Witch's Marsh Ascend

Mature Content Warning

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The participants have indicated the following reason(s) for this warning: Gore, murder, death

all welcome! Somebody feel free to come in and save the baby!

Moss stole off into the night, treading through shallow waters that leapt hungrily at her heels. Wave after wave of  tension rippled through her flanks and kept her moving even when she stumbled on the wet rocks. Behind her she left nothing but a watery path that would continue on long after she was added through it.

Downstream she went, to where the water turned foul and putrid, to the marsh where the stench of swamp was too heavy for much else to gain attention. By this time, blood trickled down her legs freely to mingle with the yellowish waters. 

Overhead the dark sky was hot with lightning. Rain began to pour and with a scream, Moss began active labour, when she felt her sides clench and quiver. In a flash of crackling light, a child was born but she did not pause to investigate. The child was dark, still and cold and with a dark grimace she pushed the child, still encased in its birth sac, into the mire. 

It would not live to taste the dawn- nor would the following pup, whose breach birth caused Moss agony. She lurched to pull at whatever she could grab until the spongy marsh earth around her was black with blood. The second child she pulled free of herself, emitting a roar that would be lost in the thunder that rumbled overhead. She saw its mouth open and hastily pushed it into the marshy waters as well. It would drink a mouthful of bloody water and nothing else.

The two cursed children were pushed into the dark murk- never to be seen again.

Moss felt her own life drain- but she felt lighter now that the dark spawn within her had been purged. She had hoped that in conceiving them, she might draw the curse into them, and out of herself- and that she might live following their birth. But as the clouds began to part and she saw the first glint of the gloaming, she knew she would not move from her spot there, in the stinking marsh.

One more impulse overtook her waning frame and when she heard a mewling cry she summoned the last of her strength to reach around and destroy the third child- only to find temperance steadied her hand. She pulled the child close and cleaned it. A little girl- whose white fur was bloodstained and covered in mud. 

She had felt the evil pass with the two- and understood that this one would be her legacy. She tilted her head back to howl for help- and held the little one close. She would be offered one meal, all that Moss’s body could give her, and then would be pulled close to Moss’s giant chest where she might hear the last of her mother’s heartbeats. She would keep the child warm, until her body went cold. 

Her last thoughts were ones of hope; that she had saved the Teekon Wilds from the curse that had been placed on her- and that her newborn child might somehow beat the odds and survive.