Even in her prime Krieg was not what you would call a good mother. A stretch to call her a mother at all, really. While she was always fiercely protective of her children, those through blood and those adopted, it was never truly for the right reasons. She had raised and molded them all, including her adopted daughter, to grasp for power without having to do any of the work herself. She had collected them like shining trophies, showing obvious favor without even attempting to hide it from the others.

And now, carrying another babe of her all powerful and beloved dark God, would be no different. Carnage. Her body tingled at the thought of him and his power. How she had awed at his presence when her adopted daughter had summoned him with fire and blood. Something reminiscent of a little purr reverberated through her at the memory of it, closing her eyes and remembering as vividly as she could. The death pit, the blood, the fire. The war. After ages of wandering and stealing years from those who would likely do more with them than she would ever even think of, she found herself pregnant again with the Dark God’s child.

Initially she was delighted by it - the thought of bringing another into Beqanna for Him. As the pregnancy progressed, though, something was clearly not right. Every night as the sun sank below the horizon Krieg would become so ill. Her coat, the color of stomach acid, a vile green, would be soaked and frothy with sweat as she spent the nights shaking with fever. Her bones felt like they would burst from under her if she tried to stand and walk, muscles weak and quivering. Every morning, though, the sun would rise and the pain and fever would leave her as quickly as it began.

Birth could not come soon enough.

When it did, it was evening. She had found herself in a land that felt like Carnage. There was something about him here. His mark, burned into her flesh the day he lit the Valley ablaze and burned them all, tingled on her skin as she strode across the dusty land in the fading spring sun. Krieg didn’t see any sign of him, or anyone for that matter, when the feeling of labor began to creep across her body. The creep of pain quickly raged into an inferno.
And it was hell.
She begged for it to end.
As the moon rose and lit the land with silver light, it was over.

Her body aching and quivering, she could barely raise her head to glance at the creature. And a creature it was. She rested for a moment, regaining her bearings and a drop of strength before getting to work on the babe.

She stepped back after deciding the thing was alive and clean enough. She nudged the creature into standing on wobbly legs and frowned. The sickly coloring of his fur was decorated with black skeletal markings and his eyes were a haunting orange. “Well aren’t you interesting…” she muttered to the babe as she continued to look him over. A boy, of course it was a boy. Her only other son had been Kars. The color of a swamp with tattered and deformed wings. Her daughters had always been perfect.

Krieg sighed and continued her motherly duties, allowing the boy to suckle as she stared off at the sun that was disappearing to the horizon, night swallowing the earth. When he was finished she turned to fuss over him some more. She froze as her eyes landed on what was previously a healthy looking foal, despite his coloring and markings and ghoulish eyes. He now looked like she had drug him out of the death pits in the ancient long gone Valley. Tufts of fur looked torn away, his tail was bone, an ear was missing, eyes milky white as if blind.

He stumbled towards her and she took a step back, a sound like a hiss escaping her. Despite looking like he’d been drug from the grave, he seemed fine. Her ears pinned back as she looked him over. She reached out towards him and gave a sniff. He didn’t smell like death and decay the way the truly dead do. The small creature pushed near to her, stumbling into her leg and laying down, exhausted. Krieg decided she was also exhausted and she would deal with whatever plagued the boy after some rest. She lowered to the ground to provide him warmth and closed her black beady eyes.

When dawn came and Krieg opened her eyes she pushed to her feet and looked over the still slumbering boy. Confusion crossed her as she realized all of his missing flesh and exposed bones had returned to their proper state. She frowned, had she imagined it? The boy stirred and opened his eyes, lashes fluttering to expose those haunting orange eyes. The milky white was gone. “You’re a Ghoulish little thing, aren’t you?” she murmured to him.

Deciding he was fine, Krieg roused him to his feet again. The hours behind them had provided some steadiness to his gangly legs. He nursed and returned to the ground to slumber again. Krieg looked around and sighed. A sudden realization hit her that she had no real desire to be a mother, not right now. She was tired, the pregnancy and birth had depleted her. She lowered her head to the boy and with a gentle touch, he began to grow and age. Just old enough to survive without sustenance from her. She would never take too much from her children despite her selfish nature.

Krieg watched curiously as the little creature stirred in his sleep, surprisingly not waking from the power that had stolen a part of his youth. Oddly she felt as though his yellow-green fur had a strange, almost eerie glow to it that she hadn’t noticed before. He appeared almost radioactive. Perhaps it was remnants of the magic she had used to take away some of the youth? Had something gone awry when she took from him? She then decided she was likely imagining it, like she had imagined his rotting body in the night.

A small ache began to flutter in her chest at the thought of abandoning him. She did have some form of a maternal instinct, somewhere, but not enough to stay or to take him with wherever she went this time. He would be fine in this land of Carnage, she was certain of it. Her mind wandered to the tingling mark on her chest again and she found reassurance in that. Krieg turned away from the creature, looked back, and then retreated into the distance.

The foal stirred a little more, orange eyes blinking open to watch his mother fade into the haze. He fumbled with his gangly legs beneath him, somehow they felt as if they were longer than they were when he had laid down to sleep. Stumbling to his hooves he lurched and wobbled to get his bearings. When he felt his legs become a slight bit more sturdy beneath him, he turned to follow her. His mother. Perhaps she had thought he was following and didn’t notice he wasn’t.

But when he moved, she was gone.

The colt looked in every direction for her but could not see her green form anywhere in the distance. He continued to stumble on his unsteady, unnaturally long legs. There was no one to be seen, not his mother, not a stranger, not a single living creature against the expanse of Pangea. The world around him was glowing in the daylight, yellow and red and dust billowing in the breeze. He tried to call for her, but all that escaped him was an exasperated cry.

He coughed and choked on the dust in the air, his mouth feeling so suddenly dry. He looked about the area until he found the river gurgling in the distance and stumbled towards it. As he neared and heard the gurgling and saw the inviting water, his steps hastened. Uncoordinated and jerking movements until he collapsed at the water’s edge, dipping his head to drink hastily. He brought his head up and gasped, suddenly so hungry for the dry air as water dripped from his face.

The colt coughed and gasped, taking another long drink and looked down to the flowing water, catching a rippling, distorted mirror image of his young face. A glowing yellow-green face, orange eyes, black markings decorating his face as if his skull lived outside of his body. He could vaguely make out the black tufts of hair sprouting between his ears, short and waving in the breeze. Pushing his way back up onto his long, wobbling legs he continued to stare down at his reflection, a small frown coming across his young face. Ghoulish little thing, aren’t you wavered through his mind in his mother’s voice.

Ghoulish. What his mother had called him. What he was, who he was. Just Ghoulish.

krieg  ghoulish