Snippet #2617992

The sound of his name broke the relative stillness of the glade, and Nova felt a chill creep down his spine, followed by the bristling of fur. The voice had sounded familiar, though Nova could not immediately place the proper source of it. Before cocking his head to the speaker, his mind made a few rapid calculations. If he was about to be ambushed, he could use the lake to his advantage. No Tenneth would follow the Ausi out on an improvised ice barge. All he would have to do was make a defty dash to the right. Perhaps he should not even give the speaker the pleasure of a response. After all, why would anyone besides a hostile Tenneth be over here. But then again, what Tenneth actually knew his name?

Curiosity eventually trumped Nova's natural caution, and the ice wolf turned to meet the speaker, who was standing several paces away. Nova raised a claw to his face to hook the goggles from off his eyes to place them on his forehead while peering at the distant speaker. It did not take Nova long to recognize Durandel, though the normal warmth of seeing a familiar face was replaced with an icy fear. The two of them had not departed on the most gracious of terms, where Nova had rather rebuffed the Cancius by telling him to leave his territory for his own life's sake, despite the adventure they had just emerged from. Now, the tables were turned, and Nova was the foreigner without anyone to support him. The fact that the fire wolves were now aggressors did not help his nerves.

"We-ll hullo Cancius!" Nova said with an awkward stutter, not entirely sure what to do, calling the wolf by his pack name out of habit. He wasn't even sure if he had ever called the wolf by his name, he couldn't remember what it was. If there was a even a hint of foul play, Nova planned to dash for the lake. The treachery of the attack was still fresh on his mind from the Dimitrios report, and though Nova had not suffered personally from the attack, he still felt a natural amount of fire surfacing beneath his nerves at the sight of the red wolf.