He's in the sun.

It's a real sun. Not the sun he's been stuck in for a while, warped and strange. The air is. It's real. He's not breathing a thin void, converting other gasses to oxygen through his body. Because he can do that. He looks at his hands-- paws. They have always been paws. They have always been golden, too, so he's not sure why he remembers brown. He blinks a few times, sitting up from the patch of flowers that he sits in, feeling the ghost of hands across his scalp.

You never knew kindness, did you?

He shudders. Something about that sickening voice beckoning him forwards, the smile on her face, disgusts him. He looks around, but she's nowhere to be seen. He wishes he had a gun right now-- though he wouldn't be able to hold it? He's never been able to hold it? He's not sure. Standing, four legs, he's sure he's walked on two. But as he raises one paw, putting it carefully in front of him, he feels as if this how it should be.

The ring of flowers around him seem to be of many shades, and around them, snow. He is in the only patch of grass in the field. He observes the horizon, dotted with mountains. And the sun. Bright. Real. He breathes deep.

And he smells blood, he's pretty sure. That, at least, is a familiar scent. He turns his head towards the scent, nostrils flaring, eyes scouring. But there's something wrong with his eyes. Have they always been this weak? Color feels duller, heat signatures aren't being picked up... Hm...

Perhaps it was only in a dream he could see that way.

He stays where he is, in his daemon ring, and wonders if this is a trap to lure him out. Because the worst could happen.

The worst could always happen.

Scouting wasn't her favorite thing to do, normally.

Nor was getting into scuffles with strangers clad in nightmare, bearing threat in every breath.

So Solulfur scouted, now, often. Always brief things, a quick jaunt into the Alpines to check for evidence of the man's presence before she disappeared again.

She'd told no-one, spoken nothing about her encounter, hidden the marks on her shoulder the best she could until they healed enough to lie easily about them, or dismiss them entirely. The shame was...choking, the fear blinding, the churning anxiety in her chest and stomach weighing on her every breath and robbing the Sun of her appetite.

Her nose was in the middle of a bundle of flowers, sniffing them. She'd never been to this part of the Alpines before - it was a meadow of flowers more than a mountain. She thought she should tell Solvi of it, so the madwoman could go herb-hunting.

Sol's stomach flipped, and she decided to tell Solvi at a time she could accompany the madwoman across the borders.

Up ahead, a golden figure moved enough to catch her attention. The Black Sun lifted her head, molten gaze picking out the details of the man as she neared him.

He was tall, wide and looked strange; it took Sol a moment to realize it was the muscle visibly wrapped around his frame. But he was seated in a ring of pretty flowers, as if he'd grown from the earth just like them.

Sol tilted her head at him. Belligerence was familiar on the tip of her tongue, but she remembered the last time she'd spoken without thinking.

Was she going to let her cowardice rule the rest of her life?

Hello.

The source of the blood is not this woman. Her voice catches his attention before his nose does, and he peers over her with a cool scrutiny. He has not had much to do with women in the past; his brotherhood had been sure of that, though he's not sure he can truly call himself a "man" in the sense that the average person does. Still, he looks upon her without judgment. A solid figure, a shroud of ebony surrounding it. He takes note of the strength in her limbs, the way she seems to hesitate before speaking.

He gives her this: mortals should be hesitant to speak to him. As one of the God-Emperor's chosen sons, he is set apart from them. Apart from her, even. A protector for the hope of the future, the hope she would come to benefit from. And he would give his undying life for this, a soldier of the Imperium to the last.

(And yet, he thinks of soft hands brushing across his scalp, shushing him softly and avoiding the diodes that connect him to his armor. The soft breeze. The babbling of brooks. They took so much from you, didn't they?)

He dips his head slightly, unwolfish in his greeting. "Emperor's gaze upon you." His voice is deep, resonating through his barrel-chest. And yet, as imposing as he is, he does not seek to enter her space, to make her cower. He stays in his circle, expressionless and firm, but not hateful. "Do you smell that?" He supposes she does. They have always been wolves, and that means they can smell things like that.

(Though if this were normal, he thinks, she would be on two legs as well, and her nose wouldn't pick up things half as well as his. They never choose women for his burden.)

