He sensed them before he saw them.
A few days after the incident with the hawk, Richard and the group were sleeping(Krackle was still in the lake, though Richard had began having the octopulse come out onto land to stretch once in a while)
Adrenaline shot through Richard's mind, forcing him to wake as he felt a presence on level to Alexandria's, and the sharp intent behind it, forcing him to stir to wake.
The presence in question was not in front of the cave, seemingly out of politeness, though Richard wasn't quite sure, since it was his first time meeting this presence.
Alexandria got up quickly, seemingly excited. "She's finally here!" She squealed, and Richard could not help but be reminded of an excited teenager, much like the young nuns at the church, excited to share more gossip. Despite being a church, the priests and nuns were quite the gossips.
In spite of his groggy body, his now very much awake mind forced him to wake, while Panda cursed as he woke.
"Damn blasted whore! Who the fuck wakes people like that! Goddamn prick in my consciousness, I should pull out some hairs and see how they feel about it..." he grumbled as the squirrel got up, receiving a harder thwack than usual, though the squirrel waived it off.
In the center of the forest near the lake stood the one who had shocked him out of sleep, two different figures.
One of them was quite familiar to him, the red furred gladius lupin he had seen a few days back, and the other was a wonder to behold. The former was giving him a glare, which seemed rather cute considering how childish he looked while doing so. Wolves looked childish now. Huh
A beautiful white wolf stood before them, easily 2-3 times Richard's size, with small streaks of blue accenting the fur, equally matched by streaks of red, each one lighting up softly, seemingly in tandem.
The tail, however, was quite different from the average gladius lupin, splitting off into 9 different tails, each of them embellished with blades, the blades seemingly acting as scales to the tail.
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The amount of blades needed to cover 9 tails so perfectly... How many has she taken...
As Richard pondered this in wonder, the wolf's striking violet eyes passed over them quickly before it returned back to Alexandria.
"Alexandria," she purred, "it's good to see you are doing well this year." The wolf's voice reminded him of a middle aged woman adventurer he knew,who had a deep and sultry voice. She was well known around the church, for... flirting with a younger innocent priest at the church.
Alexandria returned the greetings excitedly, "it's great to see you silverwind!" and they do a weird hug thing. It's hard to tell really, since one is a wyrm, the other some form of gladius lupin, and Richard was unwilling to cast appraisal, lest it bounce back or it be seen as rude by the being clearly seen as a friend and equal to Alexandria. The hug looked more like some sort of death strangle, with Alexandria rolling around with Silverwind in her grip, and were it not for the grins on both their faces, he'd think they were fighting.
Looking over at Richard and the red Gladius Lupin, she added in, "hey, why don't you and Smolderfang go hang out elsewhere while we chat?"
Richard decided to do so, since clearly they were about to do girl talk, and if Richard's experience with nuns in the church meant anything, it's that he was just going to end up lost.
Looking at Smolderfang, he motioned with his hands to follow him, before heading over to the lake where Krackle had been recently living.
Smolderfang grumbled but followed him over to the lake where Richard sat down, tapping his tail on a spot to sit down, and Smolderfang chose to deliberately sit down somewhere else.
Richard rolled his eyes, unsure why the child was so grumpy. Not his problem. He'd still try to start a conversation, to be polite.
"So how do you know si-"
"Fight me!" Demanded Smolderfang, much to Richard's annoyance.
This brat... Fine. He'd been staring at him funny, and even Richard couldn't put up with annoying children.
"Alright, where do you want to do this? Do you want to fight with magic, or would you prefer no magic, or..."
"NOW!" It shouted as it charged forward, blade in mouth.
Richard sighed and prepared to fight.
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Silverwind sighed as she watched her son get pummeled into the ground.
Alexandria looked on, clearly amused. "You're too soft on your son" she scolded, and Silverwind could only scoff at the hypocrisy in the statement.
"Anyway, have you heard from Gillian?"
"Last I heard, he found a hot new thing-"
The elders didn't mind. Children had their little struggles once in a while.
Gillian and his new mate was far more interesting gossip.