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THE PART OF HER TERRITORY THAT WAS CLOSEST TO THE LEAGUE WAS THE PART THAT, ON MOST DAYS, SHAE SOUGHT TO DO ONE OF TWO THINGS: COMPLETELY IGNORE, OR CAUSE A SCENE AT. Most cats of Absum Lux had finally gotten used to that. They had adjusted to the fact that Absum Lux was in a constant state of war, and that she was their military general. She would lead them to victory, she was sure, by snubbing out the only other revolutionary group that was worth snubbing out. Eliminate the other chaotic darkness of the forest, and then reign supreme. It seemed like a good rationale to have a vendetta against Primal Instinct, and, of course, there was a partial truth to it. Absum Lux needed a chance to prove to the rest of the forest,a forest who saw no value in the Coalition, that they would soon be a force to reckon with. However, objectively, this was not Shae's goal. The brown tabby she-cat might put up a good front to make it so the others believed that this was their motive, but the truth was much more personal. Shae wanted to see the League go up into flames simply because they were a piece of her past. The League was where she had trained, where she had met Byre, where the two of them for moons vyed for who would be successful. When Byre became Assassin Successor and Shae didn't, it devistated her. Byre had won. Shae was not good at accepting defeat, and when she trailed off into the woods, effectively deserting Primal Instinct, she vowed to prove that Byre didn't win. She achieved this nearly two full cycles of the seasons ago, the first time she took over as General of the Coalition. It had been so easy; she had barely wooed Octavia before the power was given. Shae had finally won. However, this was not the end of the story between the she-cat and Primal Instinct, for although she had whatever she wanted, the League had betrayed her by choosing Byre first. The League only continued to betray her the fateful day that she found herself squared off against Vera E'tani. The Nemesis had been much stronger than Shae; in actuality, this wasn't that hard. It had been an easy battle, one that left Shae far away from the Coalition that assumed her dead. By the time she found her way back, everything was different. Octavia was gone. Genesis had moved onto Omega, a tom of all things. Her life had been effectively destroyed. Her desire to destroy the League, then, was personal. It was an amalgamation of all of the ways the League had destroyed her. It was an eye for an eye.
Didn't you ever learn that an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind?
The voice lingered in the back of her head. It had become more and more frequent the further Shae had departed from anything a rational cat could consider a moral compass. She hated the voice more than she hated the League. This was simply because the voice in her head was not hers. It was the voice of Genesis, masquerading in her brain. This, of course, was no surprise. If any feline's voice was to establish morality in Shae, it had to be Genesis. It was Genesis, after all, that tended to her broken soul and body, convinced Shae that she could be better, that she should be better. Shae was bitter that no matter how many times that she tried, the voice was always there, a quite reminder.
Her tail thrashed through the air as she glanced over the Primal Instinct border. Despite the Heda's general goals, she had no intention to cause a scene today. She was just doing reconnaissance. It had been several days since Primal Instinct's last counter attack, which made her suspicious. This would be a good time to launch another attack herself, but that would be no fun. Part of this game of chess she and March had arrived at was reliant on the fact that she let him make a move in between each of her moves. It was more entertaining that way, a long haul in which she would come out on top.
Her ears pricked at the sound of upcoming footsteps. There was a part of her that wanted to do the strategic thing, to hide in the brush as a cat approached. But, that wasn't any fun. Shae enjoyed good fun. So, instead, the Absum Lux Heda sat down right on the border, her tail wrapping around her paws. She let out a long, drawn out purr.
"Bold of you to come to such a hot spot of activity alone."
As far as loyalties went, Eshek's had never been vested much in the interests of her own home. She'd been born there, certainly, as purely Primal Instinct by blood as any cat could get; but any instinct that veered towards devotion for the sake of devotion had been snuffed out by her father before she'd been much older than a mewling little kit. She never did mewl much, though. Oh, no. Far too frightened of making any sort of noise for that. Her litter had been all her mother's failing little body could handle, and she'd died in the muck and blood of her newborn kits. Her father, blaming his surviving daughter for the death of his mate, had treated her with disinterest at best and abuse at worst. He spent most of her youth in a haze of grief and hate and misplaced condemnation. You killed her, he'd whisper, breath stale and rancid from whatever half-rotted carcass he could stumble across in his stupours; and, each year, on the first day of summer, he'd wish her a happy anniversary of the day she killed her mother. How does it feel, he'd ask, with that empty-eyed smile of his, to have become a murderer so young?
How does it feel, she'd whispered back, in years to come, to have made one?
