When there’s time to rest, Wolfbane rests. He sleeps near the extreme edge of Pangea, close to the barren sea where no life teemed in the water. It was too saline, he’d found out. The conditions didn’t support much of anything aside from microbes or other single-celled life forms. Not until the water changed and mixed into the currents, but that wasn’t for a hundred leagues or so.

Nothing that Pangea produced was stimulating. What came from the wasteland was made from the wasteland - even its coral deer.

Yet Wolfbane, like so few others that are beginning to inhabit the eastern kingdom, thrived here. He awoke to the echo of his name, recognizing the summons as only one who’d been given the ability to do so in the past could understand, and arose from his resting place with a shake of pale dust and the stretch of his muscles.
He contemplated ignoring Ghaul’s call, since the tone had been more-or-less neutral, but pushed aside his hesitation only because Ghaul had been the one to welcome him in the first place. "A tit for a tat." Longclaw reasoned, though the other voices in his head stirred him into a mild state of irritation. He was no lapdog to be beckoned.

He was Wolfbane, and as he strode out from the shady cover of a large, overhanging boulder, his forehooves transformed into eagle’s claws: large enough to support his weight and shimmering, iridescent blue. The heat had begun to build in intensity, a sure sign of foul weather, so he molted away the long mane he usually wore and changed the stiff hair into a line of white feathers that blended nicely into his pale wings. Happy with the adjustments, the shapeshifter took to the skies in a few lopes and made his way swiftly from one end of Pangea to where Ghaul was waiting for him.

He’d only come to land and take a few reaching strides forward before Ghaul began.

Bane sighed. He listened, but soon a dull look of boredom glossed over his usually interested eyes. There was nothing new or fascinating about the idea that some place or another wanted him dead, and that Ghaul might be considering trying to appease their wishes. "Keyword: try.” Lupei cackled in his head, but no flicker of amusement colored Bane’s masked face. Ghaul would not be the first, and unless he had the means and the willpower that Loess, Nerine, and Taiga all seemed to lack, he’d find the task unfulfilled - just as they did.

“You mean like my marriage to Lepis, current queen of Loess? Or perhaps breaking the spirit of Lilliana, diplomat to Taiga? Or what about the virginity and life of the new Nerinian queen?” He tallied his offenses one-by-one, unconcerned at admitting the truth, “Or would you like it if I turned my own child against her brood, made her my own pawn? No? I could damage another, I’ve got plenty of whelps... if I hadn’t already done that as well.” His tail slapped at his gleaming hide.

“If you’re seeking action, you’re a bit late to the party. I have raped and pillaged my way across the northern territories - more than any acolyte of yours has done thus far.” The hippogriff’s voice measured a bit sharper, “Maybe you’ve found out the truth for yourself. I value nothing, aside from my own desires and the freedom to enforce them as I see fit.”

Not this Kingdom. Certainly not Ghaul’s approval. Not his wife or his children or even his sanity, no. Hadn’t he told Ghaul exactly what he’d wanted from the beginning? Why, all of a sudden, did Ghaul need further proof? Celina had told him of the now-King’s journey northward; if Ghaul refused to see the obviousness of his nature then it was his own fault for being so petulantly blind in sense, as much as he was in natural sight.

“I’ve left Pangea and her inhabitants alone. There’s your proof.” Bane replied, and the level of his statement couldn’t be mistaken. There wasn’t room for discussion. “Accept that, or lose a valuable weapon in your arsenal.”