Stab. Sprint. Stop. Stab. Sprint. Stop.

Hathor’s lungs were furnaces in her chest, bellowing hot air. Her heart thrummed like a motor only seconds away from exploding. Every muscle felt stretched to its breaking point, microtears aching when she pushed herself still farther. She knew drool leaked from the corners of her heavily panting mouth. She also knew that one of her feet had started to bleed, the tender pads of her toes finally wearing away from too many laps around the craggy hills. Shove through it. Just a few more. The young fae charged through the final inches of her sprint - pivoted on a dime - and slashed out at an invisible enemy by rearing on her hind limbs and ripping the air with her foreclaws. The curving onyx scimitars attached to her feet moved with stunning speed. Sharp enough to kill. Dextrous enough to hit only what she wanted to shred.

Plenty of disadvantages came with having literal eagle legs, but Hathor could deal with those. After all, if she learned to utilize them correctly, she possessed deadly weapons on all four feet.

With one final up-slash - her talons cutting upward through an imaginary gut - Hathor hopped back to earth. Dust clung to her creamy pelt, several shades too warm to pass as “white,” especially with the soft faded black brindling tickling either side of her rib cage. Fearsome windows - one dark as midnight with a maple ring, one sweet as honey with bursts of yellow - scanned the blue waves crashing along the beach. An ocean breeze combed through her feathers, stirring plumage of russet and gold with irregular patches of white and occasionally catching actual fur. Unlike her avian father, Hathor’s warrior headdress was really more of a warrior cape, her avian blessing shimmering out from behind her ears, down her neck, across her back, and over the upper portions of her shoulders and rib cage. The pinfeathers had been agony as they grew in… though Hathor groomed her coat now without a worry, idly picking out any loose feathers that had overstayed their welcome. Some packmembers had - rightfully - complimented Hathor on her beautiful plumage. What they failed to praise… even outright ignoring most of the time... were her legs. And the extremely dangerous gorgeous daggers those legs flaunted.

Proportionally speaking, Hathor’s stems were perfectly normal. Fur transitioned to scales and flesh from the elbows and ankles down, but so did the Akkunak’s. What tended to freak others out (and what made ambulating an incredibly difficult task) was the fact that each of Hathor’s columns ended in honest-to-goodness raptor talons.

But she was a fabulous gryphon - so what do you expect?

Steeling herself through the pain of her injured foot (it was the front left one, damned thing) Hathor took a deep breath and prepared to lunge into another set -

And that’s when she heard the howl. A stranger’s voice swaying across the atmosphere, asking for an audience with her father: Kershov. Hathor immediately bristled, her temper triggered. Didn’t this bozo realize her father was busy? Did he not think that the Umiatsuak had better things to do than entertain guests all day long? She decided to head off this - this - this heathen at the border and save her Alpha the trouble of coming himself. Surely he would praise Hathor for taking the initiative and acting like the leader she was so clearly meant to be.

The little lass might not walk very fluidly, but she had devised a way to travel quickly based on her observations of birds. Small birds tended to hop around, and so Hathor mimicked this movement herself. It took her a few weeks to build up the proper muscles - her wolf-body wanted to lope, to dig into the terra with normal paws - but now the girl could skip pretty swiftly in any direction she desired. She soon passed the hills that smoothed out toward one of the rivers fencing Uyaraut’s edge; her sharp eyes picked out the group waiting just beyond the border much sooner than any usual lupine’s, and in clearer detail. It looked like a bunch of… kids? Some her age, some a little older, some with eyes that GLOWED like blue stars even with the sun shining above. What in the actual HECK was going on?!

Hathor sprang toward the gathering on her slender limbs, her surprisingly graceful gait not unlike an antelope prancing past the high grass. It was only when she began to slow down that the awkwardness of her talons betrayed itself; her splayed toes - tipped with deadly claws - proved excellent for spearing prey and delicately handling small items, but could not carry her with the effortless steps of real paws. She shuffled as if on broken glass, although it did not hurt to walk at all. Hathor was simply a gangly pup attempting to figure out the already baffling proportions of her growing body… a process not helped by the fact her mostly lupine body had to make do with bird-feet. When she swooped within ten yards of the Dierne Hrof party, she threw out an aggressive, challenging screech, the sound identical to that of a territorial avian of prey. The mottled feathers caping her back and sides rippled upward, revealing the fluffy under-down beneath her new mature plumage. “DON’T GET TOO CLOSE!” Her shrill voice speared toward the small pack, mismatched eyes burning furiously. From five yards she skidded to a halt, claws sinking into the soft sand as if to root her in place. A subtle tremble worked itself up her yellow-scaled columns… yet the gryphon held her ground, convincing herself that it was the force of her mighty anger shaking her so. Letting out another short shriek, Hathor let her flag fly high as an alpha’s behind her. “Do you have any idea of where you are? You’re near UYARAUT soil. You better not be getting any WEIRD ideas!”