Ever since his sudden transformation into a hellhound had happened, Wormwood hadn't really spared any more thought to it. Sure, it had been fairly confusing and unsettling at first, but there wasn't really anything he could do about it, except get used to it. Red had seemed pretty concerned about it, and still seemed like he was fairly worried about why it had happened, but neither he nor Worm could think of why his shapeshifting – a power he had never discovered before – would just go off like that, and make him into something so... disturbing. An unsettling looking blue hellhound with sparkling golden eyes that, from the outside, looked like he was rotting away. It was clear to Wormwood that obviously he wasn't dead, given the way his heart beat in his chest and air filled his lungs, but he certainly looked like he was supposed to be dead from the outside, with the rotted blue skin beneath his fur, and the rotted back lips that made him have a constant sharp toothed grin. So yeah, it was a little upsetting to be in such a form, but he was adjusting just fine.

Besides Image, Worm hadn't actually run into any other creatures that looked like he did now, with the exception of maybe Beck. But Beck was a ghost, not a zombie – not that Worm was actually a zombie – and he didn't actually look that rotted to the outside onlooker. Of course, he had never seen another creature that looked like him... until now. The hellhound had been out on a hunting trip by himself, sniffing around on his search for prey, when suddenly the scent of a squirrel reached his nose. He lit up and looked around excitedly for the source of the smell, moving forward before pausing in surprise when he found the small animal. The squirrel was upright, sniffing at an acorn that it had, and that wasn't cause for concern, except... it looked rotten. It's flesh was torn in certain places and it looked like it was rotting from the inside out, just like him. He frowned immediately upon this revelation, before charging forward to snap the smaller creature up into his jaws, teeth crushing against muscle and bone. He wrinkled his nose a bit at the feeling of the squirrel's skin in his mouth, and he trotted back towards town, still holding the prey in his jaws as he walked.

Once he reached town, he sat near the center of their little camp, and spat the squirrel out onto the ground, inspecting it. Beneath it's rotting outsides, the squirrel seemed like any other piece of prey, with good meat on it and nothing wrong, except for the odd outsides. It seemed that it had been just as alive as he was now, despite appearances, until he killed it. Glancing around camp, he hesitated before barking softly, prodding at the unnatural looking squirrel with a paw, "Hey! Has anybody else been finding prey like this around here? It looked all rotted and dead, but it was up and walking around, plus it seems like the meat is good... I'm just wondering if anybody else has seen anything like this." Unbeknownst to him, the very same "necromancer" that had caused his change into his hellhound form, Arethus, had been experimenting with prey in the area, seeing how he could bring dead souls back to life. However, he had only tested his theory on a few pieces of prey, so it would be unlikely anyone else had seen similarly undead looking prey.

( just for clarification for rule reasons, Arethus has not actually brought anything back from the dead, he just shoved formerly dead spirits inside of prey, which caused it to look rotted and undead despite being an alive body. Got the clearance for it from Tikki ^.^ )

A handful of decades ago, some sort of phenomenon occurred in the swamp. A phenomenon that drove the human population away, all the while afflicting the environment with a radioactive burden. One could only infer what truly transpired way back when, though it must have been something inordinately powerful - for its impact nevertheless lingered to this very day. Leroy especially understood the sheer extent of the marshland's pestilent predicament. Out of everybody that formed Tanglewood's motley crew, Leroy spent the most time as a Tangler (save Beck, of course), hence he'd witnessed perhaps the highest amount of radiation-related incidents. The Proxy recalled a circumstance dating all the way back to the prior Autumn, in which a younger member of the group brought forth a hideously contorted rabbit, only to dub it as their pet. He vividly remembered the mixed feelings of repulsion and shock boiling within him as he gawked at the unfortunate mammal's six limbs. It was his first taste of radiation. Unfortunately, it was far from his last.

The tumour latched against his waste, which may be the source of his ultimate undoing, was nothing but a repercussion of Tanglewood's radioactive properties. If anyone was an expert on the swamp's contamination issue, then hell, it was definitely him.

Thus, Leroy could only assume that the root cause of Wormwood's disfigured squirrel was the same cause guilty of mangling the wildlife in a very similar fashion. "That thing looks heavily mutated; I'd advice against puttin' that in your mouth", he informs the hellhound, scrutinizing the prey before him. It seemed to be dead. More dead than it already is. Leroy's initial judgement was that this thing was long since deceased, as it bore the appearance of a rotten creature. According to Wormwood, however, this was prey. A fresh kill. Piecing those two factors together, he concluded that this squirrel was, in fact, mutated.

