NOV - Adderfrost - 3344 Words

Adderfrost rushed through the underbrush, his tabby pelt catching on brambles as he made haste through unfamiliar territory. His two sisters were now in safety, far away from the looming threat that overhung all that he loved. It was his duty, after everything, to make sure that his sisters were okay - he could never live with himself if his last memories of them were that of contempt. As much as they had caused the mess that had now driven them from their home, he could at the very least make sure they escaped safely to a place where that very mess could never reach them. Although they would never return to home, he knew that much from the looks in their eyes, he would make sure that the mess would never claim another cat.
         Darting over the thunderpath, the skies above paraded a perfect moon, illuminating his tabby pelt to silver as he pushed down the last familiar stretch to his home. He would need to disguise the sudden disappearance of his sisters somehow, making sure nobody would look for them. That would only draw scrutiny and eventually knowing from the thing they had ran from. If that happened, he would have failed as a brother. Yet as he drew close to the cavernous entrance to his home, he knew something was wrong immediately. The entrance sat disturbed; the grass flattened by a large set of paws that seemed to be pressed into the dirt as if running. No rock sat undisturbed. Fear scent hung over the air. Something was scared, and it seemed to be searching.
         Raising his nose and staring down the gleaming moon he tried to smell for anything that might tell him what had happened, yet all that was in the air was fear scent and a strong smell of lavender. Lavender. Lavender. He racked his brain, trying to decipher what lavender could mean. Was it an omen? Had he done the right thing? No lavender grew near here, and the scent of lavender would only be carried by a Healer - the last of whom had just ran away with none. What was it used for unless for healing? Suddenly, he felt his limbs freeze like ice as his mind stumbled upon realisation. He had seen lavender placed on the body of his lost friend Pantherdapple's body to mask the smell of death. Lavender was used to disguise scents, and only one cat would ever have the cunning and knowledge to use lavender away from a dead body to mask a scent.
         The frantic rustle of a bush behind him threw him from these thoughts and into action, spinning on the spot with raised hackles and a hiss in his voice. Slowly a pair of green eyes, frantically shifting from place to place, emerged into the clouding silver moonlight. Its gaze was widened to a horrified search, raking through his fur and into his very core as it passed over him. The tabby pelt that adorned them was jagged and torn, its movements slow, a firm set of muscles moving jauntily beneath the brown fur as it froze in front of him. Sparrowsight.
         "Ferntalon and Mothflower are missing, I-I can't find them anywhere! I've been searching for them but they're just gone, they're not inside the territory or the caves. All I can smell is their fear scent. Please, they're your sisters. Have you seen them? Please..." Sparrowsight's voice was strained as she spoke, rapid and panting. She had been searching thoroughly, which was beyond an issue for everything he was doing. He would need to dissuade her from the truth, those cutting shards she had for eyes would need to be directed elsewhere. His sisters would be safe for as long as he had breath in his body.
         "I haven't seen them, are you sure they aren't just hunting in the faraway forest together? They wanted to earlier," he hurried to form a response to her concerns. Whilst he was able to keep his composure, he was far from able to settle down. Maybe this would work in his favor, the flood of information supposedly scaring him to puffed fur and outstretched claws.
         "I've checked! I couldn't smell them anywhere..." Sparrowsight seemed to grow to silence as she finished her words, her gaze slowly settling disturbingly on his pelt, looking at every minute detail on him. He could feel the clicks of her mind working in the depths of those green eyes, trying to figure out the truth behind it all. He could still set her thoughts in the wrong direction.
         "I don't know, I'm sure they'll be back. Where else do they have to go? Come on, let's go hunting - we can take your mind off this, we don't want our best fighter to fall to ashes, do we?" His words were cheerful, finally finding the strength to soften up under her ice-cold gaze. It took a great deal of effort to even soften, unable to meet the green depths of her eyes no matter how hard he tried. "Come on, they'll be f-"
         "Don't lie to me." Sparrowsight broke across his words. Her voice was disconnected, nothing more than a whisper. Her green gaze had darkened, their icy depths cutting straight into his eyes no matter how much he tried to look away. The jittery aspect of her body had evaporated, leaving cold conciseness at its wake. Her limbs had eased as if to fight and her fur flushed to its full size, the muscles beneath defining to elegance. The moon's silver light began to fail as clouds wrapped around it - as if to shield it from what lay ahead. Her head slowly turned to face him down properly. "I can see it all around you. You know. Your fur is torn like running through brambles, which don't grow near here in our territories. Your pelt smells of the other Clans. You're jumpy, surprised, as if you feared to see me. Your gaze is panicked. You smell of them."
         Adderfrost backed a paw away, the previous care in Sparrowsight's eyes all but dead. Darkness seemed to cling to her fur and crawl into her eyes as the moon's light waned and failed, her stare scratching its way into his mind. "Please, this doesn't have to be hard. I don't want to lose them. I lost Finchpaw, don't make me lose my mother too. Your own sister, gone. Please, Adderfrost," her head tilted as her whisper broke through his ears, "where are they?"
