licked it.
It had the same taste.

"Speech"

Vesper followed Ignita at a distance, having no desire to get too close to the diseased samples. When the Lady asked her a question, the Songbird shrugged her shoulders. “He muttered about his worry for his dad and seems to think he's on some track with grabbing herbs today, but it's all above my head.” she admitted. “...my lady.” She concluded. Up until a few months ago, healing had been witchcraft to her.


She was leaning back, expecting this visit to be short when Ignita suddenly licked one of the samples. She recoiled in horror. Was this why she was sneaking in behind Oleander's back? Because she had a death wish!?

Well, it really wasn't her problem, but she took some big steps back from the other girl. She wanted no part In it.

This was worse than sand fleas, worse than dragons breath, worse than the mother of the sun in curses.

"Fuck." Ignita said quietly. Her ear catching the movement of Vesper. She knew what it looked like, but it didn't matter. Her gaze grew distant as she thought back to when the first shipment of tainted meat arrived.

"Fuck." She said again, clutching her stomach as she felt nauseous. How would this blight effect the babies? She placed the meat down and shook her head.

"If your not sick now your probably immune... Maybe... Come with me. I need someone to keep my thoughts straight." She motioned to Vesper to follow her.

"When did you first arrive? Was it last season? Begining of this one?" What was the shipment like when she came. She would lead Vesper into the storage room across the Col, leaving the samples uncovered in the clinic. It didn't matter if they were out now. When did Bas tell her about Ollie's new slave? She wished she had been more aware of the goings on in the rest of the pack...

Vesper was feeling rather bewildered. Though perhaps by now it shouldn't surprise her to see the weirdness of the Armada wolves. She followed along after Ignita. Knowing she was a vaguely important wolf, and having nothing better to do. She was accustomed to feeling helpless, but that didn't mean she liked it. This would probably lead nowhere except to Ignita getting sick, but the thought of Wilder sick in those woods carried her along regardless.


“Uhh… late Winter I think, My Lady.” She said. She'd been rather out of it at the time, and spending so long in her sick bed hadn't helped her sense of time. “What are you… doing, My Lady?”

Late winter... what was she doing around late winter? Looking for Charlie... Among other things... But it gave her a frame of reference. Her golden and ginger paws skittered across the Col as Vesper asked her question.

"Hopefully, I'm helping the pack remain safe, or proving this quarantine is too little too late." She told Vesper over her shoulder.

"If you came in late winter... Lets see..." Ignita had made a chart on a blank wall of the storage cave where she had several symbols and marked deliveries.

"Here! This is the delivery from the smokehouse around the time you arrived. Looks to be about the same amount as before and after... There's been an influx of prey lately and I thought it was just from the incoming spring." She pointed to a snowflake symbol with six lines beside it. Then a few words beside that.

"Here I marked the beginning of Spring delivery..." A little water droplet with one line next to it and on the same line it said something similar to the late winter delivery.

"There! This is when it changed! The same day as the Raid on Avalon!" She followed her paw along the line to read the note she made about it and pulled her paw to continue the line to another marking about where that order had been stored.

"All right, let's see what's left of the last healthy delivery, and we'll check the pelts too." She dashed down the shelves to exactly where the delivery would be from before the raid was set.

"Okay, so I made a mark here that says this is a more recent delivery. Meaning that the healthy meat has been eaten already. How old is this one?" She was mostly talking to herself, but having Vesper there to talk to helped keep her mind focused on the task.

"Damn. It's the delivery before last. That means we've been out of the healthy meat for two weeks now. This also means we've been going through stored meat a little quicker than I realized. Fuck." Ignita stepped back, sitting on her rump, placing a protective paw over her slightly swollen womb. They'll grow even faster in a few more weeks... If they grow at all. There's no telling what this blight will have done to them all.

She chewed her lip, her paw finding the new opal bird hanging from her neck now.

She already had an idea of what she should do next, but she took a page from Basilisk's book and looked at Vesper curiously.

"What do you think our next step should be? How might you advise me?"

"Ignita"

She followed the crazy lady to the storage den, walking as distinctly from the other as she could without making it obvious. She sat in the storeroom and watched as Ignita looked through the supplies. Showing clear marks she had made on deliveries. She was an organised wolf, Vesper had to give her that.

“So you're saying the pack’s been eating tainted meat for a while?” She asked, trying to confirm where the distracted wolf was coming from. In her horror, she forgot to tack a title on with her sentence. “Why isn’t the whole pack showing signs of being infected?”


"Speech"

Ignita could tell the girl was frightened for her life. Ignita was in getting shit done - freak about it later mode.

"Those that eat from the storerooms, yup, those that have been hunting in the woods for sure. Can't say for sure why. I can come up with a bunch of possibilities. Things like immunity, only eating the meat they've caught, maybe the dried or processed meat weakens the disease and makes it safer. Regardless, it's here, and you and I have already eaten it. We can't think about it now, now it's time to get your paws dirty and earn your keep." Ignita was a little sharper than she intended but she wasn't going to let the panic sink in. She had too many other lives to think about. Too much to do.

"Let's go, if you're not feeling the disease already you probably can't get sick and we're going to need all the help we can get." The girl hadn't offered a suggestion, ah well.

"Let's pack up a cart and start to throw this shit in the bonfire." She'll have to find a way to clean the storerooms.

"Actually, I have to go to the smokehouse and stop all production." She muttered to herself pausing, then looking back at Vesper, "You are going to take Oso here," She nodded to the mini reindeer, "lash him up to one of the carts and start pulling all the meat, hides, and plants from here and throwing them in the fire. Carefully, don't smother the fire. Bas will kill us both if it goes out." She ordered. Ignita wasn't thinking about doing things right, she was barely thinking, probably why she wasn't as emotive as usual.

"Questions?" She was about to let Vesper get to work and head to the smokehouse and then to the woods. There was no more point to this quarantine. They needed to get everyone out and burn the whole thing.

"Speech"

She made a face at Ignita’s words. She should have taken her to go bag and just gone. This was messed up. But if what the pale girl was saying was true.. It was too late. It was much too late. She felt a sinking in her heart. Wilder, Oleander, his family… they were all in deep shit, weren’t they? Not that she cared, of course.

Ignita gave her orders, and she nodded her head obediently. She knew she had to do as she was told, she knew that she had made her choice to stay and now she had to live with that. Maybe, by the time this was done, there would be no pack left. Maybe she had lost her mind, but she was in it now.

“Yes My Lady” She said, turning back to the storeroom, and pausing when Ignita spoke. “Is there…. Any hope?” She asked quietly.


"Speech"

Ignita was about to turn but was physically pulled back by Vesper's words.

"Oh! Of course, there's hope!" Ignita replied, turning back with a sheepish smile. She had been so wrapped up in the crisis and getting the physical labor done she had forgotten to even consider there wouldn't be hope!

"I don't know what the next few days will be like, but there's no way I'm dying before my babies are even born, nevermind before I can watch them grow up! We'll survive Vesper! We have to!" Ignita replied with a shrug dripping in unconcern, holding her belly protectively.

Poor thing, gone through so much now thrown into a den full of blight and asked to carry out the hardest of labors.

"When I can, I promise to be back and work right alongside you. I'll be taking down the quarantine so we'll also have a lot more help." She said with more warmth and reassurance in her tone than before. Vesper's back was probably going to make the poor girl's efforts slow, "Don't overwork your back. We've got this." She nodded there and then, she then dashed onward toward the smokehouse. No, there wasn't a rush, but there was, she wanted to get the wolves of Armada back together again as soon as possible.

"Speech"