THE HOODED MAN // OPEN - Printable Version

Clarence hadn't been here for long. The only two leaders he'd known in his time here were Agathe, a woman who he'd never even really met apart from when she was making some poor tiger suffer, and Atticus, a man whom he trusted greatly. While he didn't know him well, he seemed honorable and wise enough to lead a group of people, or animals, in this case. Clarence at least trusted that he would keep this area relatively safe while he stayed here, which was a comfort. He was sick of looking out for everyone and fighting back all the enemies. He was more than happy to let someone else handle his safety for a little while, no matter how long it might really be. It was comforting to know there was an entire clan behind a leader that kept each other safe. As long as they didn't sail into any stormy waters, so to speak, he thought they'd be safe for quite some time and, even if they did, that Atticus would be able to lead them out of it. Hopefully. He had thought the same thing about Finnis and that hadn't ended so well for anyone.

In any case, Clarence was trying to do his best to ignore those sorts of thoughts. It was hard enough to wrap his mind around his current situation after leaving the human world, one where he'd been aboard the Queen Charlotte for months with a strict schedule and the fear of impending death at any moment, to this one. This world which, for all it's problems, seemed more peaceful than his old one, and one filled with animals that had complex thoughts, languages, and societies, all of which he understood as a fellow animal. It was a lot to take in.

Then there was that smell again. That awful smell. He smelled it here more often than he'd like to. Some sort of blood or rotting or terrible thing. Despite himself, despite ever logical thought in his head telling me to go in the opposite direction, away from the dead thing, he made the decision to hurry towards it. His mind screamed in protest but his paws carried him quickly to a strange scene of some kind of creature trembling beside a body of some kind. The man stiffened but stopped himself from any sort of attack. Despite what the events of the last week or so might bring one to believe, Clarence wasn't a man who preferred violence. In fact, he'd like to stay out of it as much as possible, but that simply wasn't what he was meant to do. While he didn't like violence, he also wasn't a man of inaction. If he felt there was danger, he would do his best to take care of it before it seriously hurt anyone. "Who are you?" He tried his best to steel his voice, but soon his expression and tone both softened and he was quick to add, "Are you well?" Clearly not but he wasn't sure how to help in this situation. He still stood at a distance, carefully guarded and with his entire body coiled, as though ready to move if need be. The creature didn't seem to be a threat but he wouldn't take any chances, not when it was standing over a body.

LISTEN UP; HEAR THE PATRIOTS SHOUT

BLOOD LUST IN A HOLY WAR

―――― Atticus was no fool to assert that he was irreplaceable. On the contrary, he lived his life knowing very well that every situation that he encountered held the potential of one of several things. Perhaps, for the case of the Sunhaven Neutrality, it was the debate of if new leadership could overwrite old leadership; if two leaders, and two clans, could find peace among each other despite horrific circumstances. When he had become leader, he had done so with the knowledge that he would be responsible for the safety and well-being of the Ascendants, and though he had never voiced the notion aloud, he was more than prepared to die for any of them if he had to. It was simply the matter of loyalty, and of family. Certainly he did not truly have any blood relations in the Ascendants, but one thing was for certain, they were family.

And this act of desecration was unforgivable.

Kit had never been particularly close with Moonmade- aside from one instance where he had somehow ended up being required to call the leader mistress- but... That was really aside the point, wasn't it? The matter of the fact was that this person, this being, was disturbing the dead. They were disturbing the final resting places of their members, and... Well, they themselves didn't seem... Normal. It was the odd spoken language - odd only in the sense that it hadn't been spoken around the Ascendants in some time- that caught his ears first, and Clarence's timbre second.

And the sight that he was greeted with was one that he was not prepared to see. He stepped up besides Clarence quickly, a few paces ahead as if putting himself between him and the stranger, his brows furrowing as he stared ahead at the scene and the man's... crying? In the dim lighting of the evening Atticus could not place a name to the face before him, no matter how quickly he tried to dig in his memories for it. Dirt was displaced everywhere, and the scent of a decomposing body made Atticus had to steel himself before he ended up gagging at the sharp scent. But even if the body that the man now held in his paws and covered with his wings was hardly a body anymore, Atticus knew the location of the grave that he had now misplaced. "You knew Moonmade," he dared, more a statement than a question. If he knew Moonmade, there was a likelihood that Atticus really did know the creature before them now. "And yet you dig their body up? Why?" Perhaps the answer was already certain, yet Kit posed the question regardless, perhaps more as a means to stall if this creature was dangerous, more than he was curious about the actual answer.