- Jun 9, 2022
- 405
- 100
- 28
When StarClan comes to deliver him, Weaselclaw is ready.
“I wanted to… kill you,” he says in a voice like splintering wood. The tone is almost casual, though behind the façade, his heart cracks against the dried-out ribcage in his thin chest, and the fear stark in his eyes would be apparent to any who looked. That shriveled blue gaze is trained on a cat he sees more clearly than any living one who has visited him. Muscular, thick-set, ebony-pelted with flecks of snow. A single searing flame-colored eye rests upon him.
Judgment.
“You’ve been waiting to do the same thing.” It’s not a question. Since the fateful day Weaselclaw had taken the RiverClan cat’s eye, a war, private, personal, has raged between them like an unquenched wildfire. Cicadastar’s consort and Sootstar’s mate, but it has gone beyond that, each battle becoming progressively more brutal.
He had wanted another chance to kill Smokethroat. He wanted to make good on his last promise to the tom who’d kidnapped his daughter. “I will tear every last life from Cicadastar and make you watch,” he’d snarled, and even weak and wasted away in his nest now, that’s what he still wants. He wants the other cat to suffer.
That he must now leave that to the paws of his sons and daughters, of his mate, of his Clanmates, is bitter.
“You’re lucky,” he says, though the apparition never answers him. “I would have killed you slowly.” His cough this time is unyielding, claws raking through his lungs and chest and leaving wounds that bleed like fire. He lays on one flank, spasming until they’ve gone, and then—then he cannot get back up. He’s paralyzed, staring the StarClan warrior in the face, in the eye.
Weaselclaw bares his teeth a final time. “Come and get me, then.”
He cannot fight this battle. He cannot win.
He doesn’t.
By the time they find him, the struggle is over, and Weaselclaw lies still on his flank, eyes half-lidded and glaring at an enemy who is not there and who never was.
“I wanted to… kill you,” he says in a voice like splintering wood. The tone is almost casual, though behind the façade, his heart cracks against the dried-out ribcage in his thin chest, and the fear stark in his eyes would be apparent to any who looked. That shriveled blue gaze is trained on a cat he sees more clearly than any living one who has visited him. Muscular, thick-set, ebony-pelted with flecks of snow. A single searing flame-colored eye rests upon him.
Judgment.
“You’ve been waiting to do the same thing.” It’s not a question. Since the fateful day Weaselclaw had taken the RiverClan cat’s eye, a war, private, personal, has raged between them like an unquenched wildfire. Cicadastar’s consort and Sootstar’s mate, but it has gone beyond that, each battle becoming progressively more brutal.
He had wanted another chance to kill Smokethroat. He wanted to make good on his last promise to the tom who’d kidnapped his daughter. “I will tear every last life from Cicadastar and make you watch,” he’d snarled, and even weak and wasted away in his nest now, that’s what he still wants. He wants the other cat to suffer.
That he must now leave that to the paws of his sons and daughters, of his mate, of his Clanmates, is bitter.
“You’re lucky,” he says, though the apparition never answers him. “I would have killed you slowly.” His cough this time is unyielding, claws raking through his lungs and chest and leaving wounds that bleed like fire. He lays on one flank, spasming until they’ve gone, and then—then he cannot get back up. He’s paralyzed, staring the StarClan warrior in the face, in the eye.
Weaselclaw bares his teeth a final time. “Come and get me, then.”
He cannot fight this battle. He cannot win.
He doesn’t.
By the time they find him, the struggle is over, and Weaselclaw lies still on his flank, eyes half-lidded and glaring at an enemy who is not there and who never was.