Amaranth I

The previous village had been... interesting to say the least. A smiling star idol. A sleeping populace. The smells of food and celebration from the night before.

It was overtly obvious to her as she walked along that the settlement was new and that the leadership had freshly departed from a larger village where such things as celebration were safe. They didn't yet know how harsh the forest could be to a smaller group.

Maybe they'd broken off from a larger village like her former clan, The Exiles, led by a mad prophet. It seemed like only the the thoughts of incoming doom could convince a group of people to leave all the protection and safety they'd ever known to follow a stranger. Spirituality did that, it seemed. It took a person out of his or her comfort zone and thrust that person into a strange land where danger lurked around every corner. Perhaps faith was forged in such a thing... an environment where only providence prevented disaster. Indeed, if Iskra had been a pärak, a hell-demon, like Jack, she might have blown the whole village up after noticing how lazy the citizenry appeared to be.

Then again, that wasn't really a fair assumption, considering that Jack hadn't blown her up when he met her. He was rather like a crow, a black, curious thing.

[ EXP: 250 || +1 TEXP (1st post) ]

It seemed that a short time after departing the village, Iskra froze perfectly still for a moment, as though under the influence of lighting. For a few moments, she didn't move at all, but then her brow furrowed and her mouth grew into a long, bitter grimace.

Indeed, the spirit turned and marched towards a tree as though the plant had offended her somehow and stopped stiffly in front of it, as though attempting to resist punching it.

She ran a sharp-nailed finger down the bark, and stared hard at the moss at the bottom, inhaling impatiently.

When she stood again, it was with a sigh and a growl. "I can't believe the..."

The sentence died, drowned in another snarl of fury and contempt.

Some very large dog had claimed the territory beyond the village for his own.

"I'll fix him." Of course, the hyena spirit didn't want to openly defy the borders and drive whatever creature it was out. He had to have someplace to live, after all. Everything had to.

[ EXP: 200 ]

Additionally, the dog-thing, whatever it was, hadn't openly offended her yet other than innocuously claiming this spot before she could get to it. Now she had a mind to claim everything around the spot and thus contain him and keep him from simply having his way with this village behind her. After all, a large carnivore, especially a wild one, would be a threat to the sleepy village behind her, and since they were human who resided on her "spot", she felt oddly protective of them.

It was a plan that she immediately set about, but she wasn't really sure how to explain it to Lethe. Then again, he understood her nature as a beast-at-heart, so perhaps he would guess it from the offense she took at a "tree" of all things.

"Look, I've got to go do something," she mumbled aloud to her lackey. "Alone. You can start claiming the lands a little west of here and meet me back here after some time has passed. It won't take me long. I want to see a few miles in this direction."

[ EXP: 200 ]

With that, the woman turned and began walking northeast. She didn't lean to the trees to sniff them, but she had a rough idea of how far around the territory extended in the odd way that carnivores empathetically understood natural borders. She'd lied, actually. It would probably take her a really long time to claim the vast periphery that she'd need to claim in order to feel as though she'd adequately contained the dog-beast, wherever he was.

Walking away from Lethe made this business more tedius as well. Ordinarily, she would have company, but she didn't really care to do such a thing in front of humans who were supposed to respect her. She knew from her experiences with Nori that doing hyena stuff often freaked out people who didn't understand such things or who weren't openly accustomed to them. It was too much mental work to try and discern whether or not the barbarians at Lethe's back were accustomed to dealing with such spiritual oddities as herself as the thing she was.

[ EXP: 200 ]

Thus, when Iskra was a safe distance away from the rest of the company, her body began to change in its strange way. Her shoulderblades pointed forwards. Her feet grew longer and narrower. Her body in general got longer. Her clothes detached from her body until it was a spotty, white coat. Her arms fell to her sides, and soon her body fell to the ground, supported not by one foot, but my four. And soon she was not a woman, but a large, aggressive-looking beast. A monster, by the definitions of many villages.

There weren't many villages around this area, however. Just fields and such, all of which she'd need to walk. Hopefully she could just make a large circle and meet Lethe from the west end that he claimed.

She trotted for several dozen feet and paused. Dogs were weird in that they marked trees, the height of the mark advertising the height and assumed size of the dog.

As a creature more related to the cats than a dog, she felt no such need to have a pissing contest.

[ EXP: 200 || +1 TEXP (5th post) ]

Land Grabbed!