Of a Beast [Thorfinn, open]

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Most people would have been intimidated by the approach of the wall between Regna Ferox and the Halidom of Ylisse, but not Dawn. She had been traveling for quite a few days, the evidence being the snow and mud that was ingrained into her fur, and she merely took in a deep inhale, her muscles coiling behind her as she skillfully picked out a lower part of the wall that wasn't patrolled. She took a moment to watch the patterns of the guards before she decided that this was her best chance, and in that moment, she exploded outwards in movement, running towards the wall, taking a few leaps up though lower buildings before springing away again and managing to place her front paws on the very top of it, an impressive feat given the size of the wall compared to even her beast form. Panting hard and well aware of the shouts from the distance, a snarl left her muzzle as she dug her claws in and pushed with her hind paws, the extra leverage giving her the ability to scramble up to the top of the wall, and it was a simple matter of three strides before she was leaping from the battlements, javelins hissing through the air around her.

The impact with the ground was hard on her paws, but she ignored the slight pain, instead shaking herself and continuing her run, soon leaving the snow and reaching the grass, where she slowed down, her paws faltering until they rested beside each other. Her head turned, and she looked back towards the north, the land of her pack. She had ventured from Feroxi soil before, but this... this was the first time she'd been without the snow, and she was grateful that the weather was at least still cool, otherwise she would have been warm in her winter furs. Her stomach ached slightly with hunger, but it was forgivable, something easily forgotten as she decided to stretch out on the ground and lick her pads clean of dirt and blood from where they had rubbed raw. She always forgot how much of a hassle getting over the wall was until she had done it, and it was something that always left her pads aching at the very least, if not with a few javelins sticking out of her pelt from the guards. Honestly, by this point, she really thought that they should learn not to throw their weapons at large beasts crossing the walls, but then again, humans were self-centered and rarely learned from their mistakes. They had hunted her family to extinction and enslaved her people. Humans were all the same.

Except for the boy who saved her. He was not like his kin. She snorted, tail flicking at the fact that her thoughts had wandered back to him. She didn't know his name, and she was almost certain he would have forgotten her by now. Besides, he should be back in Ferox, with his pack, so why were her thoughts straying to him? Weak. The humans must be rubbing off on her. The thought made a growl rumble out of her chest.

If there was one thing Dawn hated, it was being weak. She would not tolerate such a thing from herself if she could avoid it.

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The plains, flat as the sky, rolled beyond every direction. There was little place to hide here in the open. The several trees that grew in the plains were thin and small, and were far apart from each other. One traveler who came from the direction of a small town, recognizable as a small, block-shaped form in the distance, had spotted instantly the injured beast that came from out of nowhere. He dropped down to a low crouch and took his bow from his back.

Thorfinn had hunted a lot of small and big beasts in his life. His father wanted to raise him to be strong and skilled, to be armed with instincts that would help him survive. While his mother's charm had been his name, his father's had been this technique. He was a hunter but Thorfinn had never seen this long-eared, quadruped animal before.

"It has no fear," Thorfinn observed. Most beasts who were injured would be on high alert. They would run with their broken limns until they could seek protection in a cave or a forest. One would not be so bold enough to appear here in the open, especially when, from the javelins poking out of its fur, it had a run-in with humans.

This beast would die for sure. Before that, an unfortunate human might have a run-in with this beast and perish first. Thorfinn laid flat on his stomach and carefully pulled from his quiver an arrow. He notched and aimed.

"I will put an end to your misery. I promise to make this quick. Just..." He'd never had to shoot like this. The plains was not an ideal place to stalk a prey. "...stay...still..."

He steadied his bow, the arrowhead locking on the beast's head. He released nock, sending the arrow flying, a white lasso trailing its flight.


Rima

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Dawn's attention was riveted on her paws, licking them clean of the dirt and blood, and she soon managed to recover the state of her paws back to the way they had been. She had no intention of getting up and running again for a while, just so that the pads could recover a little. She yawned slightly, her jaws gaping wide and teeth shining in the light, and then she dipped her head down to begin tugging out the javelins, discarding them at her side as she removed each in the same way that someone would needles from a pincushion. There was a bit of blood that came with each removal, but she just licked at the wounds a few times before she moved onto the next, rather used to things like that happening whenever she would hop the border. It was her usual method for crossing from Ferox to Ylisse, though when she would go the other way, she would do so as a human; the Feroxi guards were less suspicious of a young woman with a hood pulled up over her head and who sat in a wagon refusing to speak much than they were of another large beast jumping up over the opposite side of their wall.

She let out a yelp of pain when an arrow barrelled into her side just shy of her head, growling and bristling up. She snarled low in her throat, her fur slowly fluffing up the same way that a true wolf's would when threatened, and she glanced upwards, figuring out the direction the arrow had come from. She got to her paws and padded slowly in the direction, her voice coming out a bit more warped due to the difference between her beast form's vocal cords and that of her human form, but it was more than discernible to people. "How dare you shoot an arrow at me," she snarled, lip curling up to show off her sharp teeth. "How dare you, self-centered human, think you could kill me, the last of my pack?" She howled loudly, her nails tearing into the ground beneath her in one angry swipe of her paw. "How dare you shoot me!?!" she roared, furious. The archer would pay for his arrogance just as surely as she was a taguel. She would ensure of it.