@heroic-ignus Location: The journey to Hrimthur's Outpost
(tw: violence) Each step further into the wasteland was agony. The miles and days had piled up, but so too had the promises. Little aside from callouses and frost-bitten extremities had materialized as rewards. That was until the long-whispered about village materialized before their eyes.
Rest was welcomed, and the collective held breath was finally released. Hands were made busy with preparing beds for resting, hunters were dispatched to find meat, and gatherers for what other provisions there were to be found. Even Juneau, perpetually pessimistic, found her mood slightly lifted and her surly attitude a bit more welcome to chip in for the benefit of others.
Juneau had been tasked with preparing a space for the horses, and that solitary work suited her fine. She spread the hay as evenly as she could, and perhaps fed them a bit more grain than was prudent, but they had earned it after all. Her back had begun to ache from the manual labor of refreshing the stalls and wielding the heavy pitchfork. A breathless sigh escaped her as she pulled the thick sleeve of her coat across her forehead.
And then—somehow immediately amongst the throng of refugees—she saw his face. Ivar. Whatever happened between the moment she first laid eyes on him and meeting him toe to toe was beyond her. Rage and shock had blacked out her senses, and then next thing she knew she was throttling him.
Pitchfork in hand, she grappled him to the ground and relished in the fact that her newfound strength allowed her to best him. Juneau was determined now to demonstrate her superiority in every way, to return his favor of demonstrating how little he had needed her but sending a clear message that she needed him even less. Ivar struggled, and his panicked eyes found no reprieve or tool to aid him in his plight. Instead, he only saw the jackal’s smile materialize on Juneau’s face hovering above his own.
He was fighting as hard as he could, and the unyielding, violent urges that drove Juneau’s decision making process spurred her on. She pinned him, one foot pinning down each of his arms with her full weight. Juneau needed him to understand how futile escaping his fate would be, he would receive the same lack of mercy he showed her a month prior—none. Her breath was ragged with elated anticipation as she gripped the pitchfork in both of her hands and strained her back to lift it above her head.
The movements were swift and secure as she brought the rusted points of the pitchfork down with the whole of her might. He screamed and the sound of it could have made her laugh. Perhaps there was a time and a place for small mercies, for rather than piercing him through the neck, she pinned him to the frozen floor of the village path between the lethal prongs of the tool and slowly lowered her face toward his. She felt her mouth opening, the flesh of her cheeks lengthening until the sinew tugged at itself to the snapping point, her gaping maw opening wider than the hinge of a human jaw would permit. The razor-sharp jowls of a wolf threatened to raze through his neck and swallow him whole, but when the beast of Juneau took in that anticipatory breath before the kill all it loosed in her was a scream.
The woman jolted upright into the frigid, dark air in a chaotic, sudden lurch. Juneau panted and clutched at herself, finding that she was still very much human in form. The flickering light of a near-dead fire reminded her that they had not arrived anywhere except another bend in the winding mountain pass, another false summit, another unkept promise of respite. She swallowed hard and pawed at her cheek finding it dry—it was too cold to allow for the materialization of tears, not that she was weak enough to cry. Not for that fucker. The beating of her heart began to right itself again, slowing back to its normal rate in increments and she glanced around hoping that her decision to sleep as far away from the others had granted her the privacy it was intended for.
