to the person who needed help: make sure you’re using the correct number of berries AND charcoal. put only 9 amar, 9 azul and 2 charcoal (or multiply everything by the amount you want) and this will yield x5 green dye. ☺️

The Blood War

Chapter Eighteen

She wanted to attack, she wanted to run, she wanted to scream, but all Outlander could do was watch. The remorse and sadness in Bone's eyes was gone, the small bit of normalcy within him set ablaze and burned away till all that stood was his blind rage and bloodthrist.

"And you'd almost made the mistake of trusting him ... of pitying him," growled a voice in her mind. It was Scavenger's. "Don't forget who he is. Don't forget what he's done."

Bone looked up from Snowbank's corpse, his eyes meeting hers. She tensed, preparing for the monster to attack, but the fire disappeared and the remorse returned.

Don't forget, Scavenger's voice echoed.

"I," the beast started to say, but he was cut off by a long howl. Outlander looked back at Snowblind. The now sole heir called out in the night, and soon his voice was joined with a chorus of howls in the distance. He lowered his head and looked down at Bone. There was no anger, no sadness, just that same cold calculating look. "My pack," he said, "Is just a few bounds away. If you want to waste time attacking us, go on, but when they catch you, they will not make the mistake of letting you get to your feet again."

Bone seethed at the threat before looking at Outlander. "I didn't want this," he murmered.

Don't forget.

"Leave," she growled. "If I ever see you again, I will give my life to make you suffer."

There was hurt in the eyes of the beast, and he opened his mouth to speak, but another break of howls, much closer this time, prodded him to turn and dash into the bushes. Outlander felt her own anger begin to fade away.

"He followed you?" Snowblind's voice in the sudden silence startled her. She looked at him. No concern for his brother was there, leaving Outlander to wonder if he even had a heart.

She thought, choosing her words carefully. If Snowblind thought Outlander was working with Bone, he might blame her for his brother's death. He would kill her, torture her even. "He followed all of us."

"But he came to speak to you."

Outlander swallowed, her heart thudding, but she was spared the trouble of answering as Snowblind padded over to his brother's mutilated corpse. Heads poked out of the bushes, and Phantasm's face fell immediatly as she shot out of the bushes and ran to her son's carcass. "The beast was here, mother," Snowblind sighed. "Snowbank attacked it foolishly."

The alpha looked up coldly, her tear-filled eyes meeting Outlander's. The coywold resisted the urge to shrink away from the alpha's gaze. It would only have been incriminating. Phantasm turned to face the pack. "The hunt is over. I've lost my son. We're going home."

~CL1

The Blood War

Chapter seventeen

Journey’s face was there and then gone on the white wolf that lunged at him. This was not her; this was Snowbank, a rabbit pretending to be a wolf. His jaws widened as he plummeted towards him, paws outstretched. Outlander was shouting his name, but not in attempt to save Bone; this coywolf would never save him. She was, despite not liking the alpha heir, trying to save Snowbank.

So don’t kill him, his mind said. Prove you’re not a monster. Bloom, Bone. BLOOM, IDIOT! BLOOM!

He dodged away from Snowbank’s snapping jaws a split-second before the wolf reached him. He hit the ground running, spinning on his heels and leaping again, this time landing his blow and knocking Bone backwards. His head and shoulders were pinned to the dirt before he could regain his breath, but as Snowbank went to kill him, he seemed to hesitate.

“There isn’t a throat to rip, is there?” he snarled almost mockingly. He surged out from under him, kicking him away with one powerful blow to the neck. Snowbank staggered back, focus fading from his eyes. Outlander made no move to save him, made no move to attack; she simply stood, her eyes wide. “Kill him,” her eyes seemed to command. “Prove that you’re a monster. Slaughter another innocent soul.”

NO! Bone’s head shouted as he spun away from Snowbank’s violent attacks again. As he lurched backwards, a flash of white caught in the corner of his eye. Snowblind.

