Even without a sense of smell, you could tell when you walked into a clan's borders.

There was some deep instinctual feeling, some wrench shoved into your soul, a tightness in the chest - a feeling that you, suddenly, were an outsider, and that you, suddenly, were liable to be a target. It was the sort of feeling that made the hairs on your back stand on end; rather, the hairs all over your body, as in Abathur's case, the sudden shift in atmosphere from regular liminal space to owned liminal space sending every one of the hypersensitive strands of hair on his body to stand on end, as if each one were an antenna, reaching out, trying to grasp at whatever danger may lurk around him.

He let off a low grumble to himself. Truly, he wished he had a mastery over his own biological functions, because he knew the flight or fight reflex that was building inside him was mostly baseless. He was here for a reason - talk to someone, somehow find shelter even in his body, and then wing it from there. And in case someone decided to attack him, to send him reeling away from the border as they oft wanted to do, he had developed a backup plan, specifically involving the lovely trees all around him. Felines (as were most common in inhabited areas such as these) were good climbers, but they were no match for him, especially with his years of practice in tactical retreats.

Many, many years. People were never too kindly to his kind, which he, as far as he knew, was the only one of - were they to have thumbs, he was sure he'd have been chased by torches by now. Given his massive legspan of three feet, though, he supposed it was somewhat reasonable of a reaction. Most didn't respond well to regular spiders, and given that he was three times the size of the biggest other spider species... well. That didn't bode well for his odds of not getting persecuted.

Ironically antsy, the great black spider shifted his presence, moving just another meter forward, before settling next to a nice looking tree and waiting. Had he had eyelids, he may have closed his eyes and listened, but since he didn't, he simply watched and waited, proverbial fingers crossed that someone would run across him soon, for better or for worse. He may have a lot more time to live out, given his relative youth, but he'd be damned if he was gonna spend too much of it waiting just to probably be attacked - push comes to shove, he'd just keep marching through the marsh and find some life on his own.

tags - "speech"

The territory of Tanglewood especially seemed to have an atmosphere of being owned, mainly due to the fact that if you weren't a member of the group, the swamp that they inhabited could be an absolute nightmare to navigate. Recently, Aurum had made sure that all of the tree signs were refreshed everywhere, but that didn't particularly help anyone outside of the group that assent aware of what the symbols meant, which meant that they were susceptible to traps or other hazards of the marshy territory around them. Luckily for Abathur, however, the first male to find him didn't have any particular interest in just launching himself forward and attacking without at least asking some questions first. He didn't have a tendency to do that, at least as long as someone didn't smell of the Pitt and hadn't recently kidnapped his son. So Aslisk happened to be quite the special case. Otherwise, though? Aurum tended to exude a friendly and warm atmosphere as he approached anyone at the border, whether they be a joiner or just someone from another group who was interested in getting some sort of information out there. Honestly, Aurum wasn't sure he was aware of anyone who would've chosen to just attack Abathur on sight, at least outside of the context of perhaps a prank or joke. It wasn't as if they were the insanely violent Pitt, and it also wasn't as if Abathur had gone strolling past the border with reckless abandon, so they weren't going to do anything so rash and violent right off the bat.

It was a bit unnerving, however, to be patrolling the border and find such an absolutely massive spider sort of just... relaxing there. Aurum had never been that much of an arachnophobe, since he had always been so big and so much more powerful than spiders that they represented little threat to him unless they were highly, highly poisonous. Sure, their appearance could be unnerving, but so could his to the right person, so what right did he have to judge? This was the first time, however, he had encountered such a creature so large, and evidently so intelligent, if his resting and waiting at the border was anything to go by. Aurum found himself hesitated before he steeled himself, wandering up to the spider and settling back on his haunches before he spoke, his wings spreading out a little bit to help maintain his balance, "Hello there... I'm assuming you're waiting here for someone, so could you tell me who you are, and why you're here at Tanglewood?" Part of him had just wanted to straight up ask the creature if he was sentient, since Aurum wasn't sure if he had ever actually encountered a sentient spider before, despite having encountered many sentient prey animals, but... that felt rude, so he decided to go with his standard greeting, his fluffy tail coming to wrap around his paws as he relaxed. Even with his slightly disturbing appearance, it didn't seem as though Abathur was here to go on a rampage of biting and pillaging anything, so the angel didn't feel there was any reason for him to be so tensed up.

