Male Hatchling
Name: unnamed
Species: Mortifelis
Birthday: Thursday, October 28, 2021
Owner: Moonlight36
Element: Neutral 
Your egg is slow to hatch, never really cracking but instead becoming soft enough for a limp tail or limb to burst through the shell. You would help it along, if not for the horrid reek emanating from inside. At times, you suspect the hatchling has perished and is simply rotting away, but eventually the sides of the egg start to peel, revealing a small dark body. The kitten is listless at first, unmoving even if gently prodded, yet come nightfall, it awakens with glowing white eyes and stilted, unsteady movements. It doesn't meow so much as it groans, calling out in a high pitched drone long past the waking hours of the night. It refuses to feed on anything fresh, but devours long-dead meat with fervor. Whenever it feeds, it seems to grow faster and more precise in its movements.
All decessi fear one creature above all else, the dreaded mortifelis that devours them by the thousands come the autumn harvest. The mortifelis were produced centuries ago at the Keep, experiments to imbue a living cat with the ability to kill the hordes of undead rats that flooded the countryside each year. The experiments were an astounding success initially, but soon the magi who had created them started noticing that the cats were behaving oddly. They refused to eat regular food and appeared to stop breathing - yet they were still alive. Their skin would slough off in putrescent chunks, even down to the bone. Their eyes would decay and their noses would shrivel up, their ears eaten away by maggots and other insects that feast on rotting flesh, yet the cats seemed unaffected, clinging to life in much the same way as the decessi. Given free reign like other creatures of the Keep, these cats would occasionally come to scratch or bite other cats, spreading their condition, and their love of dead flesh. In due time, the existing cats were relocated to far corners of the world where they wouldn't pose a threat to living cats, but occasionally they find themselves back at the Keep with the onslaught of decessi.
Sprite art: Tekla (hatchling) | Description: PKGriffin