Emperor's gaze upon you, he said. Solulfur determined this golden bear-wolf to be a raving idiot from that statement, adjusting her expectations accordingly. She didn't know who the Emperor was, but she bowed to no king nor quaked beneath his gaze. It was her Afi who watched over her. You as well. She replied, to match his energy.

He hadn't moved toward her. Sol appreciated that. She didn't want him in her space, not after...

Anyway, the man continued to speak, a regal dip of his crown and an odd tilt of consideration to his head. Solulfur tilted her head in mimicry. The flowers? What do you smell?

She lifted her gaze off the Golden wolf, glancing furtively at their surroundings. She saw nothing, though.

A raving idiot...perhaps worse. Perhaps a madman.

Or he was going to make a rude comment about her smelling bad, and Solulfur was going to be forced to enter the man's space and risk an additional set of teeth marks in her shoulder.

He steps forward, not towards her, but in a direction perpendicular to her. He can't read her expression, know that she doesn't trust him, but he knows he is not Of Her. The Astartes are Apart from the mortals, and he knows they do not look upon his kind with affection. He is a hero or a terror, and he doesn't care which one she chooses. But she must be a citizen of the Imperium, or at least aware of it? There's a possibility she's lying, but Azrael doesn't consider it. It's not important if she is or not.

"I thought I smelled blood." And then he lifts his paw from the snow.

Blood is left in the print.

"...My own." He doesn't know if he registers the pain. But it looks like a deep gash is in one of the pads. Now he senses it, dully, aware of it but not freaking out.

"Ah. Nothing to be concerned about." He puts the paw back down in the snow, where the cold should stem its bleeding. "I thought it was someone who needed help. It's nothing, then." His ears flick back and he stares off into space.

"I must have opened it in my dream."

Blood, the strange man said. The stiff guard hairs along Sol's spine lifted slightly, her golden gaze shifting across the landscape once more furtively. Could it be...herself? The shoulder wound was close to healed, but he could still be scenting it...I'm fine. She retorted evenly.

But, no, the blood was actually the stranger's; he denied any need for help before Solulfur had even offered, which vexed her. She would have liked the opportunity to decide for herself if she was feeling altruistic or not.

He stared off into the middle distance, avoiding her molten gaze, which annoyed Solulfur all the further. She liked power, and this wolf denied her the opportunity to get the upper hand on him without much effort on Sol's part without so much as a bothered bat of his eyelashes. He'd hurt himself in his dream; that prompted more open reaction from the wary young woman. She scrunched her nose a bit, tilting her head to make it clear she found such a comment very odd. How twitchy are you in your sleep? Solulfur wondered aloud. He'd cut his pawpad in his sleep? Was he fighting off a pack of bears in his nightmares? Her dreams, even the worst ones, almost always left Solulfur still as stone; trapped in her body and her fear like when she'd broken her leg and could not walk, could not run, could hardly crawl to and fro.

Are you new to this world? Blunt, now, as Solulfur's curiosity had outlasted her patience and caution.

He listens, though she doesn't say much. Good. He likes that. And she doesn't truly need him, does she? He presses his paw down into the snow. The cold should stem the blood. "Good," he comments to her being fine, though there's not much warmth in the statement. More, a realization that he's not needed. He could wander on.

But she asks him about dreaming, and then about the world. He stares around, feeling as if he knows this. Has always known this. And yet, it is foreign to him.

"Yes? No?" He doesn't answer the question about dreaming. Mostly, he doesn't dream. But this dream had felt so visceral, so clear... And yet, so distant at the same time.

"This is Terra," he states after a moment of consideration. "I have been here, and I have not." He stares down at her, impassive, distant. "You don't look to be a daemon." And if she said otherwise, he'd kill her. It would be his sacred duty.

Solulfur fought a childish and unusual urge to roll her eyes. This wolf was comprised of non-answers that only bore more questions.

She hadn't decided, yet, if she was challenged enough to want to keep interrogating him until she understood him better or if she wanted to huffily write him off as not worth her time or effort. Helping him was off the table entirely, unless it suited her interests. He was sturdy-looking and clearly unbothered by pain, but he was also perhaps unstable, so she didn't yet consider him a target for her recruitment tactics.

