Wolf RPG

Things had really gone downhill the past twenty-four hours. Honey Badger now had all of her mental faculties returned, yet it seemed she had lost her physical ones in the exchange. Her amputated tail reeked of infection, weeping foul-smelling pus and constantly throbbing with pain. As the infection spread into her bloodstream, it left her weak; she could barely stand and walk. She messed herself more than once because she couldn't respond to the call of nature quickly enough. Finding food was out of the question; she didn't have the energy to scavenge for carrion, much less hunt.

Aware that she was wasting away toward certain death, she naturally fought against the inevitable. Running on her final fumes, Honey Badger crawled away from the creek, slumped past the great lake and slowly dragged her sorry carcass northward. She followed Saena's fading scent trail, though by the time it led her to the foot of the plateau, the yearling was totally depleted. She collapsed in its shadow, her filthy fur practically hanging off her bones and a cloud of stench—urine, feces and disease—announcing her presence.

In Dapper's erratic wandering — guided by hunger, and occasionally the driving need to find her — he had come close to the edges of claimed lands before, but instinct overrode hunger and he had kept his distance. As he trekked northeast, he caught the scent of caches intermingled with the faint scent of pack; it seemed luck was with him today. If he was quick and cunning, he could feast upon the caches and dash away before their owners could intercept.

It was in pursuit of these caches that he caught wind of another, more heady scent — despite the fact there was the distinct scent of death intermingled with it, he growled his approval. His course altered, and soon he had her in his sights. A wicked grin spread his maw, and he trotted up to her prone, collapsed form. Drawing close to her ear, as if she were his lover, he whispered, "Hello."

Her senses began to dim—not just her vision but all of them. She felt numbness creeping over her body and the sounds of her natural surroundings faded into muffled silence. Honey Badger could still taste and smell, which she only knew because her nose and mouth were filled with the flavor of death. It was repugnant.

Her electric yellow eyes slowly became glassy as the world faded to black. She didn't entirely lose consciousness, though. Honey Badger clung to those last few frayed threads that attached her to this corporeal world. She was even aware of it when someone approached. One odor of death was traded for another when warm breath washed over her face with the whisper of, "Hello."

Honey Badger's entire body went rigid. Her spirit screamed in defiance. Yet there was nothing she could do for herself anymore. She was going, going... almost gone. The only thing she could manage to do was curl her lip and stare blindly up into the face of death. She was actually glad to go out this way, at the teeth of an enemy, rather than pathetically succumbing to a silent killer.

He could see awareness fading from his prey and knew his time was short, if he truly wished to be the one to take her away from this world. Though she made no noise, he hushed at her gently as if to soothe her— and as if he were her lover, the thin male licked her face tenderly. His tongue washed over her eyes as though he were wiping tears, then down her cheek and along her muzzle. Had he not been so hungry, this might have caused a stirring within him— but had he not been so hunger, neither of them would have been in this situation to begin with.

Instead, he whispered, "Goodbye."

He moved down her body, away from the merciful jugular— there was no meat there, and his hunger demanded he eat now. One last cast of his grey eyes over her body, The sweetest thing I will ever smell, the most beautiful thing I will ever see. He tore into her soft underbelly, as if she were no more than a doe, and began to feast upon her.

The most delicious thing I will ever taste.

Fuck you, was her final conscious thought as Honey Badger's tenuous grip on life finally came loose. In those final seconds, she felt at peace and accepted her fate. She had no regrets. True, she had never found Saena, nor what she represented: a normal life as a wild wolf. But she had fought a lot of fights, kicked a lot of ass and taken a lot of names in her brief life.

She felt nothing as the starving wolf tore into her body. Her flesh tore and her infected blood spread on the snowy ground. Somewhere in there, she took her last breath, then deflated emptily. She tumbled into the black abyss of oblivion, unaware as the cannibal feasted upon her stinking earthly remains.

When the sharp edge of hunger subsided and gave way to a dull ache, Dapper came back to awareness, away from the red of her infected blood. He remembered, then, that he was close to pack borders— though her scent, the sweet scent of blood and infection and death and her was all that he could sense. They would be alerted, especially by now, and they would come down upon him.

For a brief moment, he attempted to drag her away by the leg. This would prove to be too slow, however, and so the blood-soaked male regrettably left her— leaving her body and his own bloody paw prints behind.

Jade had been following a trail, one that stank of infection and near death. Herbs she had picked up along the way she held in her maw, but deep in her heart she knew the horrible smell of infection was strong, and one had little chance of surviving such an illness. As she grew closer, the smell of terrible sickness grew stronger, so did the sudden tang of blood. Heart pounding, Jade raced towards the smell, then backpedaled wildly until she slammed into a thick trunk.