"Looks mutated," he repeats, this time in a more firm tone than before. The Proxy's hues shift from the dead creature to its killer, before he amusingly adds, "That, or it got beaten with an 'ugly stick'"

Although Wormwood had not been in Tanglewood for nearly as long as Leroy, or god forbid Beck, he had definitely seen the effects of whatever devastating event had hit their territory many years ago. After all, he had his own mutated wings on his lion body, limbs that he was sure wouldn't have grown against his shoulder blades unless the influence of the radiation had played a part. Still, that didn't mean that he was intimately aware of the ins and outside of whatever had caused that massive crater that most were warned away from. He knew what radiation could possibly cause. After all, the Proxy in front of him was an example of the negative effects that radiation could have on the many animals living within Tanglewood. Of course, that wasn't to say that the radiation was the sole reason, but Worm couldn't have imagined that it helped in any way. So, when Leroy approached and began to speak, Wormwood decided that he was fine with trusting the Proxy's judgement on this one. Occasionally he questioned some of Leroy's instructions, but in general he trusted the other canine, and he felt like in this case, Leroy knew what he was talking about.

Slowly pushing himself up into a sitting position, the hellhound glared down at the rotted squirrel before shaking his head, barking out an explanation to the Proxy, as well as the newly arrived Delilah, "Trust me, I wasn't going to eat this thing. Contrary to how I may look now, I'm not really a huge fan of eating things that look all zombified... I just wanted to make sure that this was an isolated incident. I mean, I know Tanglewood territory has it's fair share of radiation, but I've still never seen anything like this before." He prodded some more at the squirrel, as if he was somewhat "dissecting" it, but much more sloppily. When more of the unpleasant stench of death reached him, he gagged and shook his head, his ears pinning back as he moved to spear the squirrel and toss it away and out of town, grumbling as he shool his head, "Smells damn awful though... I'm glad that I'm the one who came across it, since I wouldn't want some younger member bringing it back and deciding that it was good enough to eat... not that I think they really would, since it's not like we raise idiots around here." He smiled slightly at the thought of the younger members, such as Roy and Torren, knowing fully well that good kids like them wouldn't just decide to eat something all rotted looking... at least Roy wouldn't now. He might've when he had first arrived, and had seemed much more feral.

His attention was pulled away from feeling proud of the children of Tanglewood, however, by what Delilah had previously said. Some sicko had been doing that to prey? He glanced off in the direction of where he had thrown the squirrel, and his tail lashed from side to side as he barked, shaking his head, "I really hope that Leroy is right, and it's just some mutation that made it look like that. I don't wanna know what some sick asshole did to a squirrel to make it like that, if it was intentional. Plus if somebody did that intentionally, it would mean that they could make more of our food supply all rotted. Even if that looked fine on the inside, I still don't wanna eat it." He didn't like the thought of some unknown factor going around the territory experimenting on their prey, and while that squirrel had looked like any piece of prey on the inside, he really didn't like the thought of closing his eyes and trying to power through that, especially considering the smell.

A b i e n c e.  n.
Considering himself still among 'relatively new' members, the scottish wildcat had yet to adjust completely to the concept of the mutated wildlife.  Radiation caused strange happenstances the youth realized, though many of them seemingly uncomfortable to his eyes.  Regardless, he failed to hear of any 'rotting' mutations -- word of unusual creatures with extra limbs or strange fur he heard of.

"Crowley's right," he muses at once, brows creased.  "If this isn't a typical mutation seen around, it may be worth keeping an eye out for."

Three new arrivals to the scene, and all of them were sort of echoing Leroy's words, although Crowley's addition made a slightly anxious noise leave Wormwood's throat. The demon was right, of course, that this should have been cause for concern. The wildlife could become more and more infected with whatever had happened to that squirrel, and the thought of that made Worm's stomach roll with nausea. If nobody could eat the oddly mutated prey, it could go as far as to cause a shortage in the food for Tanglewood, and... god, he didn't even want to think about that. Especially with Vathmos around, talking about how she used to eat her tribe mates – where was Vathmos, anyways? He hadn't seen the hyena in ages, admittedly, and he hoped that she was doing alright, and hadn't just snapped up a mutated piece of prey and dropped dead without anybody noticing. Sighing a bit, the hellhound barked as he nodded to everyone that had now approached, "Yeah, it was up and walking around like that... it seemed just fine, but it looked all fucked up, kinda like me in this form." He gestured to his own slowly rotting hellhound form before sighing and glancing towards Torren, "Yeah, you're both right... I'll keep an eye out for more like that, but that was the first one that I've seen since I joined, so I don't think it's a usual thing... hopefully nothing comes from it. I don't really want us having any problems with our food supply."