“Brother!” Snowblind shouted as Snowbank rammed into Bone with full force, sending him tumbling into a tree. “Brother, stop! He’s too dangerous to attack alone!”

Bone’s vision faltered. Smears of blood flickered in and out of his line of sight, and he saw the twisted body of a corpse. A corpse that he had taken the life of.

He surged up, rage instilling him. He loomed over Snowbank, and beneath him, he saw the heir tremble.

Teeth plunged into Snowbank’s throat, and a heartbeat later his innards were open to the air. Blood pumped from the wound like a garden hose, and Bone planted a paw on the wolf’s head. The crunch of a skull crushing inward echoed through the forest, and blood, for the millionth time, smudged his fur.

His eyes drifted upward and met Outlander’s.

- President Loki

The Blood War

Chapter Fourteen

A chorus of crickets masked the sounds of pawprints picking delicately through the brush under the cover of darkness.

"I still don't see what we're doing out here in the middle of the night," Snowbank growled, digging his claws into the ground violently with every step he took. "And with HER, at that," he snarled, jerking his head in Outlander's direction.

The coywolf lowered to the ground slightly, as if making herself a smaller target for Snowbank's piercing words to hit. She didn't understand what they were doing here either. A few hours after the pack halted its tracking mission to rest, Snowblind and signaled for both of them to follow him away from the temporary camp.

Snowblind looked back at them over his shoulder. "We're continuing the hunt. On our own."

"What?" Snowbank sped up his pace, stopping in front of his brother. "Are you insane? We can't hunt that thing on our own! We don't even know where we're going!"

"I saw it earlier," Snowblind said matter-of-factly as he pushed past his infuriated twin. "I know which way to go."

"And you didn't think to tell mother, or anyone else for that matter?!"

"I was going to, but large numbers will only anger it, don't you think? Less wolves will die if we look like we aren't a threat. Besides," he said, looking at Outlander, "We have the only one he's failed to kill."

Outlander shrank into the shadows. The thought of facing that bloody creature filled her with anger, but also fear. Still, she was grateful to be pulled from the scornful eyes of her pack as they followed her to their certain deaths. Now the moon was their only guide as they picked through the shrubbery, hunting a monster they most certainly couldn't kill on their own.

"Coywolf, keep up," Snowbank barked back.

"She has a name," Snowblind sighed. He slowed until he was next to Outlander. "You can't walk in a straight line?" He joked, looking at her paws. She had been struggling to keep her feet under her. "I haven't slept," she confessed.

"The nightmares again?"

"Yes," she sighed, the image of Scavenger transformed into a decayed creature entering her mind. She saw it everytime she closed her eyes. Monster elk she could handle, but she couldn't bear to see her sister turned into a horrific monster before her very eyes. She had given up on sleep since that night, and the effects were showing.

Snowblind looked up to the moon. "My mother once told me of a green bird that visits wolves in their nightmares. If it touches whatever is haunting you in the nightmare, you'll never have a nightmare about whatever it was ever again."

"You believe that?" Outlander lifted an eyebrow towards the skeptical wolf. He shook his head. "I'm sure there is a way, though." He smiled at her, but not at all in a friendly way, and a realization came over Outlander. She wasn't his friend, she was his subordinate, and he would leave her to die the second her usefulness ran out.

Nausea rose in her throat and she quickened her pace a bit. "The nightmares will fade," she said, more to herself than to him, "once the Beast is dead."

~CL1

The Blood War

Chapter thirteen

Bloom. Bloom. BLOOM?! How in all the ancestors’ tails was Bone supposed to BLOOM?! He paced furiously, scraping up the cliff that he stood on with his wicked claws. The corpse of an elk, limbs torn from its body and face shredded beyond recognition, was splayed nearby, just within the trees, blood staining the bark red.

“Bloom,” he muttered to himself, ears angling back. “Yeah, Journey, amazing advice! Now HOW THE OPPOSITE AM I SUPPOSED TO BLOOM?” His voice echoed off of the cliff, into the forest around him. Thick, white clouds whisked themselves through the air, and on the horizon, the hulking form of dark clouds, burdened with rain, were crawling in his direction. A storm was on its way.