Her maw opened in a scream of shock at the bloody scene before her. Herbs dropped, and as Jade gathered herself, she edged closer to the body. A mutated and scarred fae lay before her, perhaps she had been beautiful once, but with all the gore it was hard to tell. It's tail seemed to be the source of the terrible infectious smell, her stomach ripped open and gutted. Jades eyes stared disbelievingly at the bloody paw prints, and her nose wrinkled as the previously missed scent of a brute met her nose.

This death was not natural. A wolf had killed another of its own, and eaten it. A cannibal lived in these wilds.

Staying far from the body, Jade let up an urgent and scared howl, requesting help. With a cannibal on the loose, everyone could be in danger. She was however unable to tear her eyes from the prone body.
@Saena
@Dante

Saena was on the verge of a nap when a sickly sweet smell reached her on the breeze. She slowly lifted her head, drawing in deep breaths, and then rose quickly when she recognized it: that was exactly what Junior smelled like when she was at her worst, when delirium nearly drove her to pitch herself off the Plateau.

The young Eta moved swiftly through the trees, easily pinpointing the source of the scent at the base of the cliffs. Only when she drew near did the scent of blood also reach her. The sour mixture was almost enough to turn her stomach, so much that she didn't even notice the panicked howl that rose from the flatlands.

And when she came to the bottom of the towpath and finally saw it, it did turn her stomach and, weak in the knees, she turned away and promptly vomited.

There lay the lifeless body of Honey Badger, the fiery female she'd met at the edge of Otter Creek, but she wasn't Honey Badger any longer. She'd been disembowled, and even without spotting the bloody pawprints nearby, Saena could tell the work of a wolf when she saw it. But she couldn't think much on it; Honey Badger had, after all, reminded her of Junior in a way Saena hadn't been able to explain. Coupled with the same scent of infection, Saena was seeing not the black and white body of the loner, but the body of her sister.

Her psyche grew fragile and threatened to snap as she scoured the scene, spotting first the bloody pawprints that led into the distance and then Jade. Logic should have told her that the prints didn't belong to this female, but logic was the first thing to go as hysteria quickly set in.

"Who are you?" she shrieked at the lone wolf as she advanced to stand protectively over the cadaver. Her fur puffed out at all angles and her face was twisted into an ugly, furious snarl. There were tears matting the fur under her eyes, but she didn't notice them. It wasn't right to treat Jade this way, but Saena was in a state of extreme and almost hallucinogenic grief, having compared this body to Junior and now associating it with her sister. She barely knew Honey Badger; it was only the association that cut her so deeply.

She loosed a fearsome snarl and, standing at her fullest, bellowed, "GET THE FUCK AWAY FROM MY PACK," while taking an sharp, uncharacteristically menacing step toward Jade, who hadn't done anything at all but was now the scapegoat.

"I-I'm Jade" she stuttered. "I smelled sickness, so I followed it and found her like this, I sw-" Jade cringed as the fae bellowed at her again. "Can't you see the prints are male?" she shouted at her. "I was only trying to help her!" rage swirled inside Jade. Someone thought she had eaten this wolf? She had only been an innocent bystander! "See? Herbs.' she said a little more calmly, pointing to the pile by her paws.

Saena was shaking from head to foot, and though she fully expected the lone female to get lost, Jade did anything but that. The bystander instead indicated that the prints were male, and that she'd brought herbs, but this wasn't really why Saena was treating her aggressively.

Saena could tell just by looking at her that Jade hadn't been the one to kill and devour Honey Badger. No wolf could escape such a messy ordeal without wearing blood like a bib. The juvenile didn't particularly care who had done it, though; she wanted these mongrels, all of them, away from her doorstep. If there was a cannibal out there, then he could feast on the lone wolves, and she wouldn't have any of them enticing him to come back here. Blacktail Deer Plateau didn't need more wolves, and it didn't need more tragedy, and there was nothing Jade could do for the corpse anyway.

The grief-stricken female ignored everything Jade said, and instead rushed her. Saena was no fighter, and it probably showed, but the young female couldn't just stand here and allow a lone wolf to stand so near their borders after such a clear tragedy. No one was trustworthy... not even Jade, who clearly wasn't involved. "I said get out," Saena snarled, aiming a vicious warning snap at the lone wolf's face.

Only when Jade shuffled away did Saena allow herself to weep, and only when she'd cried long and hard did she make her way back into her packland, leaving Honey Badger's remains in the shadow of the grand ledge.