Infection and the Dead
Living in the bog lands has never been easy, but when an aggressive outsider comes sniffing around, they must be dealt with swiftly.
Only that outsider brought with them an infection from the human villages.
In the fight, the pack leader received a heavy injury, temporarily crippling her. Crag was bitten deeply as well, but the intruder was taken down and left to rot in the swamp while the pack went to the burrows to lick their wounds.
Hazel’s recovery was surprisingly fast given the severity of the injury, with the leader growing stronger and stronger as the nights progressed. She began to change, along with Crag, little things here and there, growing bigger, her paws shifting.. it wasn’t until the next full moon that things came to a head, with Hazel becoming something not quite a wolf, not at all human. She was bigger, stronger, and hungrier.
Crag suffered from the same effects, the two wolves now not quite something of the pack, but still.. family.
With their newfound strength and mutations, hunting became much easier, and the size of the prey they could bring down became even greater. They no longer feared any other predator, not even the humans with their strange weapons. Anything that entered their bog was fair game.
This affliction didn’t pass to all, the more submissive wolves not stirring up a fight, but the more un accepting wolves and challengers were quickly put in their place about who was still leader, leading to a few more blooming infections. Now the pack is a healthy mix of monster and wolf.. sometimes in the fog of the morning, the humans can swear they see a wolf that’s not quite right out there. But no one dares enter the bog.
Now that leads to an important question, what happens to those who die in the bog? How has there been no remains to find? The simple answer is, they eat their dead.
And the more complicated answer is, nothing in the bog is wasted, if a pack member dies it is eaten out of respect as much as for survival. This includes still born puppies and the sick.
By eating sick wolves, they build an immunity wo whatever killed their comrade in their eyes, and eating and pups who pass is seen as taking them back into the blood to give them another shot at life, only at a later date. In doing this, they eat everything down to the bones, leaving nothing behind to be defiled or stolen by outsiders or other predators.
The pack also believes by eating their own, they take in the spirit of their members, keeping them within the bog and keeping the bog protected both spiritually and physically. To be cast out from the pack is the most damning process, being thrown out of not only their home, but the circle of the pack as well. Any exiled wolf or lycanthrope will be chased from the bog and no longer be considered part of the cycle within it's ecosystem. Any foolish enough to return is attacked as if they were an intruder, and and if the attack results in the outsiders death, they are fed to the creatures of the bog, still barred from rejoining the spiritual circle of the Broken Branch Pack.
 Art of Hazel by SLlTHER 🐍
Layout by ♥ Boba (#1999)
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