He stomped his foot down, small pebbles skittering down the cliffside and clacking away into the woods below. “Don’t kill anymore, Bone,” he snarled to himself. “Be kind, Bone. Turn from the violence, Bone. Yeah, thank you SO MUCH! I NEVER thought of that MYSELF!” He spun around and attacked the elk corpse again, claws ripping apart the skin and exposing the flesh. He turned, grabbing one of the front legs in his jaws, and whipped it violently back and forth, spraying blood and scraps of skin in every direction.

Dropping it, he stood with his chest heaving, blood spattered all over the cliff-edge, flesh and reddened skin snagged in his claws. He sat down, bowing his head and closing his eyes to restrain tears. Whether they were frustration-sourced, or sadness, or cold amusement, he couldn’t tell. He could never tell anymore. He hadn’t been able to tell for five hundred years, if he was being honest to himself.

The wind that blew a storm his way suddenly carried voices up to his ears. “…hunting it. Nothing… kill it.” The voices grew clearer, and Bone’s heart dropped to his hollow stomach. “Find the Bone Beast.” A white wolf appeared visible in the trees, leading an entire pack of wolves. And there; standing beside the white wolf was Outlander, the coywolf he had nearly killed.

“Lead us to it, halfbreed,” the white wolf ordered. “And if any of you see it,” she continued, looking to the rest of the pack, “…kill on sight.”

Bone backed away from the cliff-edge, ears folding back. The eyes of a white wolf, slightly smaller than the alpha, drifted around and suddenly met his, and the cold, calculating expression turned venomous. A cruel smile crawled over his face, and he raised his head to bark the alert of spotting their prey.

- President Loki

The Blood War

Chapter eleven

“Did you SEE what I did?” Bone cried without looking over to that which he spoke to. He was dreamwalking, standing at the edge of the wolves’ camp and watching the young coywolf as she spoke to two, elegant white wolves. Their words, whatever they were discussing, were slurred and muddled, as they always were when he dreamwalked.

“I did,” came the reply, carried on a patient, soft voice with immense elegance. He sighed, turning his head to look at the white wolf, paws dusted by starlight and mist, that stood behind him, her olive-green eyes full of compassion. “And I know that it wasn’t you who did it. It never is, Bone. You’re a monster at heart, sure. Anyone who has to live forever is. But aren’t we all, truly monsters at heart?”

He looked away again, down at his paws as they scuffed the dirt. “You aren’t, Journey. You are not a monster at heart, because you’re still willing to talk to me after all that I do.”

A cold, wet nose laid over the back of his ear, and he twitched, swiveling his head around to look at her again. “I’ve seen you murder,” she said softly, her tail swishing against her hind legs. “I’ve watched you massacre innocent wolves simply for the temporary taste of blood. But I have also seen your compassion.”She padded over, brushing herself against his currently-intact fur. “Your heart, beneath those layers of pain, and suffering, and death, is active and alive.”

He looked back to the coywolf, shaking her head wearily as she tried to sit back on her haunches, halted by the pain which he had inflicted upon her.

“Do you remember when we met,” Journey said, sitting beside him and watching the pack with a warm glow to her eyes, “and you told me that the world works things out in funny ways? Your name was Bone, and look at you. My name was Journey, and look at the journey I had to take. Do you know the name of this coywolf?”

Bone took a deep, slow breath, breath rattling in is chest. “Her name is Outlander,” Journey went on, her voice gentle. “An outcast to her own pack. She can’t fit in anywhere; not in the coyote pack, and now, not in this wolf pack. Unsure of what to do, but she wants so desperately to find a place where she belongs.

“Like you.” Journey looked back to him, and he met her eyes this time, trying not to wince beneath her words. “You fit in nowhere,” she continued, shaking her head slowly. “But look back at generations of those with The Gift. Did they ever fit in, either? No; because nothing great ever comes from ordinary.”

