She doesn't hate him-- at least, not so much as the other two. She certainly doesn't like him, but there's something comforting about one of the alphas coming from Oukoku. It's likely he knows how to hold power, as his mother had, without gripping it so tightly it breaks, as other Rosas she saw replaced. No way is a child of Yellow weak in any way-- that's soothing. It's not like anyone would have listened to Telana or Cocytus is if weren't for his imposing stature behind them.

  Miasma only hopes they're worth supporting. She hasn't decided, but she does know how to show deference. She saw it at the last coup. Trudging through the brush with a pair of antlers, folded on their strings and clicking between her teeth, she seeks the Magus. He's not hard to find, anyway: large and starkly patterned in sharp contrast. Red isn't uncommon in Alteron, but such a crimson is hard to artificially keep. The dire girl doesn't speak with her mouth full, tail swishing high and just damp enough still that the scent of decay hasn't found her yet, the curl of heavy air, the mottling of mud. The ascension wasn't much to see, but the son of a Rosa deserves a proper coronation, and she's groomed for the occasion.

  The antlers were shed from a white-tail, double-pronged and almost delicate looking on someone such as he. Bound by a cord in the back,  which tethers the antlers around the neck. The longest prongs are bound to the eye sockets of a possum skull from within, suspending it at the deepest point of his chest, assuming it's adjusted properly, while the secondary points serve to frame his broad chest, curl away from the body just enough they pose a bit of an obstacle to anyone aiming for the throat.

  The yearling steps back, dips her damp head, and says, "I hope you like it. It's the best I can do, with my skill." Self-taught, vaguely deranged. "I heard bones are a mark of royalty in Alteron. Maybe. I was just getting used to it when everything changed." Miasma recognizes him, from the Valley. He has Alaunos' silhouette, but is the spitting image of Nhu. She knows his name, doubting he's heard of her. She tended to hide in a den where she wasn't born, caked in tar and cloaked in Crow's shadow. Him, Falco must know.

  Finally, something goes right. Through trial and error, and so many hides dropped to rot, her tanning is finally coming together. Sure, they're still slipping, and not so malleable as leather ought, but it's working. Not so far, in some hole in the rock, she has a ribcage mostly articulately, almost exactly Crow's size, and soon she can start sewing from it. A series of sinews threaded in sun-bleached bones hang from phalanges gouged in the wall long before her, some found, mostly made on her own in the style of artful predecessors. Miasma still thinks them pretty, but she doesn't want to seem too gaudy, if she's the only one.

  Her claws scrape over the fleshy side of a pelt, blunt enough they don't damage it, but remove any meat she missed. Smiling privately, she goes about her work, and thinks of nothing but blood.

  Her fur is fluffed, and for once, it isn't the humidity. Miasma seethes, staring at the temple-- where Crow was taking her, where the Dragon lived, raised her offspring, birthed her brood, fucking Antaeus and Persephone and Cocytus--


  The white of her lower jaw has been stained a sullied burgundy, splatters flaking from her thick neck. Killing doesn't calm her, but she keeps hoping it might-- eating does. The dire's started gaining some weight; she looks nothing like her dad now. As if she ever did. Their crippled queen said they were catering in the upcoming party, so Miasma oscillates between stuffing herself sick and trying to sculpt something from the remains. The Artificers died with their old regime, and sometimes she wonders if she had been intended to follow them.


  Feet braced wide in the dirt, she jerks at the skin of a fat badger, determined to save something before she turns over the carcass for someone else to feed from. Alteron is inhabited by disgusting scavengers, and if they find something freshly deceased, they'll leave the herds be. Who knows how many will be in Inaria? How many mewling children, parched for their first taste of blood-- it had better be fresh.

  The flesh she was shearing rips instead, and in frustration, Miasma grits her teeth, deep in the meat, and thrashes. It ruins the pelt, of course, but what did she need with grey, anyway? When she drops it, scraping fibres of fur from her tongue against teeth, the neck sets at a strange angle, throat exposed to the bone. "Fine," she seethes. "If you won't give me your skin, I'll just take the whole head."