- Sep 1, 2023
- 34
- 6
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CW: death, blood, insensitivity to death, minor/moderate descriptions of gore and violence, grief
Continuation from this thread: dualism of mirrors } dream os
And this thread: demon king } missing mentor
@Flamewhisker @nightbird @spottedpaw
First section is Asterflame’s (npc mentor to Dreampaw) POV
——— ——— ———
Everyone has said things they regret. Asterflame knows this as his pawsteps trace the moonlit and stony ground of a far edge of Thunderclan’s territory. Without realizing it, he was at Snakerocks. It was Dreampaw’s favorite place to hunt. The kid liked the thrill and danger the snakes provided even if they tasted less than desirable. He could still remember the grimace on the apprentice’s face the day moons ago that he’d caught his first adder and then the twist in his belly as ‘the Dark Warrior’ declared he’d take its skull for his nest as a memento of the occasion. He was proud of him that day…so what had made him say what he’d said this morning?
It was just that he was afraid for Dreampaw. He was intelligent, eager, and wildly inspired. He was becoming stronger by the day and they worked hard training together. Sometimes his apprentice’s perception surprised him and sometimes his stupidity shocked him (after all Dreampaw was also bossy, cryptic, and selfish). Still, it was all a mentor could hope for to see their own student flourish. He had asked just once for his apprentice to let go of his idea of this ‘Dark Warrior.’ It wasn’t healthy and he’d never forgive himself if he let Dreampaw charge into danger with the impossible belief that he truly could not lose, that he could not die, that never losing and never dying was all part of being the Dark Warrior.
His argument with Dreampaw had worked its way into his brain and heart for hours. He had gone hunting but he hadn’t caught anything. His mind was drifting. He had wanted to say he’d always be there for Dreampaw but instead he had accidentally pushed him away.
A clatter of paws on pebbles shakes him from the confines of his mind and Asterflame glances up suddenly very alert.
Two loners, a large pale tom and a smaller black tabby, were making their way toward him, the invisible line of the Thunderclan border unhonored. Even at a distance he could smell the strong sick-smell wafting from the smaller of the strange cats. Asterflame steps forward on hurried paws, tail raising in challenge, ”This is Thunderclan territory. Strangers are not welcome. I suggest you turn around and go back the way you came.”
It is the larger of the loners who responds while his companion practically droops like a wilting flower, ”We mean no harm. We are looking for a cure to an illness…yellowcough. Word has traveled that the clans have a cure. P-please we are desperat—“
”If you’re looking for the cure, you’ll have to look somewhere else. Thunderclan has none to spare, especially on outsiders.”
For a moment the white loner is speechless, mumbling in listless protest. Then, his eyes flash with fury. With startling speed, the loner lunges for Asterflame and in moments they are tumbling on the ground.
He momentarily loses his breath as the loner crushes him under his weight, claws slashing at anything they can take hold in. Words are spat at him in a rush, ”You. Have. It. You clan cats are selfish to keep this cure all to yourselves!” In a moment the sky was the ground and ground was the sky as Asterflame rolled with the enraged loner until, finally, he breaks free. With a final warning swipe at the white tom’s face, the warrior stands.
And it was now Asterflame who was angry. To be assaulted in his own land by loners who had no respect for their borders, unbelievable! He gathers his ragged breath, ignoring the sting of the claws the loner had left through his pelt and shouts, ”Leave! Your friend is ill and you should bring no further pain upon yourselves by staying. Leave and don’t return. This is your final warning before I chase you off myself.”
The pale-pelted loner hesitates, his eyes growing dim as he realizes he won’t be getting anything he hoped for after coming so deep into clan territory. There was no winning for him, no cure for his friend, and no victory in a battle against a warrior of the clans. With panting breaths the loner lowers his shoulders as if in defeat. Then, in a last ditch effort to express how he was feeling, he lashed out with a two-pawed strike that landed squarely on Asterflame’s chest.
Asterflame’s eyes widened as he felt himself losing purchase. He tipped and fell. One moment feeling the cool leaf-fall air in the moonlight, the next moment feeling a crack of an impact and then darkness.
