Where Elspet was slow and purposeful-- even if it were a rare occasion --Kera was quick and had only one working brain cell. To patrol all of the caves in record time, and make sure she didn't miss anything, you had to gallop about as fast as you possibly could.

Which is exactly what Kera was doing, scarcely looking in front of her in favour of looking just about everywhere else, nails clicking rapidly against the cave floor. She liked running, at least-- she liked hearing the blood rushing to her ears, the rhythmic thumping of her paws, gasping for breath. What Kera did not like, however, was ramming face-first into a Gorilla.

Luckily, Kera's one brain cell managed to notice.

She planted her paws firmly in front of her and came-- quite literally --skidding to a halt, nails scratching against the stone underfoot. She'd managed to avoid a collision, for now, at least. With a heavy breath, the dog padded out to regard the gorilla.

Kera had never seen one before, but she was fairly sure the horns were her gemstone and not, in fact, part of a regular gorilla's anatomy. "What up?" The wolf panted, tongue lolling out. "Are you evil?"

It was a reasonable question, of course.

It seemed just about everyone was evil, these days.

What Kera meant, specifically, however-- was 'are you a Bloodberry?'. Which was also a reasonable question. The Bloodberries seemed to take their home in the tunnels surrounding Polaris, particularly tunnel N. This was not tunnel N, but it was close enough that they might be patrolling either way.

Then, without asking, the wolf ruffled out her fur and took to introducing herself. "I'm Kera, the Lightbringer, 'cause I brought light back to the caves, and I'm gonna kill Blackberry and her murder-dumplings." She liked murder-dumplings. It rolled off the tongue fairly well.

Kera nodded a few times, because Caves knew that villains liked to monologue about how evil they were. Although Kera knew there was a possibility that Elspet could be smarter than your average bad-doer, and was merely saying she was not evil, Kera trusted her word enough.

She'd just have to kill her later if she was lying.

"Hello, Elspet," the wolf panted, hunching over onto herself. She listened, ears flicking and a tongue lolling out to swipe along her jowls. "Blackberry is a fucked up goose who likes to kill people. I'm trying to find her so I can kill her before she kills anybody else."

There was a pause, a thoughtful one. "Sometimes I wonder if that makes me as bad as she is," Kera said. "Y'know, wanting to murder. That's all she wants, you know? But she's a really bad person, and I like to think I'm a good person." The wolf paused, then shrugged. "I think so."

"I think," Kera added, "she just sort of, uh. Brain-washes kids, including her own, to murder. It's really bad."

Kera lifted a paw and started itching her side. "You got any kids?" She asked, conversationally.