Awoken

Ashetta had yet to find herself a new home. Stubbornness, pickiness, an all-around glutton for self punishment? Likely all three of those things, but she found herself moving place to place every night, rarely returning to the same location twice. She didn’t know if Alistair had gone back to the place they had been sleeping, but she wouldn’t. Even if it were empty, she would not go. It was rare she slept anywhere civilized, instead choosing to curl up with her tail over her nose in any place small enough to be considered a den. Today, it was the hollow in the roots of a dead tree the black wolf had to wriggle out from under, shaking her pelt against the dropping temperatures and darkening skies.  She hadn’t been sleeping, not quite. She hadn’t done that in… two days now? Flickers of blue electricity flared in her coat as if to punctuate her wide yawn, but the hybrid absorbed the lightning into herself. Her heart was sent racing and every nerve was alive with fire suddenly.. And so began another wakeful night. She was just leaning down to take a drink from an icy cold stream hardly even wider than herself when she caught sight of it: the patch of dead grass. She drew her tongue over her jaws as she picked her head up, sharp golden eyes peering closely. She sniffed carefully, and her lip curled against the scent of decay, of something other. This was magic, there was no doubt… but this was no magic she had ever seen before. Ashetta made a quick hop over the stream, happy to put the looming self-loathing somewhere else as she investigated: that ever present need to know, a curse more than a blessing. She’d planned to find her way to a bottle of alcohol somewhere tonight - likely would slip into some unguarded sap’s house for it - but her attention was suddenly dominated. She followed her nose, though sight alone could easily guide her with the path of decay so blatant. What, or who had done such a thing? She wasn’t sure she’d ever encountered magic like this, certainly not in Northwind or Northaven. It didn’t take very long for the wolf to track the source - an easy trail and she was all too eager for something, anything to keep her moving, keep her thoughts moving forward. She paused at the edge of the clearing that path had brought her to, head lowering as her ears pricked forward. A man lay face down in the circle of dead and blackened grass, his eyes shut. Simple conclusion: he had done this. The nature of his magic… something destructive. Dark. She felt it as she lowered her nose to the earth, breathing in the barren circle of former life. Her golden eyes never left him, even as she lifted her head back up. It was a long moment of stillness, and she considered padding away again. She thought about trotting off into the woods and letting this man deal with whatever this was he was dealing with… She had been found half dead from her own magic once, near unconconscious in a circle of destruction. With a harsh squeeze in her chest, the wolf moved forward. Large paws crunched on the desolate ground, and she remained cautious as she approached. The scent of decay and this man’s own scent prickled in her nose, but she didn’t stop until she was perhaps a couple of feet from him. She moved to sit back on her haunches, and then in a flash? The raven-haired assassin crouched on the balls of her feet adjacent the man’s shoulders, fire-blue eyes looking warily down at the man. She couldn’t help it, the unconscious reach for her knives strapped at her hip… and she spoke. ”You awake?” She didn’t dare touch him, didn’t dare get close enough. From the looks of his arms, she was only just barely out of his reach. Idiot girl. Attraes ashetta it's live or die my way.