She'd grown up guilty and quiet, too frightened to speak, to put a paw wrong, to make any sort of tiny mistake that could invoke his rage. She'd treaded on eggshells around him for... well. Time really didn't mean much to her anymore. She'd lost any sense of time and space when she was a kit — all she knew was that days were for cowering and silence and making fun for herself wherever she could find it, and nights were for freedom. It was only a matter of time before all that silence erupted into ear-splitting chaos — and it had. She'd found the one thing that made her feel in control, the one thing that made her feel a little less like a guilty little mistake that was never meant to survive: torture.
Even thinking the word made a delicious thrill tingle up her spine. She'd learned that as long as she had someone else's blood on her paws, the blood of her mother meant a little bit less. She'd made the most of the life she'd been denied growing up, discovering a taste for violent parties and hedonistic pleasures, for hunting things that weren't meant to be hunted and torturing herself with sleepless nights. And her finest victim was still her father.
Oh, his screams had been so pretty. They almost made up for the sickness that rose up in her throat and spilled out onto the cobblestones afterwards. Why should it matter? she'd wailed to herself, ears ringing with static and heart clenching with guilt and grief. Why should I care? But that was her greatest failing, really. She always cared.
But what was the point again? Oh, yes. Her loyalty. Really, it was rather a fickle thing — a pretty face here, a favourite victim there; the ones that caught her eye and the ones that held her fancy. Primal Instinct was no more than a place to rest her head and a pit-stop to revel in the stories of all the ones who had just as much blood on her paws as she did. When she was with them, it felt less wrong. When she was with them, she felt less like a monster. She could pretend she enjoyed it when she was in the midst of it, and she could pretend a little while longer when she was with them. And, really, no, that wasn't really true - she did enjoy it. She loved it. She was hungry for it. But love and guilt had never been simple things, and she felt both of them to excruciating amounts. It—
Bold of you to come to such a hot spot of activity alone.
Eshek came to abrupt spot, one paw still raised in the air. The claws glinted in the half-light. She stayed frozen for a long moment, a warily-excited half-smile playing at her lips, and listened to the quiet amidst the screaming in her head for any noise other than the birds and the distant hum of Twolegplace. When the unseen she-cat made no other sound, Eshek slunk into the shadows beneath a thornbush and wriggled forward on her stomach to the other side. And there— Eshek stared, still half-smiling, trying to place her: the smell, the voice, the too-familiar mania lurking behind her eyes like white-hot smoke... Shae, she realised, with a delighted little start. She'd never met the new Heda of Absum Lux, but she certainly knew her by reputation — and, truth be told, she'd had a celebrity sort of crush on her since she'd first started hearing the tales of the bloodshed and the burns. And—oh, yes, they were as pretty as she'd imagined them. She eyed the burns hungrily, gaze soft and reverent, before she remembered who they belonged to. Smaller than she had pictured, the new Heda, but she did have quite the thing for little she-cats with a whole lot of... fire.
She snapped her gaze up and purred, "bold of you to assume I don't get my kicks from being threatened by pretty blood-rivals."
In truth, she'd stumbled upon the border quite by accident — but where was the fun in any sort of truth?
Devotion for the sake of devotion was something that Shae had always found niave and childlike. It meant that the cats were unable to consider the world for themselves, that they were so ready to drink the punch handed to them that they couldn't be critical of it. This had gotten even worse when the one cat she had been loyal to did not return the favor. Of course, though, such loyalty had always found a way to come in handy for her. She didn't feel it, but the cats around her, the ones that understood her as leader and the cat to bare loyalty to, they felt it. They felt it and acted upon it as if their life depended on it. When Shae thought of such loyalty, she thought of little Yumemi-kepa. She was so eager to please. She wanted to show her loyalty and do whatever the little girl could to make Shae happy. It was an unfortunate reality for Yumemi that Shae was not a cat to trust, and that Shae planned little more than to use the feline to her best interest. Any cat who thought any differently, the sage included, was simply mistaken. That's what they got for blind loyalty, she would muse to herself late at night when insomnia clawed at her mind.
Once, she had been told that perhaps she could sleep better if she made better choices, that her insomnia-fueled nights were physical manifestations of the conscious she was supposed to have. Perhaps if she made choices that didn't make cats who had any faith in her despondent that she had a soul at all she would be able to sleep. This was a piece of new age jargon that Shae often chose to ignore. She had always had trouble sleeping, after all. Even before she let the world shape her. Her mother, a soft sort, used to sing to her on the nights she couldn't sleep. Shae had been so young, so innocent, back then. If this was true, it couldn't be true that her insomnia was a punishment for her obscure behavior. She didn't particularly mind her inability to sleep, though. Her body had long since adapted to getting only a few hours of rest if she was lucky, and the extra time meant that she had time to herself. She had time to cause mayhem and run the streets of the city, a wildfire waiting for its next victim.