She leaned forward and put her forehead against his. He closed his eyes, breathing deeply, a clamor of thoughts filling his head. “So don’t be ordinary, Bone. Don’t even wish for it. For the longest time, you’ve been the trampled plant beneath the feet of others’ success, hoping that you’ll finally decay and leave the world. But perhaps this is a time for change; an opportunity for new buds to spread.”

Journey pulled away from him, turning and beginning to pad into the forest. She paused, glancing over her shoulder. “So don’t try and decay, Bone.” He blinked slowly, shifting his tail slowly over the dirt.

“Bloom.”

- President Loki

The Blood War

Chapter nine

There was no fear in the eyes that Bone found himself staring into. Swirling, dark pools of rage, tainted by pain; but not a hint of fear as she stared into the face of murder.

His breathing came heavy in his chest, rattling his throat and billowing from his slavering jaws. His sides heaved, the curve of his ribcage shuddering as he panted, the fur of his chest clumped by still-fresh blood, his paws and jawline stained with scarlet liquid. The gash along her neck, fleshed-out and raw, was oozing blood, rivulets parting her previously-neat fur.

“You… you killed Scavenger,” she said in a strangled voice, lips curling upward as she spoke. “You murdered her.”

Bone blinked his weary blue eyes, vision faltering momentarily as he dipped out of his sense of the world. “Who…” he said slowly, as the wolves all around them shifted, backing away slowly, “…who is Scavenger?”

Rage burned brighter in her eyes, snout creasing as she snarled. “You don’t even remember her,” she choked out, her voice full of hate and malice. “You took her life and you don’t even remember.”

An image burned into his head, flashing visible and then gone as he made a mental connection. His mind, reaching out with groping paws, took hold of hers and intertwined into her thoughts. The picture, wavering in and out repeatedly before growing clearer, was of a young, slender coyote, her eyes round and brown, her fur light. Memory seethed into his head; yes, he had killed her. He had ripped her throat from her body… and eaten her corpse.

“I remember her,” he whispered, shoulders sinking as the temporary rage that had instilled him drained out of his muscles. “I remember the look on her face when she saw me, and the cry of fear… I remember…” Bone slowly turned his head, scanning the pack around them. So full of fear, eyes burning in terror and struggling to stay brave.

He looked back to the young coywolf in front of him, who lifted herself up in attempt to stay tall in contrast to his hulking frame, with the rage of a million suns burning in her eyes.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered in a voice that shook the air. “I’m sorry.” He turned slowly, wincing on old paws, before bursting into a sprint, leaping over the corpse of Stormwind, and fleeing the wolf pack and the bloody clearing.

- President Loki

The Blood War

Chapter three

“Walking SO much walking. You see what I mean, right?” Bone whirled around to face what he was complaining to; a deer skull lying on a low rock, eyes hollow and face reminding him all too much of himself. His tail lashed lightly, stirring up fallen leaves behind him.

“What wolf pack needs me to walk around and say, ‘Hey, you know your great great great great great great step-uncle you never met? Yeah, he says hi!’. It’s not necessary!” He clawed at the dirt, plucking a broken branch out of the leaf litter and snapping it in his jaws. “If a wolf wants to talk to to their descendants, they can visit them in a dream. They don’t need a monster with no organs telling them. ‘Family drama, oh no! A bear!’ And I’m caught in the crossfire.”

He sat down with a heavy sigh, bowing his head and fixing his dazzlingly blue eyes on the ground beneath him. Faint dapples of sunlight reached through the treetops above him, freckling the earth in warm, golden-white shafts. Bone extended a paw slowly brushing his time-beaten claws over the light.

“I just want to die,” he said finally, looking back up at the skull. “Is that too much to ask? After seven hundred years, is it so unfair to make that one request?”

He slowly lay down, tucking his nose beneath a scramble of leaves, and dropped into uneven sleep.

“Up here,” a voice said nearby, snapping Bone into wakefulness again. He scanned the straggled forest around him, narrowing his eyes slightly as he listened.

