( eek this was written up way back when the previous meeting was up, but band camp delayed this until now, so it's somewhat retro & warning for gore and descriptions of decay
also this could be considered my return to activity thread who knows )

    With all life drained from his glassy eyes and pooled beneath a long abandoned corpse, the boy's hollow stare was a difficult feature to ignore. Always vacant despite the occasional flicker of restlessness in honey-brown hues, always unfocused as if gazing beyond the fabric of reality, and always appearing to be on the brink of tears with a cloudy film settled over his lenses. Yet Beck's distant expression never failed to re-animate itself when called for, snapping from a trance in order to smile or frown or grimace or whatever reaction was expected from a responsive being.

    Yet as the poltergeist slumped against the defaced statue marking the center of town, his ghastly features held seemingly no feeling at all beyond slight shock; he hadn't shifted since his mess of a meeting had unceremoniously ended. A relapse into a weaker state of mind, and a subconscious intervention to prevent him from straining himself any longer. Truth be told, Beck wasn't powerful enough to constantly project a physical manifestation. Stretching his energy out for three long months was exhausting, and now he could barely register his surroundings. Groggily he could recall watching dead-eyed as a figure fell at the news of their missing sawbone. But what happened next? What did he say? Beck scrunched up his face to dig through his memory for anything salvageable. 'Nayru is gone, maybe dead.' Dead? She couldn't have been dead. She was alive just yesterday.

    Copper eyes peeked open even if he failed to see anything around him, blankly watching ahead as he retraced when he had last seen her. The boy couldn't remember, he couldn't remember anything but murder. Was it murder? A scene struggled to unfold in his fractured mind, painting itself in hues of wilting green and vibrant red. So much red. It was dripping everywhere. Rolling off his chin and off gloved fingers, onto his fluttering chest and onto a mossy river bank. Larger silhouettes outlined in battle-scarred metal hovered over a wounded one, a wake of vultures waiting to descend upon a dying meal. The wounded one tried to be clever, feigning that death had stolen his last breath early. He didn't dare to move. Even as he sprawled face down in shallow water tinted a sparkling shade of ruby. Even as an upright arrow plunged between bony shoulders. One onlooker reached out a boot to flip the wounded prey onto his side. The boy remained limp, fighting the urge to gasp and suck in a needed breath. For a brief pause, there was hope that the wounded child would be able to deceive his predators and escape to live another day. No creature present stirred, even as Beck wanted to scream at himself through the foggy window of a memory.

    A signal was given to retrieve the arrow that had taken down its target, and it was over. As a hand tugged at the arrow, the boy drenched in blood and water couldn't bite back a squeal of agony. Slapping a bandaged hand over his mouth didn't do any good, and the boy resorted to the only option he had always trusted: run. Some of the surrounding men flinched backwards as the wounded one scrabbled to his feet, slipping on the riverbed in a desperate lurch to evade their outstretched hands. Yet he could only run for so long; one man seized the collar of the boy's blood-slick shirt, a blur of others followed, until their catch was restrained and dragged from the river bank to the forest's edge.

    Beck didn't want to watch what happened next. His eyes remained peeled open, lost in memory while the world bustled on without him. Even if he tried to ignore the false reality unfolded around him, he could still feel everything the men were doing to the other. Beating him, bruising him, breaking him. Old aching pains began to flare, racking every individual patch of skin that connected with a frenzied blow. Fingers curled around his throat stamped indigo marks deep into his neck, now concealed by matted fur. The little air clinging inside his lungs was knocked out in a gasp saturated with blood as the men tossed their enemy back onto earthen flooring, a harrowing fire crushing his chest as a boot stomped the arrowhead in deeper over and over until the commander's labored breathing abruptly halted. Through his trance, he could feel a slight trickle running down his intact cheek; was he crying? There was no chance to check as the phantom arrowhead started twisting itself out from his back, wiggling to and fro to tear away as much tissue and sever as many veins as possible.

