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Note: There will be no set posting order for characters in this thread; it may be treated as a free-for-all until the thread concludes on 4/7. You are not required to interact with other characters and may simply post your character's arrival and curiosity to investigate.

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Effect: 「 Heightened Aggression 」

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As you approach the long since abandoned cottage, your emotions fluctuate to an alarming degree. First, you feel at peace when looking over the tranquility of the scene. Lush, grassy fields with an old wooden house and various vineyard accessories. Quiet and calm.

Although, gradually, a knot of heat gnaws through your chest and flares through your body in an essence of unfiltered rage. It’s sudden and almost urgent as it courses through you.

Your muscles flex with a painful tension and your guard hairs ripple up as if attempting to intimidate some invisible being. Every sound, scent, and movement triggers your bubbling aggression to grow even more unruly. Should anyone or anything cross your path, you are likely to lose yourself in a frenzy of brutal hostility.

Even as your combative nature heightens to unstable degrees, you can’t pull yourself away from the source of it all: the creaking, wooden house. The longer you stare you feel a burning in your veins, an unquenchable desire that you are not accustomed to having. Surely you haven’t always craved violence so recklessly and aimlessly, right?

This damned house is setting your soul on fire, burning you from the inside out until you can no longer recognize yourself. You need to find it. Whatever is making you so rabidly unstable, you have to find it. Even if you truly don’t wish to find this unknown target, there is a piece of you that feels compelled to.

Are you so drawn and determined just to destroy it upon discovery? Maybe this has all been a ploy to garner your attention and you will feel differently at the end of your search. Whatever it is, you’re going to find it if it’s the last thing you do.

Skill: Berserker [1/5]

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He'd been here so many times—with that strange little wolf who disappeared after days and that massive, talking cow. He found the building to be a comfort while the sun bore down on the earth with such vehemence that he would be rendered blind—the weathered roof shielded him from the unbearable brightness. It provided cover when he was cold, when it rained, and when the wind grew too violent.

It wasn't home, but it grew pretty damn close.

So, what had changed it all now? Ashkii was pacing from a distance. Hackles bristled along his back. His lips trembled. Long, blunt teeth just beneath thin maws glinted beneath the sun.

Wind whipped against his body. Piercing tender skin with the bite of cold, parting his dense fur and dragging its fingers down his flank. And, yet, the boisterous gales and vivid sunlight were far, far preferable to slipping past the old hut's doorway.

Something deep inside—something primal warned him that if he strayed too close, lucidity would be gone—never to return.

A pale ear pointed back, speckled nose flaring against the wind as it carried the scent of varmints. A hare, a squirrel, a rat, perhaps. His dual-toned gaze shifted up the hill—and, sure enough, a jack rabbit.

Scuffling over the ground. Ignorant and immune to the cabin and its torturous effects. It lay downwind. Unable to detect the ravenous wolf from the winds that blasted his scent away from it. Blissfully unaware of voracious eyes blazing with frenzied ire. Fangs chattered and clicked. Saliva foamed against the corner of ebony lips.

Ashkii took a few strides low to the ground, his tail tense against his hocks. Eyes unblinking. Nostrils flaring, throat stifling a pleasured groan at the cherubic bunny's scent. He knew beneath heaps of fleece was flesh—untainted. Fresh sinew, damp with blood, warm with life. Whatever self-control shackled his limbs was gone. He snapped forward with adrenaline-laced limbs slamming into the ground. The rabbit hardly had time to react before fangs sank deep into its jugular.

A shrill squeak. Scramble of little paws, flailing in a futile, desperate attempt to get away. The predator had no mercy—in fact, a deep-seated satisfaction from the agonized cry. The metallic scent and taste of the rabbit's precious life source. Frantic movements grew weaker, uncoordinated, with an eventual ritardando into a macabre stillness.

He did not hunger. Nourishment was not needed, nor wanted—he had his fill a few hours ago. Yet, there lay the prey, dead between powerful jaws. Tawny fur stained a sanguine red. Round eyes dull from its quietus. The only movement from its tiny body was the slightest shiver of fur rustled by Ashkii's feverish panting.

He did not hunger. Yet, the feeling of its innards upon his tongue was as satiating as a full meal. Split-colored face, once ashen and white, was stained with deep scarlet. Honed teeth dug into skin. Tore away the tender surface, neglected the tidal wave of red that besmirched his wily body.

