[size=11px][ Alright, 20K. Let's do this. >3 1000 words per post, 10 posts per person. ][/size]
[size=20pt] ·· M A S S A C R E[/size]
The ebony tom harboured no regrets for his decision to desert from SkullClan.
Certainly, the morbid hell-hole had fully satiated his thirst for blood and misery. But it had been a grim, malignant place that eventually began to fester at even the most indomitable and fiery of souls. Though he revelled in the sensation of warm blood flooding his jaws and the desperation and pain of the wretched individual that bore sufferance beneath his claws, the putrid stench of death and terror that hung over the entire repugnant cavern and its surroundings had worn at him. Even swine would not have tolerated such vile conditions, and even less so a cat. More besides, though the toms of SkullClan had asserted their supreme dominance over she-cats, it seemed as though they housed more of the pathetic creatures than any other alliance. It had become tiresome tolerating their residence so close to his own.
And it was so then, that when the newly forged alliance BoneClan revolted, he had taken the opportunity to tear himself free of the clinging appendages of his responsibilities at Skull. He had reclaimed his freedom, his dignity, his power. The chains of commitment and the obligations that had enslaved him, binding him to their cause had been sundered; he was Massacre in entirety once again. The blissful release his reclaimed liberty brought ascertained one thing in the atramentaceous tom's convoluted mind: Never again would he succumb to a life of servitude. There would not be another being, he was assured, that he would ever commit himself to in such a manner. He was born a vagabond, and he deigned none the honour of his service.
Though, at a time like this, he would not have found the service of another to him objectionable. A lifetime of independence and self-reliance had hardened Massacre into a cat of stiff pride and self-sufficiency. The mere concept of needing another was unthinkable. It was a sentiment that he spurned and scorned; dependence and reliance on others was a weakness. Yet now, he had no choice but to admit that he needed help. The prospect of unbending his pride enough to accept the fact was immensely painful, and a difficult truth that he had no wish to embrace, but with each passing moment, it became more evident that it was necessary.
The monochromatic black tom's muzzle was twisted into an agonized snarl, his jaw locked, teeth gritted with the effort of restraining the pitiful hisses and gasps of pain that would surely escape him if not for his endeavors to withhold them. Sallow amber eyes, narrowed and glazed, darted left and right in search of nothing in particular. His usually piercing, hawk-like stare was blank and unfocused, his smooth, powerful stride reduced to a lurching, staggering gait to compensate for his now-useless right leg. A terrifying fog of oblivion had descended over his normally sharp and deductive mind, and an encumbering dizziness rendered him pathetically clumsy. His breathes came in shallow, labored gasps, and his heart pounded too fast in his too chest.
He felt as though he had been poisoned.
And that was not at all far from the truth. A ragged gash rent his otherwise unmarred coat from his shoulder to his ribcage, a terrible, gaping wound that had been festering for days. Even the most accomplished of fighters like himself eventually met their superior and their defeat. His had come several days before, in an unexpected and ill-fated encounter with a fox. After a vicious and decisive battle, in which Massacre dealt many similarly mortal wounds to his opponent, he had dragged himself from their battlefield, miserable and almost senseless with pain and blood-loss, into a foul, damp hollow beneath a tree-root. There, he holed up for the two most wretched days of his life before his wounds stopped bleeding, and hunger and dehydration had driven him from his hideaway.
He had lost them. His two companions, Ixxr and Year of Pain. There had been thunderstorm just after his battle, and he suspected the pair had sought shelter or moved away - in any case, they had not been with him at the time of the battle, and they had not been able to find him after. Nor had Massacre been in any shape to find them when he had emerged from his shelter. Ever since then he'd blindly, aimlessly wandered, stumbling upon two abandoned kills by pure luck, which had kept him sustained. He was weak, weaker than he had ever been in his life, and with what remained of his consciousness he hated his helplessness and feebleness, and he felt a morbid shadow of fear encroaching on his fevered mind.
Fear of death. His body was waging a war that, he sensed, he could not win. It was a wound too terrible, and he could not find the food he needed in order to get strong enough to recover, nor could he tend to the injury with the care and herbs that only a real healer could provide. He was losing, and he was dying.
Rain sheeted from the heavens, penetrating the canopy of late summer greenery that arched over his head. The relentless patter of the water against his back drenched his coat and soaked to his skin in icy rivulets, and a merciless wind buffeted him from all sides. Pain, pain of the likes which he had not felt for years, a terrible, life-sapping pain lanced through his body with every agonized throb of his heart. Every step only worsened the discomfort, but his mind felt oddly numb and detached from his body. Dimly, his nose registered the strong scent of many cats a pungent warning, even in the rain, marking the border of an alliance he did not recognize.
Exhausted, the black-furred tom sank to his haunches at the base of a tall oak, and then, without realizing it, slumped onto his left side, head reeling. It occurred to him that he should rise, that he should get far from here, from these possibly hostile cats that would surely take advantage of his dreadful condition and weakness, but he could not summon the strength to do so. He lay still, listening to the pounding roar of his pulse in his ears, to the ragged intake and exhale of the shallow breath rasping in his throat. He resolved to take just a short break to lie here, just for a moment. His eyes slid shut, his garbled, incoherent thoughts only able to formulate one sentence.
What a pathetic way to die.
[ Word Count: 1107 ]
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