——— ——— ———
The search patrol had checked Sandy Hollow first but had come up empty-pawed. Asterflame hadn’t been anywhere in the area, no reply followed their calls into the night. If not for Nightbird’s adept tracking skills, they may have had no useful leads at all. But now, the small party of cats converged upon Snakerocks where Asterflame’s scent trail led.
The smell of sickness and loners reach them just as Asterflame falls, pushed over by the paws of the clanless white tom, and his head makes sickening contact with a large rock near the base of the rock pile. Blood seeps about the rockface where Asterflame’s head rested, clumping together the red and white warrior’s cheek fur.
”ASTERFLAME!”
Dreampaw’s roar rips through the uproar around him. The tortie has barely spoken since the search began. He had been fighting guilt the entire search. Guilty that he even needed help from anyone to find his mentor and guilty that perhaps it was his own fault that Asterflame didn’t want to come back. Though his roar into the night is not like the Dreampaw that had originally requested the search, no, it is a sound released with all the fury of the Dark Warrior.
Adrenaline urges him forward, overtaking the patrol leader without a second thought, as he rushes in at a breakneck speed. It isn’t Asterflame he goes for first, it is the stranger who’d had the nerve to lay paws on his teacher. He make sure they’d never be able to again.
The white furred loner is still with eyes as wide as the near full moon in the sky when Dreampaw leaps upon him. Perhaps he was surprised at what he’d done in a moment of passion but what could have looked like intent to kill. It didn’t matter. The loner never got the chance to explain himself. The Dark Warrior struggled with the larger cat but the loner was emotionally drained and exhausted from his grapple with Asterflame. He didn’t stand a chance.
It is finally when the white tom stops struggling that Dreampaw breaks away from him. It could have been a few moment or a few moons. Time felt motionless. Dreampaw’s intense gaze sketches over the shaking form of the loner, belly-up on the earth and his throat a bloody smile offered up to the sky. Dreampaw wore a similar smile upon his own maw, blood-stains that stretched along each side of his lips giving it a wider appearance than usual. ”How’d ya like that? Your doom is inevitable. Listen and know your mistake as the Dark Warrior’s words plummet you into a starless abyss!” The chanting of the Dark Warrior brims with deep fury and wicked satisfaction as he leans over the face of the dying loner, showing no mercy for the stranger’s wide, staring, and horrified eyes. It is not until the stranger has satisfactorily choked on his own blood into stillness that Dreampaw breaks from whatever evil, adrenaline-fueled state he was in. The ill loner who’d originally accompanied the now deceased one was long gone, running away on terrified, unsteady paws and tears blinding their eyes.
Finally, he notices Asterflame’s motionless form. He had expected Asterflame to get up or approve of him for coming to his defense. But Asterflame has done none of that. He feels the others around him, but he tries his best to ignore his clanmates. All he wanted now was for Asterflame to wake up and apologize for being a fuzz-brain and admit that the Dark Warrior was right and that neither of them, not Asterflame and not the Dark Warrior, would be going anywhere.
”C’mon, get up! Everything’s alright. Asterflame…please. Get up. The Dark Warrior commands it!” Dreampaw’s voice finally shook and the Dark Warrior was rapidly feeling a lot less powerful. The one saving grace was that Asterflame’s chest rose and fell but with such faintness that any warrior who’d seen enough seasons would know that Asterflame’s breath would not be for much longer.
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ooc : — ooc: tl;dr asterflame (dreampaw’s npc mentor) is out by snakerocks when two loners cross the border and approach him. The loners ask about the cure as they are desperate to find it since one of the two loners is already sick. Asterflame denies helping them and the larger, healthy loner attacks him and they have a scrap that ultimately ends in Asterflame being shoved over and hitting his head on a rock which kills him.
The search party patrol arrives to Snakerocks just in time to witness Asterflame fall and hit his head. Dreampaw runs ahead and attacks the loner who’d pushed his mentor and kills him by biting his throat. The other ill loner runs away in fear. Technically, Asterflame is found unconscious and alive but not for long :c
I know this is a lot of words but replies do not need to be long and hopefully it’s an alright read! ty! -
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