More. He needed more.

SKILL : HUNTER ( 1 / 5 )

Life had never really been easy, nor predictable.

Since before she could encode memories, Camille's existence had been a thing of misfortunate and change. She lacked consistency and safety, but she learned to roll with the punches rather than let slights or losing battles get her down.

That was not to say the street urchin hadn't grown sneaky to accomplish her means, however, for she had. What her unassuming frame couldn't pry from others, her quick wit often afforded her purloined fruit, baked goods, or whatever she could get her hands on in the streets of her province.

It also led her into meeting Lady DuBois - an event that forever altered the trajectory of her life. Perhaps she had grown complacent in the expectation of warmth, a solid roof over her head, and the absence of hunger pangs when she slept at night. Within a moment, she had gone from the doorway of the Lady DuBois' vast library to the land of Mythris, though the weight of such discovery had not yet set in.

As her lids slowly lifted, she was first made aware of the coppery scent of blood. It was overwhelming to her waking senses, far denser than when she had simply been human - a sentiment she did not yet fully understand as her consciousness hedged between the realms of woman and beast, landing on neither.

Though, if you were to ask the more distinguished gentlefolk of the life before, they might have suggested she had always been a lesser being even after she became an outlier of dignified society.

Survival instincts awakened - and with them came a slow-burning anger. It seemed like a life force all its own, churning beneath her skin - an itch she couldn't scratch. Lips that were not her own flickered in a snarl, the first conscious clue that suggested she was not from whence she came.

Camille was no longer herself.

Pale eyes cast their sight lower, to the space where paws pooled before her - occupying the area hands should have taken. Her stomach sank, taking some of the anger with it - at least for now - as she scrambled for her last memories. She had just been in the library, but a frantic glance around her person indicated she was now in some sort of dilapidated structure. The smell of farmland permeated the air - animals, stale debris, and manure to a lesser extent. It was not necessarily an unusual smell, but there were no animals on Lady DuBois' property.

So, then, there was only one explanation.

She was dreaming.

This was all a figment of her slumbering mind, the bits and pieces of fables she read to make a melting pot of some strange fever dream she would soon wake from. It would all be quite silly and amusing when she awoke, assuming she remembered it.

For a beat, she felt relief. It was quickly smothered by the irritation from earlier; for her ignorance of it, the sensation redoubled its efforts. The feral rage demanded acknowledgement and tithe, it was no longer requesting her attention - it would have it, by any means necessary.

Under the guise of accepting the situation as an altered reality found only within dreams, she indulged the heated blade of fury that pressed to her throat, her mind, her very soul. Every transgression she had weathered since she was a child turned corporeal, flooding into her veins and fueling her to stand, hackles arced above her small shoulders.

There was something, somewhere that she felt a need to find, but she knew not what it was. Dream logic was so often a product of mismatched thoughts, she did not even blink at the passing impulse. She allowed an invisible force to guide her, to hone the latent anger into something palpable as her light, yet sometimes faltering, steps coasted her through the shamble of the unfamiliar barn and into the open grassland.

Time had rendered the cottage ahead of her into little more than a lean-to, but she paid it little mind as something fluffy crossed her path. With blood already on the air, her teeth ached to sink into the hapless chicken - it was likely seeking shelter in its panic when it smelled blood, but its decision to stray would be the seal upon its own death certification.

With a predatory slope she did not recognize or consciously invoke, Camille pressed forward, taking only a handful of steps before she lunged, jaws arced wide. The chicken was caught off-guard, but its demise was swift beneath jaws that crushed the delicate bones and cartilage within its tiny neck. Feathers billowed into the air with the force of her tackle, but its stilling between her teeth would not be enough to quell her - it served only to whet.

Camille's teeth dug deep, as if hoping to find the bottom of her rage if she could only encroach further upon the dead avian's flesh. Blood spilled into her mouth, drenching her pale fur and oozing across the half-earthen floor, but she was unmoved - after all, this was a dream. Her wanton show of violence would be swept away when she woke, a distant memory.

The chicken was not what she sought.

She could feel it in her bones; there was something else she needed to find. No matter how her mind strained, she could not decipher what she needed. Camille was fed only savage, beast-like impulse - the instinct to drive tooth into flesh, it did not matter whose.

A thrill of alarm sounded somewhere among these tangents, but they were just a quickly discarded, ignored. The chicken fell from slackened jaws as her eyes - dark with a predatory hunger - scanned her surroundings. She knew another existed here, but she set her sights upon the cabin all the same.

