[Chayden]

Krotte
C L E A N S E

It was the first thing that he must do. There was no time for repentance, for lies. The span of his life grew shorter the longer he spent here... He was going to die. He was going to be cleansed.
With his last breath, he would accept himself.
He would sink down into the water, and take it into himself... And, by doing so, become pure.

It wasn't his fault, it wasn't his fault. The sky was grey because it wanted to be grey - he had nothing to do with it. His hand had been dealt, and he had played his cards poorly. His life would in no way reach far enough to tamper in the dealings of the gods. He was confined to living within himself and of himself. No others would be forced to deal with the mistakes he had made. In the end, it all rested upon his shoulders, and his alone.
There would be no more taking friends for granted.

The waters of the swamp he had selected were deep. He had found on previous visits that he could not step more than a foot away from the shore without becoming completely submerged. But he did not want to die slowly; no, he wanted the experience to last. He wanted to feel the sin being squeezed from his body as he died...

[Chayden]

SIN
Krotte still remembered vividly the first time he had sinned.
He had been only a child... And yet, he still had the nerve to lie. He had lied about his feelings, confessed wrongly to a woman whom he held no affection for... It stung him to think about it. He had let himself be carried away by lust, and did whatever was necessary to have his way with that woman. He remembered deriving such pleasure from the way she screamed and writhed beneath him... And it had meant nothing to him when he kissed her throat with the blade of a knife. What was a little blood and loss of life when compared to his pleasure?

It was nothing, it was nothing... Perhaps he had not really been a child, after all. For no child could ever be as grotesquely perverse as he... Had he even had a childhood? He felt regret that he had put his parents through such suffering. But it had ended swiftly for them. For them, he had the decency to bring a gun.

His mother's face had held such happiness, but his father's held fear.
"Why, Father? Why are you afraid of me?"
"No, no, don't come any closer! Stay away from me, stay awaaaay!"
Bang.
His father's end had been as simple as that. His own would not be wound about with such irrational apprehension... Death was inevitable. Krotte even found comfort in the fact that he was bringing on his own, instead of leaving it in the hands of Fate...

[Chayden]

Krotte stared Death in the face... Literally.

The swamp was filled with the bodies of the drowned and the damned, sent to this place warmed by hellfire to die. He had pushed them all in himself, listening to their screams as the boiling water seared their flesh. They became bloated and distorted, their past sins showing through. What was that saying about how beautiful people were often ugly on the inside?
The Lucain couldn't remember. All he knew was that  he had always hated it...

Their dying words spun lazily about him now, stirring his fur as he inched closer to the infernal water. He knew that he would be consumed by pain the moment he touched it, but he welcomed the punishment. It was in and of himself, after all, that he was doing this.

He did not know how many times he would have to repeat that before it all became okay...