    The further he delved into memories, the more obvious it was to the clueless bystander that something was horribly wrong with Beck. He made no movement besides numbly slouching down the statue's base where he sunk into a shell-shocked heap, leaving a trail of oil-black blood streaked on the statue's decrepit surface from the freshly opened wound square between his shoulders. The muddled pain was beginning to subside, ebbing away as soporific cold rushed in to take its place. Cold, he didn't like the cold. Somewhere in his mind, he recognized the fatal symptom of blood loss, but he was too drugged with nauseating confusion to notice. How long did it take for him to die? It was both an eternity of waiting and a minute sliver of time clinging onto life. Beck's apparition erratically rippled for a final heartbeat, yet he was still locked in a stupor, his tar-colored blood oozing over his scarred lips and dripping from his nose.

    With little warning, his senses were revived again, met with buzzing flies swarming the sprawled corpse discarded on top of tree roots as maggots hatched from their festering eggs. Worms and mushrooms tunneled through drained flesh as dying cells swelled and burst, retreating back to the soil. Bones were quickly stripped clean by scavengers, crows plucking out a pair of hazel eyeballs while opportunistic  passerby made a snack of rotting muscle. When the remains of the boy were thoroughly feasted upon, he was abandoned once more for the foliage to seize. Sprouting grass and light blossoms intertwined around the bleached skeleton, looping their stems around joints and bones as they weaved the child into a tapestry of forest life. The world never dared to disturb the natural grave, or at least until a chilled hand tore away a femur from its resting place, observing their own bone before stealing away into the forest to seek out revenge. Leaving the corpse to wear down into nothing more than fine dust. And Beck experienced every second of his own decay, silently wincing even as his trance loosened its grip enough for him to faintly detect the nearby figures of clanmates. By now, his filthy excuse for blood was freely gushing from his mouth and nose, coating his snout in inky black and running off his chin to drench his chest fur. Never shifting position, pinprick pupils rolled downwards to hazily stare at the almost never-ending stream of blood staining his entire front. A sharp inhale sounded from him before he sputtered out a panicked gurgle, succumbing to hyperventilation as he struggled to break from his daze. Where did everyone go, he didn't want to be alone, he couldn't be alone -- Beck lifted his glazed stare to look for company in vain, only able to see reality as a jumble of blurry shapes. His clouded mind could only focus on the missing femur, hastily skipping between different whereabouts it could possibly have ended up in with a faint flicker of hope adding into the pain of his heaving chest.

    tl;dr: after the meeting on the 14th, beck loses his grip on reality and falls into a dissociating trance, featuring warped memories of his death and his decay, which induces heavy bleeding from his nose, mouth, and the wound on his back. but wait, a twist? beck now knows that a single bone from his lost remains is still intact, and if recovered, could be hope for eternal peace at last.

    All he could see when the two animals approached were bags of flesh puppeteered by brains weighing only ounces, supported by skeletal rods and moved with strings of muscle and tendons. There was no life to them; all the materials their bodies borrowed would be recycled again once the puppet failed. Beck. No reaction was drawn from the entity as Vigenere barked out a name -- who was Beck again? Clouded eyes drifted up to stare past the dream demon, unable to focus on the yellow blur blocking his line of sight. Becky. While Vigenere's lips remained still, it was a recognizable voice that ushered his catatonic attention away. Slowly tilting his head to peer over Vigenere's scarred shoulder, the boy's jaw dropped open in terror at who was looking back, spilling out more of his foul blood over his front. A decayed mimic of him, held together by invasive foliage and bloodless skin, grinning with all teeth on display as he watched his counterpart struggle to maintain control. Amber eyes held contact with empty sockets for almost an eternity, until Vigenere repeated the same name, his maw parting to match the faint ringing Beck distinguished.

    Could he hear? No, he didn't think so. A glob of ebony dripped on top of his paw, and although small, was the first action to stir Beck back into motion. Even if all he did was cup his paws around his mouth, frantically wiping away the unrelenting blood with any part of his forearm not soaked by the replicated fluid already. Why was he bleeding? Did those strangers hurt him? The trembling feline pressed himself against the statue stained with his dark blood, a wild glint forcing its way through his glazed vision as he assumed the worst. Why wouldn't they go away? His nose flared in a desperate to catch their scent around all the bitter fluid pouring from his snout, but it was useless. Tipping his head forward to keep himself from drowning in his own blood for a second time, the boy whimpered to himself with a bubble of nonstop oil distorting the pitiful sound. "Where?" Where was he?