The appearance of a winged lion startled his quiet thoughts, sending his eight eyes directly towards the source of the disturbance. It was polite, thankfully, giving himself time to decide on whether he should be incredibly intrusive about the lion's body or otherwise, and not forcing the spider to run in terror, nor being incredibly rude. He also, thankfully, didn't question whether or not he was feral - that was one problem Abathur had never run into, strangely. Perhaps he just exuded an aura of intelligence (which he would certainly like to believe), or perhaps people just connected his otherworldly size with him being some sort of super-spider, this meaning he had to have some semblance of intelligence. Frankly, both were plausible for communal animals to assume, so he didn't spend much time dawdling on why people didn't mistake him for just another bug, instead focusing more on whether or not he was likely to get crushed like one regardless.

"Greetings," came the spider's cool voice, deep and rumbling, emanating from some unseen mouth like rolling thunder. Tentatively, the ebony-shelled arachnid took a few steps towards his lion interrogator, moving to circle it and examine its wings from a distance. "Abathur Everman. Require residence in area. Would be... grateful for subjects' accommodation." He said as politely as he could possibly muster to his now growing audience.

The newcomer, a hyena, was kind of a jackass. Not that he could really talk, but still - to start a conversation by telling the other person to hurry up was a bold move, and one that twisted the cryptid's stomach in anger. It took quite a bit for him not to retort venomously, convincing himself that policy was much more necessary than provoking this canine when it came to the current situation, but the broiling fury in his thorax truly did put him on edge. Strategically, the spider did not react beyond his previous words, and simply turned to watch Snarl, calmly dissecting the hyena with his eyes, to see if the other held any noticeable weak points - both in case of emergency, and because putting himself through more analytical thoughts helped quell his anger.

tags - "speech"

At a certain point, Aurum had just grown... accustomed to people wondering about his wings. Sure, he was far from the only unusual animal with wings around. Hell, he was far from the only unusual animal with wings in Tanglewood, but people still found themselves inexplicably interested in his wings, mostly because of their broad size and bright coloration. So, when the uge spider came skittering forward and began to inspect him, Aurum couldn't muster up anything more than the barest of annoyance at the whole scenario. He had just grown so used to the limbs over the several months he had them now that it was sort of baffling to him what the deal was. However, what he was really surprised by was the amount of confusion and vague uncomfortableness that lingered on the faces of his fellow Tanglers. Even Crowley seemed a bit perturbed by the appearance of the giant spider, and Moth practically dove down behind him before she actually greeted Abathur. The Captain blinked a couple of times, bewildered by the reactions. Surely they had seen more interesting or crazy things by now, right? For fuck's sake, there were huge dragons in this world. Wouldn't that be more frightening than a giant spider? The male just let out a soft grunt and shook his head a bit before dragging his tail gently over his sister's back in a comforting motion, hoping to get her to relax and stop thinking that Abathur was going to devour her for some reason. He then turned his one eyed gaze back to the joiner at hand, offering him a smile and a nod, "It's nice to meet you, Abathur. Er, my name is Aurum, and I'm the Captaim of the Guard around here. If you have any security related problems or big matters and Leroy's not around, you can come to me... sorry about Snarl. She's a little rude." Honestly, what unnerved Aurum the most about Abathur wasn't the fact that he was a giant spider, but instead because of how he talked. It was so oddly jerky and unnatural, not to mention the fact that he just referred to them as "subjects." That made Aurum feel uncomfortably like a lab rat, and he doubted such a thing would go over with someone like Roy either.

The spider shifted backwards, towards the tree he designated his safety anchor, a twitch of movement that was subtle in how precise it was, as if he had spent a few minutes measuring exactly how much effort he would need to put into moving himself exactly that much distance.

Eyes flicking from person to person, he let himself register the odd oxymoronic occurrence he found himself enwrapped in. He was desperately outnumbered, and yet he felt like he held the upper hand - paw? pedipalp? - here. Half those who approached him were smaller and very obviously filled with fear, and the other two still seemed to be in unease at his presence, with the only unaffected one being Snarl. On top of this, despite the familiar situation, they were all so... polite (again, excepting Snarl, but even she wasn't setting him on fire). He had, frankly, never been so well spoken to, and he was, frankly, slightly disturbed. It felt like he was the fly wandering into the spider's trap, rather than the other way around, and he did not enjoy the feeling.

