Aryn had committed to it, to running far from Habari and the infectious wolves who made their home there. The paranoia had driven her away early in the season, and though she'd been originally caught in her escape by Kali she'd managed to escape the heir's anger and disappear into the forest's mists.

A throbbing had begun on the top of her skull not long after her encounter with the crystal-ridden yearling, though unlike the other infected wolves she'd met crystals did not near-instantly seem to sprout. The pain continued, occasionally waning as instead an unbelievable itch ran beneath her skin. She lifted a paw to her skull and felt two faint bumps there. This was it - that bitch Kali had infected her, and now Aryn was going to die a crystalline death.

She ran desperately into the briar patch, the paranoia driving her deeper and deeper and her eyes and nose leaking a sparse trail of blue ooze along behind her. Aryn did not stop her frantic pacing until she came upon an appropriately sharp bramble at the correct height. "I'm not growing any fucking crystals today, nope, not me." With a short burst of panicked, near-crazed laugher, Aryn began to scrape the top of her skull against the thorns in an attempt to dig out the growths.

Viviane's fears about the weird changes in the world seemed to be coming true, as more and more wolves were suddenly displaying strange symptoms. All the other symptoms notwithstanding, the one thing they had in common was the strange oozing fluids. She had no experience with such a thing - was it a disease? A poison? A curse? If it was a curse she was not at all qualified to do anything about it, but she refused to believe that could be. But if it wasnt then she didn't know what to do to fix it, and she was frantic to find a way to cure her oozing packmates.

That was what she was doing out in the briar, desperately looking for any herbs that may have started to regrow to try something, anything. She wasn't expecting to come across another woman, talking to herself and scraping the top of her head. Viviane, alarmed, stepped forward quickly. "Ma'am, are you all right?" It was as she was reaching a paw for the womans shoulder to try to stop her from harming herself that she noticed the blue liquid trailing along the womans face, but it was too late to arrest her own motion completely and she brushed against the stranger's shoulder. She hesitated - she wanted to immediately fall straight into her healing training and do what she could to help the woman, but would it put Valhalla at more risk?

The paw came upon her shoulder and Aryn snapped out at it, teeth clicking in the air as she spun and ducked away. "Don't touch me." She warned, lowering her bleeding head between her shoulders and fixing her crazed stare upon the stranger. "Did Habari send you? I'm not going home." Kali had seemed furious to catch Aryn running away from her duty, who knew what she had told Recluse, and what Recluse's reaction may be.

"Are you sick, too? I don't want to catch anything else." Aryn roamed her gaze over the other woman, seeing no sign of illness but not feeling quite comforted by the lack of apparent symptoms. "I- I thought I was safe, my pack mate she infected me, I can feel the crystals growing in my skull." Her paw lifted and she scratched further at the open wound upon her head - it felt like she was right there, like a few more inches of flesh torn would relieve her of the suffering. "You should go before I infect you, too. You can tell them I'm not coming back." Or before the strange symptomless woman silently infected her for a third time.

Viviane pulled her oaw back when the stranger snapped at it, but didn't retreat otherwise. It seemed that whether it was wise or not, she couldn't deny the part of herself that needed to help others. She couldn't walk away and leave the stranger mad and bleeding."I don't know anyone named Habari," she said matter of factly, "and I am not in the habit of kidnapping anyone. I'm a heaker, and it looks like you need help. Will you let me see if I can help you?" She was concerned about whar the other woman had said about her packmate infecting her - how many other packs were infected with these strange symptoms? "Can you tell me exactly what's wrong?" She kept her voice carefully modulated to a calm, reasonable tone, as matter of fact as she could under the circumstances. She didn't want to set the madwoman off by coming off as threatening, or insincere.

Hesitation was clear in Aryn's panicked eyes - this woman had given her nothing to go on, hadn't even answered whether or not she was sick (not that Aryn would have believed it, anyways.) She took a small step back, but was forced to stop as brambles jabbed her from behind. "I think it's a curse." She whispered. "There was a ghost, and he tried to protect me but -" Aryn's head turned, glancing around the briar suspiciously as if the ghostly canine could hear her, and speaking of it might summon it back. "The ghost attacked us, then the pack got sick. They're growing crystals, and mushrooms, and leaking fluid from their eyes. I ran away, but I got sick anyways."

She lowered her head, displaying her crown to the stranger. "I can feel the crystals growing in, just like my pack mates have. Can you see them? Can you pull them out?" Her voice grew more frantic, her heart pounding hard in her chest.

Viviane bit at her lip as the stranger spoke. She didn't believe in curses, not really a, but she could understand why someone would think that. She was half ready to believe it herself, from the sheer strangeness of the problem. But the stranger was getting frantic, and that would spell disaster for one or both of them if Viv wasn't careful. "Hey, hey, its all right, listen. I will see what I can do about your head, ok? Then we will see what we can do about your sickness. Listen, my name is Viv, ok? I'm going to take care of you. Can you tell me your name?" As her words sought to distract the woman, Viviane was examining the bloody mess the woman had made of her forehead. She wiped gently at the blood to try to clean it away to see what she was dealing with... and dreaded that she would indeed see crystals growing from the eound as so many had begun to displau.

Aryn

The sickness deepens... Your health isn't the only thing diminishing. You feel poorer... 200 Gemstones poorer, to be exact.


You lose:

• 172x Gems- You're lucky you didn't have more to lose!
  

Viviane

It comes for us all... but you are safe... for now.