Her victims were of a wide-variety. Her kittens, they were victims of hers. She had no particular reason to feel ill will against them, except that they were so weak. They were disgustingly weak. Out of three litters, there was only one kitten that she felt was worth her time. The rest were little more than victims to her. She felt no love towards them; she had long decided that she was incapable of love. Instead, she focused simply on the fact that the cats bore her blood, and therefore they must be perfect. Perhaps she was too heavy-handed in making her kittens perfect; negative reinforcement might not be the best way to handle it. However, Shae had no tolerance for it. If they, particularly her weak final litter, needed compassion, they had Ferris. He treated them like he would die for them. It was enough to make her sick to her stomach. Why reward weakness?
Those related directly to her were not her only victims, though. Honestly, for cats who resided in the city, it was mostly chance whether or not they would come across the claws of the Heda. Those not directly in Absum Lux were more lucky than her combatants, perhaps, but Shae was unpredictable. She had a penchant for blood and dramatics. She even had created a little torture chamber for days that she was particularly feeling inspired out of an abandoned building. It was far enough away from where Absum Lux felines tended to tread that the sounds of screams weren't often heard. Not that she minded when her handiwork was found; after all, she had been quick to use her handiwork to show Primal Instinct that she was coming for them. Perhaps this was due to the blood that lingered in her veins. She was a descendent of the first evil to touch the forest, and she had been raised in the League. Both CrowClan and Primal Instinct were always known how to let the bodies hit the floor. But, perhaps it had nothing to do with her lineage. Perhaps it had everything to do with how she was dropped as a kitten, or how sometimes, the universe aligns perfectly for too long, and someone on the other side decides to cause some chaos. She liked to think that was her origin story; things had been too good for too long, so the universe decided to create and release the beast.
The she-cat blinked, bringing herself back to focus. Shae had a way of doing that, of losing focus and getting lost in her thoughts, even if for only a moment. She had once been told that this happened only to cats who had as much going in their skull as she did. Truly, it was just that the older she got, the more her mind wanted to wander. It wanted to reminisce over the full life she had lived. It wanted to plot how to make the coming moons even more full. It wanted to do everything and nothing at all. Nova, her general, had gotten used to this, the fact that sometimes, Shae just looked at her but didn't really see her, lost in the labrynth that was her mind. Moments later, she would come back to reality, just as ready to go as she had ever been.
Luckily, it didn't take her moments this time. There was just a beat of a pause after the other cat spoke before Shae reacted. The right side of her face twitched into a smile. When she had been young, and both sides of her face worked, it had been such a sweet smile. Now, it was always eerie, that one side of her face was incapable of showing any emotion outside of her eyes. It was as if her face was haunted by a ghost that was only strong enough to influence one side, the otherside left completely on its own. Or, something like that.
"You considered that a threat?" The words were echoed with a laugh. Surprisingly, it was a gentle laugh, not the maniacal laughter that rang through the streets of the Coalition at night. It was the kind of laugh that a... normal cat might have. Had Shae slipped into normalcy? How unfortunate.
"Sweet angel prince, if I had really meant it as a threat, you would have known. It was simply an observation, one I find particularly amusing. You aren't the first League feline to come wandering right into my paws in the last week. I'm beginning to think that the whole lot of you are a bunch of masochists instead of sadists, hmm? Walking right up to what could very well be your death, completely alone, perhaps never to be seen again." She tilted her head, pale blue eyes focused on taking in every detail of her form.
The very tip of her tail twitched slightly in amusement. "I do have to say, you're the first one who's come to me with flattery. It's an interesting take." The League cats were such a particular sort. If she wasn't dead set on killing them all in the end, perhaps she'd grow a soft spot for their particular brand of, well, whatever it was.
She paused. "And the phrase blood-rivals is so outdated. Blood-rivals suggests that your group has even the slightest chance of coming out victorious. Spoiler alert ahead: you don't." Another laugh, before she shook her head. "But, I digress, don't I? What really brings you to the paws of the beast, hmm? Pure chance, or were you looking for something, lamb chops? And might I get a name to match to your pretty little face? I don't think its quite fair I assume you know mine yet I don't know yours, Miss Gets-Her-Kicks-By-Being-Threatened-By-The-Only-Ten-In-The-City."