The Dawnbreakers that were nicer than her would probably take one look at the sorry, confused soul and want to gather him into the fold. She thought of Solvi with an affectionate if exasperated edge.

Solulfur knew better than to let pity make her decisions for her. It was the wolf who hesitated who did not eat.

'Terra', he said. I know it as Earth. Many Awaken here as if from a dream, transported strangely from where they were last. It was delivered coldly, but with a thin sliver of compassion within the statement. She remembered her awakening, and knew the words she spoke had another meaning: you are never going home.

He called her a daemon, which was a word she wasn't really familiar with. Solulfur scowled at the stranger, suspicious as ever of any possible insult. She despised not knowing how she was being addressed - be it in another's tongue or merely terminology she didn't yet understand. I am Solulfur fra Nordri-Crane of Dawnbreak.

What is a...'daemon'?

But going home meant returning to an eternal battlefield. Home was never known by the Astartes of the Black Templar, for their job was to purge the universe of the Xeno. Alien filth sitting on land that should be the Emperor's, scheming against the downfall of perfect humanity... A crusade that would never end...

Had Slaanesh been right? Had it been called upon for him to lay down his arms and rest?

"Azrael Pahadron, of the Black Templars. Astartes." It's stated as if she'd understand. But her world seems untouched by the Imperium. "Earth, Holy Terra, whatever you would call it, it is the same. The birthplace of humanity, the holiest of all land." He stares off wistfully for a moment. "And yet we are not humans." It feels strange. But not necessarily wrong-- the wolf, a canine, is a symbol of humanity. Perhaps the only nobler animal could have been an eagle.

He turns back to her. "Daemons are of the Warp. The Warp is where all sorcery comes from, and man can harness it, but the daemons are made of it. They are... foul things." His words take on a soft snarl, thinking of his sacred task. "They must be destroyed whenever seen. They corrupt endlessly, and a single nest of heretics on a planet may be cause to purge it."

He replied with his own name - Azrael Pahadron. She gave a curt nod, accepting it and committing it to memory, before tilting her head slightly to listen to the rest of his explanation.

She agreed in a way, the land was holy. The spirits resided in the mountains, the sea, the air around them - her Afi watched over her in stormclouds and brought her gifts of fresh, sweet water to feed their prey and the grass those creatures ate. It was all a great, divine, complex web of connections. Humans, whatever they were, were no part of that she knew of. I have never known of a 'human'. You are a wolf. If you were once something else, now, you are this. Just as I am what I am. Her tone was frank, firm but not unkind. This man seemed troubled, or perhaps of a very different world - but she was gracious and so she would help him better understand this world he found himself in so he did not find himself trouble.

She was nice like that.

She listened attentively to his explanation of daemons, giving a thoughtful hum. I have never seen such a thing, nor heard of one. This world is strange, but nothing within it is truly evil. The world operated for Solulfur more in greyscales; it always had. Azrael was offputting in his own way, she supposed, but intriguing and seemed more than anything a bit disoriented and lost - not entirely useless, although perhaps he would need some direction in order to truly understand the ways of the wolves in this world.

His loyalty to his ideals was enticing for Solulfur, who knew from her own self how valuable and powerful loyalty to one's pack, ideals, and family could be. The gears turned within her skull, a cunning glint not well-hidden in her molten gaze although her expression remained relatively neutral.

I understand this Awakening and new...form...must be strange for you. It was for me, too. She navigated the trails of this conversation with care, but confidence. Solulfur was not an outright liar most of the time - she twisted her words and implications, and others', to her own benefit and desires. Dawnbreak gave me stability, focus, purpose and a pack worthy of devoting my time and effort toward in a time when I was in need of that.

Solulfur ego purred beneath her own pride in her words - sure that this would be the bait on the hook to begin to reel this stranger in. She was not fond of bringing strangers into her inner circle, but recruitment would show Aurelia and the rest of her Pillar Solulfur was skilled with her words, and worthy of her Mediator role. Perhaps, greater responsibilities would be bestowed with success. And if this man proved unworthy, well, Solulfur would be thrilled to ask Tiberii to throw someone off their mountain.

She stood, shaking out her pelt loosely. I could introduce you to our Pillars, if you're interested.