Decidedly, she angled her body in its direction. At the very least, it would offer her refuge from the tempestuous winds and elements. With any luck, passing the doorway would deliver her to wakefulness, as dreams were so oft to do.

Skill: Berserker [2/5]

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He heard it before he smelled it; a rustle, a loud squawk of a fowl, then silence. He whipped his gaze away from the butchered remains of what was once a rabbit. Ears swiveled forward, cupping the air, seeking more sounds. When there were none, Ashkii stood, sauntering forward with heavy steps.

His nostrils flared again, huffing like a frenzied bull. Blood. Rabbit. Hen. Wolf. That was not his own musk but one from a foreign source. He lapped his tongue over his lips, rolling it over the ridged surface of his palate. His pace grew faster until he trotted. Then, he loped. And then, he galloped, flying over the lush grass with broad strides. He could see it; a supple form of blushed fawn, the flickering movement of another.

There was a tightness in his chest that he could not shed. Twisting and churning in the back of his conscience, tearing the borders of his frame of mind with needle-sharp talons. It was there, the desire. The one he felt once with Itzcoatl. The unfathomable want—no, the need—to sink his teeth into flesh. The body of varmints and prey would not suffice.

But, the pretty little flower who had begun to canter up the hill, towards the cabin—

Perfect. Perfect.

His paws slammed into the ground, drumming over the surface, sending bits of turf flying in their wake. Ashkii's lips parted, his tongue limp against his lips, brows intensely furrowed. Eyes blazed with fury, savagery, and the uncanny warmth of nostalgia.

It'd been so long.

Lean withers slammed into the stranger's side. Long limbs caged her between his burly frame and the ground beneath. Pupils were blown, gazing down at her with a fucked-up sense of want-need. Parted lips curled into a simper. A low rumble resonated in his chest with each snarl. Yes. He needed this. He has for so long—and now, there she stood. His savior. His victim. His vessel.

Claws dug into the ground on either side of her head. Y'smell me 'round here, blossom? he rasped between ragged breaths. Head lowering, dangerously close, until he could unfurl his tongue and lap it over her cheek if he so wished. Aint'cha know not to mess with what ain't yours? Face moved closer.

Self-restraint was waning with each breath, each heartbeat. His incisors grazed over her throat, cobbing the tender flesh. Someone oughtta teach you— he interrupted himself with a lunge of his head, jaws parted, slamming into the crook between her neck and her scapula.

---

Nothing of particular interest had happened in the new world. Winter crawled by unimpressively, being a blur of hunting, cold and seeking shelter, and short days and long nights that contributed to a spiral of depressive seclusion Harvey had self-inflicted as the reality of their situation sank in. She realized they were not going home. They could not find their people. More than likely, if the other Amulet weren't also scattered, their role as Monarch had already been replaced. Harvey just hoped it wasn't Harkon, gods how they hoped. Harkon was beloved family, but otherwise not the vision Harvest had for their Court.

She'd had so many visions for how she would craft and build the Amulet's name, their power, bring the whole of the Haven back to the harmony they so deserved, and now...All those dreams, dashed, like the fragile bones of a bird fallen from the sky.

The only thing Harvest had left of her home was Daryn, strange Daryn, mischievous Daryn, Daryn who prodded at Harvey's boundaries whether she was in the mood to tolerate it or not.

And they could rely on none of her usual methods for managing annoying things, because she wasn't home, she'd been be-spelled to some strange land!

Harvest had finally pulled herself out of their tailspin, though, and begun moving the pair south as agreed on. Daryn's patience had been surprising, and Harvest tried not to dwell on its implications too much lest they dare to grow fond of their betrothed. That would be foolish and dangerous. They were still Autumn and Winter. And an Amulet never gave up a more favorable position over someone for something as simple and fickle as emotion, not without good reason.

Harvest was excellent at being the Amulet's perfect Autumn heir. She was beginning to realize, traversing these odd lands, she wasn't sure if she was good at much else.

In any case, the first peace she'd had in a while had finally arrived. Harvey stared at the odd structure in the distance, tree-like planks arranged to create some kind of cavern jutting from the earth. Vines wound around sticks placed to support them. Greenery dappled the range. Harvest swayed her tail at her haunches, curious about the building and stepping toward it with her shoulders back and chin up. Daryn was right nearby as always.

