melanistic jaglion - amber eyes - male - adult - 1st tier
Killing, for Chemical, was like riding a bike. You couldn't forget how to do it, and once you had the basics down it came naturally every time you picked it back up, even if there were years in between then and the last time you'd done it. Granted, unlike riding a bike, there was a certain level of evolution to the art of killing. It was almost hard to imagine that all those years ago when he was just some twisted kid that all the death had been born from something as simple and stupid as wanting to see the blood. For Chem it had never been about making someone scream or beg while he tortured them, or the power trip that came from ending someones life. Instead he'd been drawn to the crimson. To him, blood had been the most beautiful thing in the world and it had bred in him an addiction that would eventually lead to him being exiled and chased out of Thunderclan all that time ago, back before the world change. It had been a painful thing, to be driven away. He may not have had any friends or family there as a child, but Chem was a pack animal that would never be content to live on his own. What a half life that would have been. Luckily for him that hadn't been the future that was destined to him, because he'd ended up finding the Ruins, known back then as Bloodclan. The group had accepted him despite his faults and impulses and he'd been allowed to grow and experiment, to find out just who he was and what was important to him. It hadn't taken him long to realize back then that he had never been meant to stay in his birthclan, and that it was here in the desert that he belonged.
He wasn't exactly sure just when he'd evolved past needing to see the blood. After dying and coming back so much he assumed his memory was just shit, or maybe he'd simply experienced so much that the details of the minor things were let go of to make room for something else? He thought that, maybe he could remember something about a demon and trading it something in exchange for control over the bloodlust, but he couldn't say for sure if that's what helped him past it. The past was funny like that sometimes. Still, he supposed all that really mattered was who he was now, and he liked to think that he'd come a long way from being that troubled kid. Now when he fought it was for the thrill of a good battle. He had standards and goals, and while he still lacked a general sense of empathy for people outside of his group he no longer killed 'just because'. Nowadays there was a method to the madness. He did what he considered necessary and no more, though it was true that 'necessary' was very vague to him. Really for Chem, necessary was anything that would help his clan regardless of how outlandish it might seem, and he was aware that for many members of the Ruins, this was as outlandish as it came- making sacrifices to a god.
Chemical had always been of a neutral mind though. True, he was much more prone to following logic and reason, and his instincts told him that the response to the lakes swelling and poisoning should be just as such: logical and resonable. If the crops were spoiled they'd need to purchase items on the market, if the prey was poisoned and dead then they would have to hunt on anothers land. These were things that had to be done, because the reality of the situation was that the things that had been lost could not magically come back even if there was some diety that they managed to win back. Consequences were consequences. And so the jaglion had been spending much of his time doing things like raiding resources from enemies and trying to help in camp when he could, things that were based in the realm of logic because those were the things that needed his attention first. But that didn't mean that they were the only things he was willing to consider. Chemical had been around for a very long time and he had experienced a lot of strange and unexplainable things. Was he so religiously inclined that it was the first thing he would jump to in a situation like this? No. But was he so against it that he wasn't even willing to consider it an option? Also, no. Sometimes crazy things happened in this world, and there was no real harm in trying different things out. Besides, even if he wasn't completely convinced that the Niles issues were due to an angry God, the fact remained that the Red God was a part of this groups culture, part of who they were. How ignorant and closed-minded would he be to come live in a place that he claimed to belong to and then completely shun the traditions and culture upon which it was based? He could see there being some leeway to that if there was perhaps some previous culture or belief system that he held before he'd come to the ruins, but as someone who was neutral when it came to believing in Gods and who claimed to want to serve his clan in every way, it would have been very hypocritical of him to ignore the spiritual aspect of what was going on here.
Besides, if he was honest the Blood Nile was special to him. It had been a feature of the old Bloodclan, one that he had personally drained the blood of their enemies into affter raids and tortures even if he hadn't been doing it to appease a God. Furthermore, the Nile was where he spent much of his downtime in the territory when he wasn't working, and it just didn't sit right with him to see it in such a state. In that crazy way that humans will sometimes think of an inanimate object as something like a friend with it's own spirit, such was the way Chemical felt about the Nile, and he wasn't pleased that his old friend- perhaps the purest landmark in the Ruins- was now being turned against them. Be it scientific or spiritual, Chem would cover all his bases for all of the reasons stated above.
He stood on what was now the new 'bank' of the Nile. The River had swollen up to surpass it's old confines and Chemical stood on the overhand looking down into it's churning water. He was cut up pretty good, with various gashes and bitemarks along his neck, chest, and shoulders, but even worse off was the crumpled body at his feet. The tigress was a mauled mess, her orange coat dies red from the countless wounds upon her body. She had the stink of an Exiler, but he hadn't chosen her for that reason. No, he'd chosen her because she was strong and experienced despite having no actual powers. For his first sacrifice he'd wanted a true fight, the kind of fight that was only tooth and claw and prowess and ferocity. If the Red God wanted blood to atone for the ignorance of the Ruiners than it wasn't just the blood of their enemies he'd want, and as he stood on that overhang staring down into the water below he was aware that a stream of blood -both his and the tigress'- had begun to dribble over the lip of the cliff into the water below. He wasn't really sure how a real sacrifice worked. Didn't know if he needed alters or fancy words or anything like that. But he felt sure that this was okay, that if there was a Red God, he would understand his intention and hopefully accept the flesh and blood he brought to them today.
"To the Red God." he'd mutter, before tossing the bleeding corpse into the raging waters below. And maybe it was his imagination, but the river seemed to swallow the body up hungrily, for just a moment, smile up at him.
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