Eligos came to slowly, hearing Cypher calling anxiously for him, felt the pup shaking him. But those his eyes blinked open, he saw... nothing. For a long moment shocked wiped clean all emotion, but hard on its heels came a killing rage. "That cunt," he roared, coming to his feet all at once, his teeth bared in fury. "She took my sight. She cursed me."

"I'm sorry, Eligos!" Cypher wailed. "This is all my fault! I shouldn't have taken anything from the hut, she wouldn't have been mad. I'm sorry!"

Eligos bit down on his reply - hard - and breathed sharply through his nose until he could open his mouth without saying something he'd regret. "It doesn't matter, Cypher. That bitch would have found some other excuse. What matters now is finding a way to break this curse. We can start by finding our way out of this damn swamp." Which would be easier said than done, with him all but useless. Useless! When he was supposed to be Aerie's leader, the Abraxas leader. Useless! The rage broke through his control and he snarled, lashing out with one paw and scattering mud and dead vegetation from in front of him. He would need to depend on Cypher to lead him out of here, and while Cypher was the sweeter of the two pups he was not particularly trustworthy, in the sense that he was a bit of a featherhead, and Eligos was undoubtedly going to end up completely coated in mud if he didn't end up drowning in a bog that the pup hadn't realized he was letting Eli walk towards. This was.... not an ideal set of circumstances.

Aurielle Adravendi

She was following Cairo’s scent, and had found Chrystal grumbling, about being left to guard his bracers when she heard the bellowing that sounded like a very angry Eligos. It was pitch black by now, and her paws were slicked with black muck, but the rest of her coast had managed to escape the muck, lighting her way as she followed the sound to the source. She studied the scene, calling out, “Eligos?” Normally the man was so composed, with only traces of visible anger when he’d spoken to her at the Festival, but this was a whole new level of temper. She’d never doubted him as capable of it, but someone must have fully thrown him over his threshold. A female? He’d sounded like he was saying ‘she’… The dog with him, one of his pups, was visibly upset and apologetic. Either way, she was prepared to remain unflappable if the temper was aimed at her for her appearance. Anger had a way of bringing out the irrationalities and unpredictability in a creature. Walk ---- "Speak" ---- "Labhair an Sean-Teanga." ---- "Hear" ---- Think

At the sound of his name, Eligos spun in the general direction of the voice with a snarl, eaers pinned back, hackles raised and every inch of fang exposed in his open maw with obvious violent intent. "It's the Valhalla alpha!" Cypher half-whispered, half-yipped, but he needn't have bothered. It wasn't that Eli didn't recognize the voice, or that the scent he dragged into his nose was unfamiliar to him - it was that he was so beyond the threshold of rational thought in his fury that no other reaction was possible. Eligos was in a killing rage before he'd been blinded... now with his sight gone he was furious, disoriented, and afraid and he hated every second he was spending in darkness. He found his head weaving back and forth in a vague and futile unconscious attempt to see where Aurielle was, and forced himself to stop with his eyes half-narrowed to hide whatever physical evidence there might be of his curse on his eyes, but he couldn't hide that there was something off about the way he stood, the way his head cocked slightly to try to better pinpoint the sound of her movements and breathing. "Aurielle," he rasped through bared teeth. "Sticking your nose in where it doesn't belong. Don't you know better than to be alone with an Abraxas? Do you not believe the tales, or are you so eaten up with your own self-importance that you couldn't even imagine anyone wanting to harm a hair on your precious body?" His voice dipped into a low rumble on the last words, and his claws dug into the ground to prevent any betraying quiver. He was risking the tentative alliance between their packs, his hard-fought neutrality with the light-aligned packs, that he'd given so much effort towards maintaining, but desperation awoke viciousness and locked in darkness, Eligos was beyond rationality and civility, and thought in that moment only to drive her away with words before she could call his bluff.