Blacktail Deer Plateau all the poisonous venom is seeping through the honey badger's body

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.