In some ways, they had been forced to become rather inseparable. Harvey hoped her mother would be pleased to see it if they were graced with a reunion. However, the closer to the building Harvest got, the more a sense of unease and simmering fury built beneath her usual crisp, cunning focus. Malice swirled and tainted every thought, her hackles stiffening along her spine as she walked and her mismatched gaze narrowing as she peered at her surroundings suspiciously. She needed to find the source of this strange compellation, this odd spell befallen her. Perhaps it was the way home. Perhaps it was just a way for her to vent her growing frustrations on something that she had decided deserved her fangs sunk into it.

The Amulet lowered her crown slightly as she walked, tail lashing at her hips as she stalked toward the house. The scent of blood blossoming on the wind was the only thing that gave her pause in her fevered search, a low snarl silent but held readied in her throat as she paused and glanced around. Bird and hare, and then the sound of snarled voices all too close. Too close, too close to what Harvest wanted, needed to find and destroy. The spell rattled in her limbs, pulled that snarl free of her throat at last as she scented two others in the range of the spell's effect as well. She glanced over her shoulder, her normally unnaturally neutral and unnervingly calculated visage a now-contorted and instinctive reflection of the wrath unleashed within her breast.

Harvest was not a creature to be crossed; the blood of the Amulets ran through her veins. The opportunity to find the source of this power was hers alone. And she was more than willing to employ her odd betrothed in her soon-to-be-bloody effort to find it.

Some part of Harvest - the cold, clever part, the Monarch who had earned her seat at the top through guile and not gutting, urged her to exercise restraint. She swiped her tongue along her maw, rooting her paws to the spot to remain tucked, hidden, around the corner from where she could hear a fight breaking out.

harvest can be skipped after 2 days if it's my turn to keep the thread moving!

test

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They’re not sure what has led them here, beyond the remnants of a strange dream. They’re not even sure how they had managed it, paws carrying them through grass and the change of scenery blindly, like a soldier, urged only by the feeling that they needed to be looking for something here.

The feeling doesn’t wane as they peer at the cottage- instead, it only seemed to be compounded by new emotions. The first is an odd sort of serenity, one that almost ushers them to stop and take their time with finding what they needed to. But quickly, all too quickly, it changes. The ball of white-hot anger that begins to form in Cyris is new, but it’s there anyways. It makes them want to sink their teeth into something and keep them there until their prey stops moving. It makes them want to tear something apart.

They don’t like it. They’re terrified of it, actually. They had never been a warrior, and the idea that this could change that for them was awful. They despised it.

Not enough to keep them from making their way closer, toward the cottage. It’s only when they get closer to the entrance that they realize they’re not alone- first with the sounds of a fight, and second with the sight of a stranger, closer to the entrance then Cyris was, looking as if they were waiting. For what, they don’t know- and their first instinct isn’t to ask. Their first instinct is to lunge, and bite down, and hurt this stranger in hopes that it would satiate the anger rolling within them.

When they do bite down, though, it’s in an attempt to clear their mind without bringing harm to anyone else. Immediately, pain shoots through them where they had bitten down on their tongue, and they can taste the traces of blood the action had left behind.

At least it had been theirs.

As it turned out, following Harvest around was their best chance. Daryn wasn’t good at survival, as it turned out. Hunting had always been done by those not a Zaal. Once upon a time, they’d been able to simply wave a paw and a torrent of wine and meats would be in front of them in minutes. This new world, this far away world, it had no servants, no friends, only the strange back and forth with a monarch they were to be wed to, but didn’t know much about at all. It wasn’t like they were trying, though.

It was easier to needle and push than reveal their soft belly. That man had taught them that, in all his horrid honesty. They wanted to go back in time, if only for a moment, and shove themself off that course. To know, well and true, that a young, bored Daryn would never come into contact with the man who’d ruined them. Left them this shattered creature. They didn’t even know why they still wore the earring, other than the inability to take it off. But they could rip it from their ear if they wanted to, surely. But they kept it, for some reason they couldn’t name.

