tunnels MERCY I IMPLORE [☾] Final Assessment

[SOOTSTAR]

She remembers the blue she-kit nursing at her belly, her fur scarce with a bright pink muzzle bunched against her litter-mates. It had not been long before she placed them in the care of a different nursing she-cat, her leaderly duties stopped for no one, including kits. Still she watched them grow from both nearby and afar, she selected Bluekit by paw to be her next apprentice and as Bluepaw, she has been a worthy student. An easy student- if she may say, for Bluepaw’s intelligence and ability to adapt never ceased to amaze her.

In order to get her warrior name Bluepaw would have to amaze her one last time, or never again at all.

Student leads teacher into the depths of the tunnels, several layers of dirt, clay and peat deep. Sootstar has been quiet as she observes and Bluepaw makes notes about her surroundings, the condition of the tunnels and occassionally they stop to reinforce them on the apprentice’s instruction.

That is until Bluepaw begins to lead on again and Sootstar lags behind with intent. They were surrounded by sand now, an area of the tunnels notorious for being unstable and in need of constant maintence. Sootstar reaches to the roof and snags her paw into the root of a plant that grew above, it takes a mighty tug and faster than a hare could spring sand rains down from the cealing, grains getting into her green eyes. With the thunderous caving in of the roof the walls surrounding the feline’s begin to fall out of place too, seperating the mentor and apprentice from each other.

While this seems like a freak accident the show is very much intentional, a final test for her apprentice. If she lives she gets her warrior name, if she dies she was not meant for it. She gives no word to Bluepaw before she spins around and flees the collpasing tunnel, the path she must take significantly easier and straightforward than the twists and turns Bluepaw would have to endure.

If Bluepaw is not out by the time the moon’s reached its peak into the sky Sootstar will assume her daughter has been buried, she will not come to look for her.

☾ INFO BATTLE

• >> @BLUEPAW
• 
  » Soot ․ Sootstar
  » WindClan Leader
  » She/her ․ Mate to Weaselclaw
  » Tiny blue smoke she-cat with green eyes.
  » "Speech" ․ thoughts ․ attack
  
• 
  » A high-stamina foe who can be difficult to hit.
  » Excels in quick, short moves.
  » Fights to kill and maim
  » Fatal attack of choice is an underbelly dive.
  » May powerplay minor harm. Can powerplay healing

​

 

[BLUEFROST]

Long gone are the days of Bluepaw’s timidity with regards to the tunnels. She navigates them almost as well as some of the warriors do, confident where memory leads her, solid where her senses must take over. She thinks nothing about taking the lead, hardly noticing Sootstar intentionally hanging behind her. When Bluepaw speaks, it’s almost to herself.

“This wall needs shoring, doesn’t it?” The small gray she-cat murmurs, turning to catch Sootstar’s gaze for approval. Sand begins to shower from the ceiling, and she backs away, startled. “Ah—” Her fur begins to fluff up, terrible memories raking claws through her mind. She is alone, breathing dust, Ambertail lost somewhere in the bowels of the earth—she is scrabbling after Heatherpaw, her claws flinging silt behind her—

But there is no Heatherpaw with her today. She hacks unbecomingly, feeling the sand in her lungs. “Sootstar!” Through the haze of dust, through the filling tunnel, Bluepaw cannot make her mother’s figure out. She cannot continue to stand where she is and expect to live, so she bolts in the opposite direction, deeper into the center of the moor. What little light there had been is snuffed out behind her as the ceiling caves in.

She is trapped. The darkness is thick and almost damp, like velvet pressing against her on all sides. She gropes with a paw, disoriented and panting with barely-suppressed fear, and finds the wall has opened up on one side. The tunnel twists to the right, still descending—she can feel the flat air on her whiskers. “I must find a way up,” she murmurs to no one, willing the tremor out of her voice. She blinks grit from her eyelashes and shoves her flank against the wall, guiding herself to the right, descending into blackness.

Bluepaw must walk for an hour or so before anything in the environment changes. Things only seem to become quieter. There is no light where she is, and she can taste how stale the air is on her tongue. “This tunnel has not been touched in some time,” she murmurs again. Her voice is small, blotted out by the lack of oxygen. Panic begins to sear her beneath her fur—it would take too long to wait for help. She may be a skeleton with strips of fur and flesh clinging to her before anyone is able to find her.

With a swallow, Bluepaw tilts her face toward the ceiling. Her nose bumps against the sandy bottom—and she closes her eyes, exhales. Focus. She kneads the earth with her paws, feeling for vibrations, for movement. There is nothing—but she does feel a slight widening, now to her left, and she takes the turn with as much confidence as she can muster. Panic will do her no good here—that’s a lesson a tunneler learns early in their apprenticeship. Panic sends cats blustering into trouble, into dead ends that cave in, into water that rises and fills their mouths and noses.

So, she walks. One hour becomes two.

Two becomes three. Outside, the sun begins to descend, though Bluepaw will not know it. She begins to feel a dull, throbbing ache in her claws; they are tired and strained from gripping soil and hauling herself toward safety.

Sometime before the fifth hour, she feels an ascent, and her fur begins to tingle with anticipation. She’s found a tunnel that angles toward the moor, but it is cramped, hardly big enough for a rabbit to burrow through. White paws hesitate at the entrance before she clamps her mouth shut and begins to squirrel her way through. The feeling of the ceiling pressing down on her is unpleasant and, frankly, terrifying—but she knows she has to take the chance. Prodding paws find it held sturdily in place—and, satisfyingly, she finds stick and stone holding it after about thirty minutes of crawling.

By the time she feels the breeze on her whiskers, the moon is peeking over the horizon, and the moorland is carpeted in blackness. She stumbles almost blindly from the tunnel, dust flying from her ragged pelt. She breathes air in frantic gulps, and her lungs shiver with exertion.

She did it. She lived. When Bluepaw enters camp again, it is with aching paws, lungs full of grit, fur dusty and soiled, and eyes gleaming with victory.

, ”​

​

 

[SOOTSTAR]

She has watched as the moon begins to teeter above the horizon. It’s been long since Sootstar’s returned to camp, the dirt has been groomed from her pelt and her ears shaken out. Sootstar has done little but wait with anxiety in her test, had she trained Bluepaw well enough for this? Would she rise from the earth and prove herself victorious over the tunnels? She has faith and high hopes, but for all she knows the collapse had killed her apprentice on impact.

It is near time for Sootstar to consider the apprentice dead when a figure moves into the clearing past the gorse. Head to tail she is covered in dirt and mud and green eyes glow dim with exhaustion. Yet a mother knows her daughter from anywhere, even past all the muck that painted her frame.

She races to her with an esctatic smile, practically ignoring the blue she-cats state. ”You made it out- you did it…!” Sootstar feels the weight of the world lifted off her shoulders, Bluepaw did not shame or disappoint her tonight. ”You’re ready. You’re going to be a warrior.”

☾ INFO BATTLE

• 
  » Soot ․ Sootstar
  » WindClan Leader
  » She/her ․ Mate to Weaselclaw
  » Tiny blue smoke she-cat with green eyes.
  » "Speech" ․ thoughts ․ attack
  
• 
  » A high-stamina foe who can be difficult to hit.
  » Excels in quick, short moves.
  » Fights to kill and maim
  » Fatal attack of choice is an underbelly dive.
  » May powerplay minor harm. Can powerplay healing

​