         His paws seemed to back himself away from the opposing she-cat, his legs moving without his input. He could feel his thoughts mapped out in her head, that dark scratching stare deep into his soul, too far in to shake. But why was he backing away from this cat? His ancestors would not let him die against her, not after seeing such depravity she was capable of. She had to pay for what she had done, not only to him but to Pantherdapple and his sisters, and he was sure the stars would help him. He would not back down, he decided as he fought his muscles to tense and bring himself back up. He was older than her, wiser, with more battle experience and skills. She did not have the element of surprise that she did with Pantherdapple, and he was not so easily fooled from the truth as the rest of his clan. They believed she found Pantherdapple dead. Adderfrost knew she killed her father. Finding the strength in his legs, revitalised by the power of the stars, he stood himself tall and began to defy her stare with his own back into her iris' murky green depths. Truth would have to spill, and he would make sure it happened.
         "I know what you are, Sparrowsight. You're a monster, I can see it in your eyes, in the way you walk, how you hold yourself. You don't care for them, truly, you just always want them near you for your own satisfaction. Pantherdapple wasn't enough for you? How many more cats will suffer at your paws before you're happy? Just because you can't get what you want? Your claws won't solve anything, they'll just leave you more messed up than before." Adderfrost watched as a small, satisfied grin seemed to form over Sparrowsight's face, warping her features unnaturally. He knew just one more thing that would hurt her if exposing her true nature had barely grazed her confidence. Her only weakness. He could hardly stop the grin forming on his maw, his gaze growing challenging. He could win. He would win. "Finchpaw is never coming back, Sparrowsight. You can't change that, but you seem determined to never join him with our ancestors. Perhaps you're too far gone, because you sure as stars don't deserve to be there."
         Satisfaction flooded his blood like ice as shock pierced into the depths of her eyes, carving apart the darkness like the sharpest claw. He had hit her where it hurt, and he watched her mind click to find a response as he continued to stare down her deathly eyes. Yet suddenly unbridled anger flooded into her gaze, her pupils narrowing to slits as she tilted her head downwards. In the dead moonlight, darkness welled like pools in her eye sockets - the green tint barely visible below it - yet he could feel her cold gaze shredding into his pelt unlike ever before. The seconds dragged on for hours before she opened her mouth to speak, no light reaching past her canines as she whispered in a controlled anger, "That's a weird way of saying where they are."
         Half of his world went to black at once. Smothering pain shot through his face as his brain rushed to figure out what had happened. He could feel his neck snap to the side from the force of an impact, but it felt a world away compared to the smothering ice-cold shock numbing a raging fire of pain in his face. A cry of alarm began to gurgle in his throat as he felt his life's essence pour through where his eye had been a moment earlier, painting the rocks into a dark crimson. In one move, she had half blinded him and broken the deathly eye contact with no hesitation. The floor rushed up to greet him as the pain distracted him from his paws, collapsing into the jagged stones below with the soft patter of rain accompanying his fall.
         "What a great idea, Adderfrost." Sparrowsight muttered quietly to herself above him, shifting his head in a haze of pain to look at her in what sight he had left. His seeing eye was against the floor, the other bleeding under his fur - the crimson flooding over his nose and into the crevices of the rock beneath him, diluted to a red stream by the now-falling rain. Scorching fire ran through his face as he used all his strength to keep his sight on the standing she-cat, who looked down with shadow-filled eyes and water running through her fur. Her dark maw opened to whisper again, her voice sounding restricted and controlled, "you have a lot to lose here, so consider your next answer carefully. Where are Ferntalon and Mothflower?"
         Adderfrost prepared his muscles carefully as the silence between them rang on. Sparrowsight thought she had already won, but he had the stars on his side. Maybe his eye injury was just a trophy he would wear, a good tale to tell the kits of future generations, perhaps even that of his own. He was named after an adder, and he would strike as one from his coiled position on the ground. Her own power and ego used against her for a deathly blow that she would never expect. "They would never even want to see you again if I told you where they were, and I will grant their wishes and make sure it never happens!"
         With his words said, he exploded upwards into her face. His outstretched claws flew for her muzzle, trying to scar it as well as he could. Yet his claws found no mark, the she-cat having pulled her head back - her eyes unimpressed and cold, not a glimmer of fear in them. His chest suddenly exploded into pain as Sparrowsight's claws ran through it with ease, a brutal gash left in their wake. His world shook as his head snapped the other way, his cheek ripped open just below his seeing eye - crimson flowing out of it and splattering into the rain-covered ground as he struggled to pull his thoughts back together. Yet before he could reorientate himself he felt both his ears grabbed onto by steely talons, a pair of green eyes barely concealing anger behind darkness across from him. He felt the ground rush to greet him once more as he was painfully thrown down to the floor - his ears ripped slightly by the brutal force of the move. It had left him painfully open and left Sparrowsight poised to strike once more. Her jaws clicked open and her head struck forward into his shoulder, shock barely staving away the feeling of her teeth puncturing his skin and reaching into the taught muscle itself, which tore and snapped beneath her fangs. He tried to spasm his way from her grasp, but his leg no longer moved to his command.