Blood on the wind, that was the reason they trailed Harvest. Even as they watched their betrothed’s shoulders hike, her fur standing up in a fury that lapped over their brain like a red sea. Daryn wasn’t a warrior, it was the only reason they hung back. The sounds of a fight broke through the red for a moment, before it swallowed them whole again. There was something in that cabin in front of them, something that was necessary to be destroyed, that needed to be clawed out like a heart from a dead man. Or the eyes of a living one, if they’d really been angry. They slipped through the bushes, keeping one eye on Harvest’s brown fur, body lowered to the dirt. She’s next to the door, where the heartbeat of this angry creature seemed to writhe. Daryn could tear through the floorboards, shred the heart and end this madness. But a part of them, the vicious creature that had survived the courts of Winter and survived the courts of Autumn, told them wait. Watch. Have fun, a bloodbath was something they hadn’t seen in a while, hm?

The bush yielded another figure, behind Harvest, and Daryn knows immediately what they’re going to do. It wouldn’t be very good for public relations if their to-be spouse got bit by some possibly diseased peon, right?

I wouldn’t, darling. Their voice rushed out from between snarled teeth. It wasn’t their usual sibilant purr, more of the vicious spit of an alley cat pushed to the brink. Their usual smirk had even gotten the memo, twisting their face with a mask of cruelty that they were all too eager to wear.

SKILL : WARRIOR ( 2 / 5 )

A voice met her ears and her gaze shifted, snapping toward the source and finding a split mask in wait of her sight. Automatically, her lip rose; her features were marred with a ferocity she could not find the source of. It lingered in her blood stream like a plague, assimilating until it felt as though it had become a part of her. Each breath only fueled it and the guttural snarl that ripped from her throat, accenting the gnash of her jaws in the stranger's direction, came from the deepest, more primal recesses of herself.

Va te faire enculer (French: Fuck off), she warned, her hackles twitching before the silky fur began to arc. Avant de te faire. (French: Before I make you)

She was not dissuaded by their size difference - it mattered not. Camille had teeth just as he, and she had weathered her share of altercations. If she couldn't touch their weight class, she always found other means to come out the victor.

She, and any other orphan who dotted the streets, had done whatever was needed to survive. Sometimes it required a push, a shove, a coin purse loosened by a makeshift blade - sometimes it even meant physical blows over the scraps of sustenance or shelter she managed to find.

However, she couldn't remember a time when she'd been bitten. The searing pain spread across her shoulder and the side of her throat, besieging the musculature that lay in their intersection. It would hurt like hell later as it healed, she acknowledged distantly, but it really fucking hurt now.

Her jaws arced wide as she swung them in a blind rage, attempting to latch onto any part of Ashkii that she could reach. He might have gotten first blood, but she would make him pay for the privilege.

Piece : 「 5 」 

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It’s surreal, the way you feel you’ve lost control of your senses and are nothing more than a bystander to this unnaturally-intense yearning for violence. Was this really you? Was it even possible for you to feel such a heavily weighted aggression with no true cause? While internally you may be able to rationalize that this can’t be you, you are incapable of breaking the involuntary emotional status. Even as you think it’s best to leave, you can’t seem to look away from that damned wooden house.

Why? Why were you so angry? You musn't give in, a familiar voice fills your mind, it is oddly comforting and simultaneously aggravating. The more you act on these unruly feelings, the more you shall lose yourself. You must remain focused. You are here to find it, listen to its voice. What the hell was he talking about? You couldn’t hear anything beyond his own voice and your uncharacteristically violent thoughts.

The idea of maiming something sounds soothing, as if the action was like scratching an insatiable itch. Surely it would help the flaring rage, right? But the Visitor’s words echo, reminding you that you cannot give in, under any circumstances. You already feel your freewill slipping away. With a clenched jaw, you head for the source of that nagging pull. The closer you get, the angrier and more aggressive you feel. It wasn’t safe. Not for you or anyone else. Maintain control, it is here. Please. Reach it. another comment that urges you to enter the creaking structure.

After some time, you find an old plank that blends in seamlessly with the rest of the floorboards. The only reason it catches your eye is the faint glow of blue engravings. The closer you get, you feel tension riddle you. But then an unknown language echoes in your mind. Antsir iar canind, od iar giordein, krelelk laba rekut fier hikiryl.  Af an anie dre wolf’al lor, agon What the actual fuck did he just say? The blue symbols lit up in union with the end of the… chant? Prayer? Whatever he’d said.

Act quickly! The production of aggression is stalled for the time being, you must escape the area while you can. I cannot hold it off forever, you must run. We shall see you in the land of slumber. As your body begins to feel like itself again, you sense the absence of the Dream Visitor. Wait a minute, did he say we?