“I smell it, too,” a deeper voice replied, and he caught the flicker of movement as something moved further into the forest. He rose to his paws, tail swaying slowly in the wind that shook the multitude of leaves overhead.

“You’re paranoid,” another spoke, tone demanding authority. “It’s probably a fox. There’s no way a wolf could have gotten into our borders without us noticing first.”

A low growl. “See for yourself! You can CLEARLY smell wolf, and one that isn’t from here.” Pawsteps fell over the earth, closer now to his location. Bone stepped slowly towards the the opposite trees, keeping his eyes fixated on where the patrol of wolves were.

“There is nothing to—” the authoritative voice began, but dropped into nothing as she appeared from the underbrush and saw him. Her chalk-gray fur rippled in the wind, eyes widening the longer she stared. “Oh my stars,” she whispered finally, as two other wolves appeared on either side of her; one charcoal-black, one the color of swamp reeds.

“Get back to camp,” she whispered to them both. “Now.” They turned, sprinting back into the trees, at the same time that Bone turned and fled into the forest, vanishing from the sight of the gray wolf.

- President Loki

The Blood War

Chapter Two

Outlander chased an elk through an open plain, free and alone. Just as it reached a ridge that cut off its escape path, the hunted turned on its hunter suddenly. The flat teeth of a plant-eater grew sharp, the eyes peircingly blue and almost dead. The elk's skin began to sag and droop from its body, tearing away in places, revealing dry bones underneath. There was a cry somewhere in the distance, the cry of a coyote, but the elk was advancing too quickly for Outlander to take her attention off of it. Just as it loomed over her, lowering its head to gore her with its antlers, she was snatched awake by the burning sensation of fur being ripped from her neck.

"Up, Omega!" snarled a gruff voice. Outlander's eyes were hazed with the delusion of half-sleep. She blinked hard, trying to clear the image of the blurred figures in front of her. "Yes, yes," chimed an enthusiastic second voice, "Up, half-breed!" The second figure, a wolf the color of dry mud, was much scrawnier and less impressive than the first.

Rat, she thought. That's what she called the former omega, since he looked unatural, like a rat trapped in a wolf's body. The only reason Outlander was forced to take the foal-like wolf's position at the end of the pack was because he was all wolf. No disgraceful coyote blood to taint him.

"I said up!" he screamed. He lunged at her, gripping a large chunk of her honey-red pelt and ripping it from her body as he snatched his head away. Outlander's skin screamed at her silently and through the searing pain she could feel the immistakable tickling sensation of blood gliding through her fur, but she bit her tongue, not willing to give the sadistic wolf the satisfaction he so desired.

The other wolf, Ashsky, the pack beta female, only stood and watched emotionlessly, her smoke gray pelt making her a shadow in the dim light of the den. Determined to prove his might to the respected wolf, Rat placed a paw on Outlander's head and shoved it into the ground mercilessly. The weakling was the same size as Outlander, and much less able-bodied, but she was an omega, and that meant she had to remain powerless, unless she wanted her throat torn out. In a coyote pack, power determined your rank; here, it was all about breeding and tradition.

Her throat was pressed against the ground hard enough that it became a struggle to breathe. Seeing the coywolf's frantic scrambling, Ashsky barked. "Enough," she said, calmly and evenly. Rat sneered and let Outlander up slowly. The coywolf gasped for air a moment and bristled, but kept her head low and her tail between her legs, as an omega was meant to.

Just try that again, she thought, when no one else is around, Rat.

"Come now," Ashsky said to Outlander. "We're going on a hunt, and I need you as a spook wolf to seperate the herd."

Outlander looked up, and whether it was exauhstion or pain, when she looked up at the beta, she saw blue, half-dead eyes staring at her from a body of bones, losely held together by skin. Her heart fluttered and she blinked hard again, seeing nothing but a confused gray wolf staring back at her.

"I'm coming," she muttered, padding out of the den in a dazed state.

~CL1