         Slowly, she brought her head back upwards from his shoulder, blood soaking her teeth a dark red hue as her jaws opened to speak once more like a mentor to a foolish apprentice, "first of all, if you're going to try and attack me, don't announce you're doing it - it ruins all your sense of surprise. Secondly, if you're going to try to kill me, go for my throat and don't hesitate. Third, you should have practiced your combat and reflexes. You were slow, and it killed you. And finally, was it worth it? Depraving me of my family just to die. What for, Adderfrost?"
         He could feel the essence of his life flooding onto the water-logged rocks beneath him, pain searing from all over his body. His thoughts were clouded, misery seeping into the base of his mind - how could he have lost without even a scratch to his opponent? Where were the stars? How could they leave him to die like this? His throat felt raw and unused as he finally responded, too weak to meet her gaze this time, "Th-They'd forgive me if I stood up to you... They deserve f-freedom from you, and I-I wasn't going to fail them, not again."
         "Oh, you wounded animal," Sparrowsight's coo scraped at his ears, a scratchy laugh breaking from the she-cat. "Do you really think they'd truly care for you? You can't ever undo what you did to them. You left them to be friends with a father who just abandoned his kits and mate for no reason. They used you to escape, and you got too hung up on what you wished for that you failed to realise that you can't just redeem yourself for what you did in a night. You left them for seventeen moons for nothing. There are some paths too rocky to go back on, and you threw yourself down one of them without ever looking back. You know I'll find them anyway. You know who I am, and you know how futile this was. You died for nothing. You weren't a hero, Adderfrost."
         Pain shot through his scruff as the she-cat clamped her jaws into his neck - the floor moving and scraping into him as she dragged him up the rocky trail to the thunderpath. She was right. What was he thinking, trying to fight a cat who had ran their own parents out in fear? He was no hero. He had killed himself for nothing. She would find them, and he hardly wanted to hear what she would to them. He had walked out of their lives for no reason, just for his best friend Pantherdapple. Sparrowsight already didn't like him for this, why did he try to tempt fate? But he felt as if he betrayed his sisters most of all. He had never realised it before, but it felt so obvious looking at it now. They had been hurt by him. They had looked at him with sad eyes before they left, and he had looked back with disdain. Now he had given his own future up for theirs, yet he couldn't be happier. He would have lived the rest of his life away from them otherwise, and he would never have made it up to them. He had ensured their protection for a while, maybe even long enough for Sparrowsight to be killed by the new generation of warriors before she could find her family. They could live on in their new clan, a clan who would protect them from outside threats. He would watch over them with his Ancestors, maybe even with Pantherdapple once more.
         Beneath him, the rocks turned to grass turned to thunderpath, turned back to grass. Finally feeling himself dropped, Sparrowsight had her maw free to talk once more. He wished she would shut up, but she spoke on, "it's not worth the effort to hide your body, so drag yourself about and make it somebody else's problem. Say hi to Finchpaw for me." Her voice was dead and flat to him, the rain finally beginning to subdue. She finally turned around and padded away proudly, disappearing into the night's shadows for one final time. Left to himself once more, he began to limp himself in the direction of where he had left his sisters.
         Sense by sense dropped away from him as the journey seemed to stretch on and on. His hearing stopped first, his ears filled with buzzing and what little he could hear warped and distorted. As the grass turned to path under him, his sight began to blur more and more, his head light and the world beginning to hurt to look at. He had to continue. As path turned to wood, his balance gave up on him. Falling to the floor, he began to drag himself forward, a red trail of his life left behind him. As wood turned back to path, he could feel his throat give up - his voice gone completely. He could no longer feel his tail or his paws, but he continued himself onwards. His claws had wrenched by the time he reached grass again, but it felt a world away. All his pains were little more than dull throbbing by now, even his missing eye. The scent of cat traced into his nose, his scent slowly fading too. He was aware of a loud noise when he was spotted, and then the rushing of several hurried paws, but it all felt a world away as his sight devolved into nothing more than blurry shapes.
         The scent of the clan he left his sisters with filled her nose as the cats got closer, but he wanted his sisters. The scent of herbs filled his nose as his hearing failed fully, left in a painful silence as he felt plants pressed against his pelt. Yet finally he could scent his sisters, the scent filling his nose as he was roughly aware of hurried licking against his swollen eye. It reminded him of being a kitten in the nursery with them, playing with a moss ball. When he had banged his eye against the rock wall trying to catch the moss, Mothkit had ran over and began to lap at his eye immediately. She had thrown the moss after all, and it was her fault but he never blamed her for it. The memory brought a purr to his throat as his body slowly went cold under him, and all feeling seeped away into memories. His sisters were now in safety with their new clan and future families. He could rest.