Intended to be told to future colts of the Coalition.
Also probably under construction/revision since it's 2am and I cranked this out lololololol
Night fell dark and swift over the swamp, drawing some of her children out from their caves and crevasses, but ushering most of them back into their chosen homes. For the Coalition, it was the time when first watch was posted, when those who preferred daykill retired back into the rocky caverns of their resting grounds and the night hunters emerged in search of their prey. Yet for a pair of restless colts, still before they’d laid their first kills on the Killstone, night had fallen too early, and they had not had their fill of fun. They lingered in the new moon's light, chasing each other's tails and searching for fireflies to hold in their mouths, altogether making too much of a ruckus for the hour.
"You'll get yourselves eaten."
The voice behind the pair startled them into silence, and Edge stepped out from the shadows of the mangroves, her first kill of the night already on the stone. Though her amber eyes were warm with mirth, there was still an undeniably predatory gleam in their depths, which caused the meeker of the two colts' ears to pull back for a feeling he couldn't quite explain. The bolder of the youngsters, however, had no fear of his elders. He tossed his head, stomping a hoof. "I'm not a foal anymore. Not even an alligator can catch me, nothing can eat me-" but Edge was already chuckling.
“No one has ever told you the story of the Huntskin I see,” and there was an almost wicked glint in her wild eyes. The colts shook their heads, eyes wide but eager for a story, and Edge, when in the mood to tell a tale, was never one to disappoint. She closed her eyes for a moment, tossing her head as if entering another state of mind, and then began to speak.
“I will tell you of a time long long ago, back when the swamp was young and all Her children even younger. Though wiser than us all, not even She could make a perfect balance of living things, and She soon realized a flaw in web of life. All life flourished in the Swamp, but it flourished without fear of death at the jowls of another creature. No beast preyed upon another, all subsisted off the land itself, and not even the Swamp could produce enough to feed them all. And so She turned the minds of the beasts, the Eaglehound and the Lynx, the Mongoose and the Caiman and the Crocodile, instilling in them the need to feed upon flesh.
Yet she could not bring herself to so alter the minds of her favored children, the Kimeti. She gave us our intelligence and the Swamp so that we could live as we chose to, with Her as but a guiding force, not a dictator of life, and to change our essence would be against everything she had wanted us to be.
So instead of Changing our kin, she decided she would teach us a different way of living. To a slumbering sac, she whispered a dream, visions of creatures dying by hoof and maw, scents of copper, tastes of flesh and blood, and most of all the thrill of the hunt. She named him Bloodseeker, and when his eyes opened and he felled his first foxbun, he became the first of our kin to taste flesh. The first huntskin.
As the Motherfather wished, he began to teach his way of living to others. He and his family, for he had fathered many a clutch by then, eventually formed the legendary tribe known as the Huntsworn, of which it is said each member took a bloodoath to live only off of flesh. They were said to be the most elite and organized group of hunters ever to grace the swamp, a single kin able to slay crocodile without breaking a sweat, a team of the able to clear a river of beasts. When their kills were made, they brought them back to the cavern that was their home, to share amongst the worthy.”
“Woaah,” cooed the enraptured colts in unison, and she could already see the hero-worship forming in their eyes. But the story was not yet finished.
“That is, until the dream the Swamp gave Bloodseeker began to consume him,” she continued, her voice turning ominous. “He began to grow bored of hunting the creatures of the Swamp. First it was the foxbuns, then the clever mongeese, then even the lynx and the eaglehound could not provide him with the thrill of the hunt he had dreamed of.
One crazed and desperate night, he turned his fangs upon his own familiar, a faithful wolf, said by some to be the first wolf. This hunt took days, their mental connection and the wolf’s intelligence providing him a challenge he had never before experienced, but in the end the noble beast fell to his master’s bloodlust. The stories would say that it was on that night that Bloodseeker was truly lost.
When news of the kill reached the Huntsworn, there was dissension amidst the ranks. Some were furious, some were afraid, but all admitted that it was madness that must be curbed, curbed before it grew even worse. Yet indecision crippled their actions, and when they finally decided to detain their leader and try to talk sense back into him, it was already too late. They found him savaging the corpse of another kin, one of the tribe’s own, his strongest son. None knew how many other corpses he had left beforehand, but there was no mistake of it now: he had truly become a huntskin.
It was said the mournsong of the Huntsworn lasted a day and a night, their voices raised to the sky mixing with the chorus of their hounds and wolves as they cried for their lost leader and fallen brother. The Motherfather herself heard them, and wept at what had become of the dream she had once whispered. She knew the bloodshed had to end, but she could not bring herself to take back the life she had crafted, to blame the kin for the dream.
Instead she took the fireflies from his eyes, and from that day onward the wind no longer carried the sounds of his breathren to his ears, nor the scent of them to his nose. The Huntsworn, crippled by the Bloodseekers madness, scattered to the far ends of the swamp, their oaths forever broken, fearing they would be the next to succumb to the bloodlust. It is said from their children descend the hunters of our age, their blood and their bloodlust diluted over the decades.”
At that she stopped, but the glint in her eye suggested there was yet more, and a shuddering colt asked the question she knew he would. It was the one her listeners always asked when she told her story. “But what happened to Bloodseeker?”
“Oh Bloodseeker was crippled by the loss of his eyes and his senses, yes, but he was not the first Huntskin simply because he had eyes or ears or a sense of smell. He had a hunter’s instinct, a sharper sense than anything any kin today knows. He was said to be able to sense the blood of a creature near him, and even without his senses, still be able to kill should he catch his prey offguard.
And some even go as far as to say he has survived all these years on that very instinct, killing the unwitting foxbuns he disdains, stalking the shadows for the prey that it truly thrills him to hunt.
I trust you know what sort of prey that is…” She trailed off, her eyes gleaming sinisterly as she eyed the colts, and ever so slowly, her brown lips drew back to reveal flashing bloodied fangs.
The colts screamed and ran from her in great terror, but no little glee, and she laughed, a sound far lighter and sweeter than she seemed capable of. Kids, she thought, shaking her head with a fondness she wouldn’t dare admit, and after seeing them bound safely into the mouth of the cavern, she turned back to the night and the hunt.
The moon was dark that night, but Edge feared no shadows.
