"It's okay," Yvan promises, and somehow— as it always does— that assuages some of her worries. Even if the echoing noise of his feet tapping on the too-smooth floor is too much for even pinned-back ears to muffle. Big and bright don't inspire the hope and courage she needs to survive this overstimulation, but Yvan racing through the door does.

"YVAN!" tears loose of her throat as he vanishes across the bright threshold; a yelp of a single, worried sob that clatters off of every wall of the cathedral, and perhaps the single loudest noise that she has ever actually made. It binds her throat too tight to shout again as she sprints through the pews after him, breathing heavier with panic after every step—

Her eyes dilate to painful pinpricks as the light swallows her up, and she nearly retreats, eyes screwed shut, back into the dark. A single half-step back is all she can manage, because Yvan's out there in the big bright and she needs to follow him... and give him the what for.

Which is what she does, once her panic-induced adrenaline rush partially morphs into awe-stricken quivering, and metastasizes into yet more overstimulation (but... an okay kind of it?) once she feels the soft, soft grass underfoot and the breeze stirring across her skin and scales and the gentle warmth of the big bright above, sees that it's not just a blinding white but a calm, sweet blue with shimmering lights above and and and—

Soon as her eyes find Yvan rolling in the grass, she marches over to him, grumbles in pure, fleeting anger, and wrenches that breeze into a rousing toss of air to throw him down the hill with. She crumples into a loose ball of tail and hair, then, rolling after him and flopping down at his side, scooting close enough along the soft grass to nip at his face.

"Don'd'that again..." she grumbles, a little more teary-eyed than she thought.

One more lap around the calendar, and here the Gembound are at it again: Celebrating contests of strength and finesse, and dragging Vakornol back out of her happy retirement because it's just so damn entertaining to come out and see what the Cave's put out in the past twelve cycles. Granted, she's got a little bit of rust to scrape off the gears, but...

Hey, nobody's ever upset to see the Forsaken Revenant hit the arena again, right? She's definitely not ever upset to see the beauty of armored defense sitting in the sand across from her again. They've never fought personally, but she remembers the bloody show that this thing and Draconua had made. Hell, she'd even sent Vargas's least favorite Valkhound into a chrysalis.

Of course, there's the disadvantage of Galleon not being able to do as much goring and maiming, but that was probably the whole thing of being in a deathmatch. This is much, much more casual. Perfect for taking down all those cobwebs.

Vakornol huffs as she finishes her assessment of the huge creature, grinning crookedly with her already-grinning teeth. "Hey, you with the face," she chuffs across the way, tossing her head up in a nod. "Don't you hold back on me because I'm an old lady. You better hit me first and mean it!"

Bouncing on her heels, she waits for the first strike.

coding by wulf for template purposes