The blood trail sputters, starting and stopping, leading the way towards the Golden Forest. Sometimes, there are only a few drops of blood to guide their way, other times it's larger patches, smudged by uneven paws and dried down into the dirt, smelling of decay and nothing good. Here, a patch of spots that could be paw prints and there and large smudge where a cat may have stumbled and dragged themselves to their paws. The closer the cats get to the trees, the more blood there is, until finally they are close enough to identify the cat.
Tamarackstar.
(content warning for blood and animal injury)
Credit: Tamarackstar and art by rainbow-lava (toyhouse)
His fur is caught on the ferns and brambles, golden orange tipped with white, and the blood is dry and flaking on the leaves of the ferns- fresh enough to hang around, but old enough to have dried. The scent of the Rotbeast is thick, overlaid on Tamarackstar's own scent and mixing in a cloying, decaying kind of way. Getting close enough to inspect him, Tamarackstar is in rough shape. The white side of his face is coated in blood- some fresh and some dry- and his ear on that side is half-missing, scabbed over and still bleeding in places. There are injuries all over his body- a scratch on his leg, a half-healed wound across throat and chest, a distinct, large, bite mark on his thigh- and a few scars that for sure were not there before.
As soon as Snailflight reaches out and touches him, Tamarackstar suddenly roars to life. His head whips up and around, eyes crazed, and he bares his teeth in a horrible snarl, spitting blood out. The fur along his back lifts, spiking unevenly through the crimson, and he lashes out with one paw at the closest cat, barely missing Snailflight by a whisker.
