Did You Miss Me |Bane/Any|

[Wolfbane]

Of all the possible intruders Wolfbane had noticed at his borders - Leilan, a multi-hued filly, another strange black stallion (two of the three visitors had been with Lilliana when Bane unknowingly watched from afar; he noted this to himself) perhaps the very last horse he’d ever expected to come slinking into his new home was Arthas.

The old dapple gray had a long history with Wolfbane, stretching back to the blue-and-gold pegasus’ youth. He’d been picked up, “recruited” by the elder stallion, and brought back to Loess for training which had eventually led to his ascension and initial crowning. In those days he’d been the Pirate Lord of Loess, while the two of them together had unified Sylva and the scrublands into what was currently known as the ‘Southlands’.

Their history together is Beqanna’s history, but only one of them had made it past the Plague alive.
Or, so Wolfbane had thought.

Perched comfortably among the evergreen boughs of Taiga’s redwood trees, Bane gripped at the bark with the long claws of a golden eagle. He was fully shifted, eyeing the borders regally from where he sat and pausing now or then to preen the lustrous honey-gold feathers that adorned his body. Without certain magical assistance the average horse couldn’t glean the truth hidden in the body of the otherwise normal-looking bird of prey. Even those with a heightened sense of smell or sight wouldn’t discern that the raptor was anything but an average male, out looking for an early morning meal.

Gripping his talons into the stringy flesh of redwood bark, Wolfbane hunkered his majestic eagle head down below his shoulders and tilted one round, hazel eye to where the faint movement of  a trespasser could be seen - just near the less-traveled section of Taiga’s southern border. He lifted his body in one motion, unfurled both wings, and swept down from the perch to plummet smoothly through the entwined branches. In a matter of seconds he could see the carpet of thick, hazy fog and ferns rising up to meet him so he leveled out and swept his wings to stop, suddenly, before exploding into a mess of writhing body parts.

His blue hooves touched down on the springy earth and Wolfbane shook his mane as he trotted the remaining steps forward, halting while the last few feathers of his bird-skin blending back into the white bristles of his mane and the long, silken cords of his tail just before Arthas burst through the cover and out into the open. “I’ll be damned.” Bane breathed in disbelief. If he didn’t have the ability to prove to himself that this Arthas was the real one, Wolfbane might’ve taken the dappled stallion for a sick imposter. “The dead rise again. Arthas… I wasn’t expecting you.”

@[Arthas]