Fingers - claws? - crossed this wasn't a cult.

"Greetings," he said to Crowley, trying to figure out if there was an appropriate response to being told "no problem." "Welcome to clan is appreciated." He settled on, literally and metaphorically, letting his legs relax and sink just a little bit into the mud.

Scared subject number 1 - Moth - hid behind the large lion, indicating some sort of familiarity between the two that was interesting. Perhaps data he could use later? He filed it away, quietly, moving towards Moth to examine her further - not close enough to invade any normal person's personal space, but still close enough to view anything he might need to view. "How are medical duties in Tanglewood?" he asked, half absentmindedly, not waiting for an answer to move over to the next person.

He was the second scared subject, almost amusingly so - from how he carried himself, Abathur could tell he was either important or had a healthy dose of self respect, so the whinging 'subjects' that left his mouth was very entertaining to him. A cruel irony that he couldn't help but be delighted by. He did not laugh, however, instead moving closer, closer even than he moved towards Moth, gazing into Miller's eyes with his eight. "Appreciate greeting. What are clan ranks like?" His aura of authority gave Abathur the impression he would be a veritable fount of information in those regards.

Last to speak was Aurum again. The spider shifted his weight towards the lion, crawling in a way unique to spiders, in a way that left a harsh juxtaposition in one's mind of his walking versus his talking. One so fluid and natural, the other choppy and robotic, both measured and careful in two very different ways. "Indeed," he said, glancing with one eye back to Snarl. Very rude indeed. He quickly skipped all the talk of the angel's position in the clan (though he did file away the name Leroy and the title captain of the guard for later) and jumped straight to his own questions. "Why does subject have wings? Present at birth, or acquired mutation? Is subject distinct species from most terrestrial lions?" With every question he carefully moved forwards, stretching out with one leg and pushing with an opposite leg, repeating the motion until he was standing face-to-face with the 'lion.'

It seemed all thoughts of policy slipped his mind the moment he was accepted.

tags - "speech"

It was... honestly pretty funny, the fact that the majority of the members of Tanglewood could probably take on Abathur and take him out with only a bit of effort as long as they avoided being poisoned, but so many of them were so utterly terrified just because of the male's appearance. Aurum himself wasn't too unnerved by anything save for the eyes, unsure of where he really should've been looking to meet the other's gaze. Abathur continued to talk slowly and clinically, and Aurum gradually found himself relaxing despite the strangeness of it all. Sure, the almost robotic way that Abathur spoke was still quite foreign to the captain, but it was pretty clear from the way that Abathur continued down the line that this was just the norm for him, and wasn't just some sort of unsettling persona. The angel still feared he would at some point have to remind the large arachnid that his new clanmates were not, in fact, ripe unwilling test subjects, but for now he decided to give Abathur the benefit of the doubt, against perhaps his own better judgement.

Aurum watched curiously as the spider moved from person to person, inspecting them while also spouting out curious questions, clearly very enthralled with knowing the ins and outs of every part of Tanglewood, even if he had to vaguely push for the information. The arachnid asked Moth about her medical knowledge, Kaz about the ranking system – a fact that made Aurum slightly jealous, considering the fact that Kaz was a relative newcomer, and apparently just exuded authority – and then came to him, asking him about his wings. The lion really supposed he shouldn't have been surprised, considering Abathur had already been circling him like a shark in bloody water beforehand, but he still needed to hold back a sigh as he stretched out one of his large wings, showing off golden and red bright feathers, some of which needed to be plucked and preened at some point. Clearing his throat, the captain decided to answer Abathur's numerous questions in order, since he was pretty sure if he didn't, Abathur would just grow frustrated and continue asking anyway, "I don't exactly know why I have wings. I guess that the simple answer would be that I have them for flying. It's a mutation, I'm pretty sure, cause I definitely didn't have them back when I was a cub. Had to deal with all of the pain of them just growing from my back when I was an adult..." A grimace spread across the male's face for a moment, remembering the agonizing pain of when his wings had first grown in, with skin tearing and muscle and bone shifting to form the new limbs, "And... I don't think I'm any sort of distinct separate lion species. I'm pretty sure I'm still just an African lion. Just... with wings." That was the best explanation he could honestly give, since he was pretty sure the explanation of "well I have them because I'm an angel" wouldn't sit well with Abathur, and Aurum wasn't even sure if the wings were a direct result of his angelhood.