Eshek purred softly through the Heda's entire speech, wide-eyed and mesmerised by the careless bluster, the predatory gaze, the ruined face (oh, how she adored ruins), the voice — the voice! She could listen to her speak for hours, and she was almost certain that wouldn't be a difficult challenge at all to set for the she-cat who seemed to so enjoy performing — and, oh, she did so love a dominant girl who could stride around like she owned the whole world and tell her precisely what she wanted her to do. The mere thought made the skin along her spine twitch and quiver. It was a difficult thing, even in the League, to find a she-cat who could stalk the fine line of being broken to the point of reckless extravagance and not to the point of bland numbness; and Shae walked it so beautifully. Still lying flat on her belly beneath the thorn bush, she twitched the tip of her tail and listened to the Heda with slow blinks and an infatuated gaze, expression still set in a crooked half-smile. One of her top fangs poked out and pressed against her lower lip, glinting in the slants of pale sunlight.
Walking right up to what could very well be your death, completely alone, perhaps never to be seen again. Eshek's purr rose into a scratchy almost-laugh, all hunger and twisted joy; she unsheathed her front claws and sunk them into the soft earth, resting her chin on her forepaws and looking up at Shae through her lashes with that same half-smile. It was an intoxicating thought, the fact that Eshek could almost certainly best Shae in a physical fight — she was stronger, but Shae had all that delicious wit and confidence, and she would be more than happy to roll over and let herself be torn apart. It wasn't something she often considered for herself — she was the one who did the torturing, very rarely the other way around; something to do with the thrill of having the upper hand or an instinctive distrust of most others dating back to her youth, she wasn't entirely certain, and didn't entirely care — but the idea of being at the mercy of the little tyrant with a crown whose power didn't reach to Eshek's own home, of being able to stop her if she wanted to but letting her do whatever she wanted, was definitely... something.
"Quite frankly," she purred, "if you meant for that to sound like the most unbelievably alluring thing anyone has ever said, lemme tell ya, it worked. Death? Never to be seen again?Hoo, sweetheart, you've just described my ideal first date." She crossed one of her forepaws over the other, grinning lopsidedly up at the Heda. "And if you're the new grim reaper in town, I mean—" She let out a strangled laugh, looking Shae up and down with thinly-veiled greed, "holy moly, where do I sign up?"
Eshek nodded along as Shae spelled out the certain doom that was hanging over her home; when the Heda laughed, so did she. "Honestly, I mean, when the body of that cat was found at the border — that was you, right? Ugh! The melodrama! The symbolism! I love it — when the body was found at the border and everyone was freaking out, I was like, well, that sucks, and went on with my day; but now, I mean, this changes things, y'know? Like, my home? Go for it. Primal Instinct? Never heard of them. All hail Shae? That's literally my favourite song."
It wasn't precisely that Eshek was particularly easy to manipulate — she understood better than most the innate cruelty lurking in the hearts of most cats, and had grown almost numb to it. She wasn't stupid. She wasn't eager to please because she wanted to be liked. She wasn't looking to be healed, or dying to be loved, or desperate to be known. She wasn't greedy, or ambitious, or vengeful, or untamed. She was broken. She was accustomed to stifling her own childhood fears with the fears of others. She was a believer in she-cats before she was ever a believer in any god dreamed up by simple-minded toms. She was a follower, and a sceptic, and a lover, and a corpse; a realist, and an artist of blood and sinew only, because any other sort of art got her a beating from her father; a natural-born dreamer with an imagination flattened to mundane by the necessity of growing up; a guilty-souled torturer and a soft-hearted murderer. She cared very little about her own survival, and a great deal about enjoying the ride; she drowned her traumas in fun and ran faster than the guilt could catch up; she lived with her paws firmly on the ground, any fanciful dreams long since scratched out by her upbringing; she scoffed at kings, and rolled her eyes at saints, and trailed along behind liars if it meant a bit of distraction — the point was, she was many things, but she wasn't the sort to lay down and blindly obey because someone had a title and she wanted to be good. Once upon a time, she'd been so quiet, so obedient, so desperate for any scrap of affection; then, the world had shattered, and she'd come screaming to life in roaring colour, shattering along with it and falling in love with the wreckage.
Put quite simply, it wasn't about manipulation at all — it was about the fact that her loyalties were loose and her morals looser still, and she was always happy to raise a little hell with any she-cat who took her fancy, which was most. All they had to do was ask.
'The paws of the beast', ugh, I love her. She let out another purr and rose to her paws, slinking over to Shae and sinking into a low bow in front of her. "Eshek, m'lady." She flicked her eyes up and smiled crookedly, teeth bright as ice in the sunshine. "Pleasure to make your acquaintance, and glad to be of service in any professional or personal pursuits." Blinking sweetly, she added, "and if you wanna take a swing at me, I won't bite."
