Sleepy Fox Hollow the cat keeps kicking me in his sleep

He had taken the plunge - ventured to the crack in the stone again and again, and finally probed it with extreme caution. The darkness swept over him entirely. It swarmed across him like tiny freezing fingers tugging at his tangled fur. He could almost resist the temptation of knowing but the Void called to him - it whispered, entreated, begged - and in obeying its call, Mou had made a discovery.

The stone-wrought chasm opened up like the atrium of an ancient cathedral; stalagmites and stalagtites fashioned a maw of jagged stonework around him, lined with ice as a set of jaws might be rimmed with saliva. Frost decorated the floor where it had been wind-blasted through the gap but beyond that, the space was dry and sheltered.

The smell of something foul erupted not long after that - an insidious aroma, wet and heavy, which Mou did not want to investigate and yet, found himself doing so anyway. The scrape of his claws on the diorite earth was all he could detect, and the limited light did not shed any clues. He used his nose, sought the source - and therein found something bizarre.

A creature so like a wolf lay bloated and dead, dwarfed by stone spires. Its rear end was chewed and torn to pieces. Tendrils of elastic flesh draped where the hips ought to have been - but worse was the head. Wide-eyed, staring for eternity at the only route of egress Mou had thusfar found. Around its neck a strap of worn leather connected to further straps beyond the shoulders, and there along its gaseous spine were thick gouges from bear or cat, he could not tell.

Sickened by all that he spied, Mou clamped his jaws tightly shut and retreated, seeking the chasm, and gulped the cold air when he found it again.

wary of his recent choices, made melancholy by the potential of destruction he had engendered for diaspora, mahler wandered. he skulked the edges of the hollow once more, drunken upon her scent.
in another world, wylla would have been set upon by takiyok most viciously, and he himself would have been escorted out of the female realm, not to interfere.
but this was not the natural world, it was one he had created with his own sweat and determination and greed, yes, selfishness and ambition.
was he then so unlike stigmata?
silent, despondent, mahler picked up the trail of the man who had accompanied maegi and followed it to a stone hall, in which the fetid air hung stale and dark with the odor of rot lacing through. "vhat have you found?" mahler inquired grimly, calling to the younger wolf with a quiet calm.

He stood gasping until the chill instilled calm within him. Mou did not typically find such scenes displeasing, but being in the atrium of that stony hall and witnessing such a specimen equipped with a similar collar to his, ripped to shreds and staring obliquely through the dark, made him tremble with a newfound unease. He composed himself in time - there was Mahler, earning a glimpse from the one eyed wolf, a twist of the ears.

Swallowing his nerves, Mou looked back to the gash in the stone. He did not want to venture inside again, but he also refused to appear squeamish or weak before this man. He turned to face the opening and tread close, then looked over his shoulder to Mahler and said, Dead thing inside. His voice crackled like gravel.

the other's words swept him close. the tension was palpable, but his own settled in place. he would judge no one a wariness when he himself was so mistrusting.
he took up the thin stream of rotsmell, followed it to the corridor wherein the deceased lay.
a low chuff; he stared a moment and in time returned to mou. "perhaps they vere lost to the earth moving." the man commented stoically.
let them be at rest then; he saw no reason to come back, nor why mou would stay.
a lingering glance on the other man; mahler turned and began to pad his way to sunlight. 

The man ventured close enough to inspect the dead thing, and when he withdrew to where Mou waited, Mahler spoke. He did not appear bothered by the bloated body's presence. Grim and serious was his bearing - but Mou was slowly coming to understsnd that such an aura was prevalent for the General. He was not the type of person who would grow sqeamish in the face of death, nor was he afraid, nor fixated. When he left the body Mou glanced at it with a skeptical glimmer in his own eye; perhaps he expected more from this discovery. Surprise, revulsion, maybe even blame. There was only acceptance, and Mahler was already abandoning the creature to its cavernous grave.

Mou slipped from the cave's narrow corridor and followed after the Gerneral. He would return to the body later - see it interred to softer soil perhaps, or further investigate the ornaments of leather binding it, but for now he was curious of the older man. Maegi had a strong opinion of him (Mou presumed) or else they would have sought shelter elsewhere in the wake of their pack's demise. It was time for Mou to make up his own mind.

death came for all things, and rotted each individual's flesh in the same way. mahler could no more understand mou's hesitance than he could muster interest in the mouldering body. had it not already been cavebound, he might have been interested in a burial of convienience, but there was no need.
the younger man trailed mahler; the older of the pair arrested his gait and fell back to flank mou. "do you miss blackfeather?" the gargoyle inquired, unable to help his curiosity over the mysterious goings-on and fall of the pack. he had never pressed maegi for details, but perhaps her scarred mate might help dispel some of mahler's inquisitiveness.