07-13-2009, 05:23 AM
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| http://digital-bonsai.com/katew/rp/kae/kae_jaws.jpg); background-position:top center; background-repeat:no-repeat; background-position:fixed; padding-top:221px; padding-left:25px; padding-right:25px; padding-bottom:10px;"> Kaena thought back, and she knew beyond a doubt she had killed for absolutely no reason at all. There was no logic behind Wera and Narcyz's deaths, the two alphas of the wolf pack Kaena had tried to run with what seemed like eons and eons ago, almost further back than Kaena could remember. This was the first place she'd landed after running from the land of her birth, the place where her father's bones slowly disintegrated underneath the ground. The hybrid did not ache for those two wolves, but she did wonder why she had chosen to kill them. Maeryn had died for no reason at all—there was simply no conscious thought behind her death. Kaena had snapped, gone mad, and killed her in a fit of rage. She hardly even remembered doing it—there was just red everywhere, and at first it had been anger, but it became blood, slowly—as her daughter flailed and screamed beneath her, the hybrid woman tore her to pieces, leaving barely a recognizable corpse behind. She imagined she was killing Salvaged, Zulifer, Zarah, Arlo—anyone and everything, everything she'd known. It was a catharsis of sorts, and when she awoke the next morning bloody and reeking of death, she had known what had happened. There was only that same endless numbness, the dull, ever-receding ache in her chest. It hadn't ended for months after that, until she'd woken one day with a dawning realization that Salvaged Eternity had stolen everything from her. She'd learned that vengeance could replace love, at least temporarily, and the beast in Kaena was almost soothed as she sought the monster himself. There was another raspy laugh, though this one was dry and humorless. Jael had voiced an irony in the world Kaena had long realized, and there was little happiness in her features as she spoke. "That's the world, though. It's just a big fucking web of vengeance," she said, bitterness evident in her tone. Certainly there was something better than that for her progeny; rare optimism dared to hope in the chest emblazoned with a crimson star. "I can only plead that I'm a creature as caught in it as any other," she said, slowly. She hadn't snapped at Jael, but her tone had gotten sharp and she'd used profanity, though her grandson was an adult and he should have heard such words by now. There was some truth to her words—in the hybrid's mind, most of the deaths she'd inflicted, save a few, were provoked and deserved, in her eyes. Sabryne had killed her father, and for that Kaena could have done nothing less than remove her throat and condemn her and the puppies in her belly to death. Kaena could not stand that sight. Aquiliak had really just been the wrong wolf in the wrong place at the wrong time, and he'd showed fang first. There really hadn't been a need to eat him afterward, either. The hybrid's newest memory of necrophagia had been after killing Astaroth—she'd eaten his heart afterward. "I've killed to survive before, killed for vengeance, and yeah, for no reason at all. Doesn't matter what the reason was, some of them still haunt me," the hybrid admitted, staring off into space. It was an even more rare thing for the hybrid to express regret—in younger shades of the gray hybrid, such things had not existed. But now, she could look back at a long, dreamy life and see violence, swathed with blood and warfare. Most of the time, the hybrid did not mind that her history was carved into the flesh of others, but she wondered just how permanent that was sometimes, and others, she wished perhaps she hadn't acquired so many demons throughout her life. They weighed her down and were sure to haunt her long after this life ended. |