Juneau still saw shifting under the full moon as a miserable burden since her soul had become corrupt and she’d become a vuldak. What had once been a liberating experience was now sobering and the sacrifice demanded to sustain herself felt like a heavy weight. The first months in her new form had been eased by Alder helping her find an unwilling victim for consumption, but Alder continuously pushed her toward independence. This month, they had discussed in great detail where she might find a soul for consumption that aligned with their moral code before Juneau was sent off to follow through on her own. Alder was available to her for support or as a fall back if needed, never quite too far from her, but never permitted by the blonde to witness her shift. That same sense of shame didn’t seem to permeate her abyssal, bestial form, but it resurfaced when the sun arose. Now, the moon hung high in an inky black sky, and regret was a long forgotten concept as blood and sinew dripped from her jaws. 

Steam still rose from the spilled blood strewn across Juneau’s feeding ground and, in her vuldak form, she had barely finished licking her chops when she sensed movement from not far in the brush. The blighted wolf emitted a low, guttural growl only to be met with the threat of flames that licked out toward her but did not quite touch her. Regardless, instinct overrode logic in her untrained form and her base, thoughtless reaction was to retreat. Whatever had produced the flames pursued her, driving her back but never going so far as to harm her. They seemed fully capable of the strategy that the abyssal beast lacked, easily driving Juneau to the sheer wall of a cliff cornering her with little option for escape. With few options but to attempt to fight back, the great demonic wolf felt the ground give way beneath her, sinking down into a deep pit, the top of which was nearly impossible to reach. As the wolf looked up at it, she found the perimeter was rimmed not with the illumination of the light of the moon, but the flames that had chased her this far.

Despite the near impossibility of scaling the walls of the pit and the threat of the fire, Juneau spent hours attempting to escape. Deep claw marks were scratched into nearly every inch of the surface of the walls around her, she snarled and howled until she could emit little more than a hoarse, unrecognizable lamentation, she paced and whined hour after hour after hour convinced of her impending, second death until slowly the great lumbering beast at the bottom of the hole depleted its every ounce of energy and collapsed under the weight of its own exhaustion. Silence finally overtook the sounds of struggle, the quiet lasting until the moon retreated and the light of dawn cut through the shadows of the deep pit.

Miraculously still alive and much more herself in her human form, Juneau did not wait for whoever or whatever might still be at the surface to come for her. Roughed up with bruises and blood in her nail beds from the struggle the night before, she managed to scale the walls of he pit and climb her way out now guided by logic rather than base instinct alone. She ignored the pain in her limbs and fingers--she'd be good as new in a matter of hours. Her exhaustion permeated her human form, made clear by the bags under her eyes and the hollow look in her eyes as she scanned the immediate surroundings suspecting she was not lucky enough to find herself alone.

Though it seemed that more time than she could even fathom had passed since the couple had last been in the city, it was hard to forget someone such as him; looking as though he was happily standing in a patch of flame just as he had been when they first met. How ironic it was, then, that they were meeting in the same place; the cool breeze of Saviour's Respite, paired with the real flowers lining their path lulling Red in just as they had before.

They only ever had one encounter, but.. what was it he called her back then..?

[ Zagreus, right? ] the Transistor calls out in place of the woman, though she greets the man with a smile all the same; seemingly relieved to see a familiar face, even if they were never able to grow close. [ Well, with the way this place works, maybe you don't remember us. Unless a red-headed "nymph" and her talking sword ring any bells for ya. ]