The first howl and the loudest belongs to Mosaic.

She has come riding the boarpedoes with the Silver Divers. She has come dressed in their colors: in the diving suit and armored jacket of Ember's people, though she also wears a glittering crown atop her head and a plethora of promise-ribbons tied all through her hair, descending her oversized braid like a ladder or a helix.

She is with them, but not of them. She comes in front of them, but does not radiate the pheromones of Command. She does not insist on the role of Alpha, only integration. She does not snap orders, but simply gestures with both hands through the water, spreading them wide in invitation.

Ceron. Ceron. Ceron.

The ship is your plaything. Its warriors your prey. Its prizes your glory. She, Mosaic, is here only to hunt a single name. Go and raise whatever hell you like, so long as you return to her in the end. Just as she promises to return to you. She floats, waiting. She watches, smiling. All around her, wolves cut like missiles through the water with the blessings of Preparation and Familiarity. Her soldiers knew to expect the attack, and the Corvii had not. The Silver Divers knew what it meant to [i]live[/i] in the water, and not merely survive in it. With them in front of her, there is really nothing she need do to take the ship. 

So she swims as a shadow, swift and quiet and inevitable. The water is familiar to her, too, swallowed as it was from her old hunting grounds. Now she hunts here again, muscles hardly straining as she glides forward, taking huge sniffs through the brine to listen to the rumors of the tides. Where does the scent of blood run faintest? Where does the salt give way to fresh air. What passages mark the copper tang and tired musk that means her Knight Dys. Si. A. is near? 

She feels the currents pulling at her fur and knows the battle is not something she must concern herself with. Her back burns with the ghost memory of old wounds she did not realized belonged to her. Her legs turn hollow as she kicks through the waves, though her form does not falter. Her fingers beg to be stretched, her lungs beg for rest. 

She must. She must save her strength. She glances around to see if anyone is watching, and quickly clutches at her head while nobody will see. The ride had been an ordeal. The howl had been a mistake. Against her breast a secret prayer clings to her in the shape of paper with a single invocation written on it. And a single name. Her tail swishes behind her and the currents abate. The path eases. She sighs and swims on, ignoring the smell of blood in the water as it seeps from her thigh. 

Mosaic's head breaches the surface of the water, and she lifts her hands to check her hair. She smooths the sopping braid with gentle fingers, and does not take a single step until every ribbon is tied into exacting place.