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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YHolXetFw0E

“Would you think me thoughtless if I thought less of myself from time to time
Or if I knowingly
Willingly lost what’s left of my mind.”

Scent.
The most primal information signal to all living creatures.
It could signal love, fear, danger, lust.
Death.
For Jacob, all manner of scents assaulted his senses.
A cacophony of feelings and thoughts flooding his overcrowded mind and then-
One particular smell caught, fixated his thoughts.

*No, my warrior. Don’t be so reckless*
The echo of his wife carried through his mind as she warned him not to rush off.

Jacob could think of nothing else.
His mind brimming blood and anger, his heart drumming his ears.
If he hadn’t been wearing a helmet his ears and nose would have flushed deep red through his white coat, his already red eyes a much deeper hue.
Reflexively his left hand flinched, his claws loudly popping out of hiding.
Then he became a blur of movement and death as he ran down the person who most occupied his hatred.
The one who’d ordered his family to be executed on the promenade, the one who’d laughed as he’d tried to shield his wife and daughter.
He could hear nothing aside the drumming in his ears, certainly not the demonic howl he was letting out nor his wife’s pleas inside his head.
No, his was a mind so focused on bringing death and retribution that nothing else was even considered among all of existence.
Chaos reigned as his form blew through the lines of the enemy, their panic giving his friends and remaining family an opening through which to push an assault.
His quarry turned out of curiosity to look at the commotion coming his way.

He wasn’t disappointed.
His eyes beheld the very image of death bearing down on him at a top running speed approaching 45 miles an hour.