[i]wag wag WAG wag wag[/i] goes Ember's tail, her ears perked up, her smile hidden but obvious. The energy is shared by her honor guard, who are leaning in as if to pounce, intent on the very idea of a rival pack to clash against.

"It all depends on their dynamics," Ember says, bringing her fingertips together like the archetypal "scheming Synnefo." "If we crush them, seize their pack treasures, prove our dominance, some clans would disintegrate under pressure like that, or at the very least would shed new recruits and wandering bands chased offworld. Others would harden like diamond under external pressure, fighting to the last, impossible to tame. We won't know unless we challenge them. A strike force, hitting at their base, demanding plunder and satisfaction, testing their mettle-- [i]that[/i] is how we can know this pack."

Then, with the air of a hound that has suddenly realized she has been caught halfway to the cookies, and thinks that if she freezes up she will become invisible: "If you think that is necessary. It probably is, no matter who we side with. They're a thorn in everyone's boot, except for the Generous Knight, but we've already established, I think, that we won't side with her. And we shouldn't. If she wanted an entertaining fight, she should have looked to [i]us.[/i]"

Pride radiates from the elegantly-made knight, and her bannermaid drums her stave's butt against the floor once, twice, thrice in enthusiasm. But more than that, Ember keeps sneaking glances out the window at the world below. She yearns to see, to run, to challenge, and to meet the unknown. To greet the Argumentative Portuguese without hiding, to acknowledge that she is the Speaker for the Tyrant and that she has come to solve their Ceronian problem. To win veils for her belt and to win gifts from a populace eager to be saved and spared. And who can blame her?