sensitive topics out of the blue, into the black ↷ [INTERROGATION]

[NETTLEPAW ♡]

Murderer! Kidnapper!

The words stung harsh, like wasps buzzing toward him- finding Nettlepaw's heart, bashing it with a swarm of stings. Brokenhearted eyes found the splinter in ShadowClan's paw, found his father- soaked with seething spittle out of Smogmaw's mouth, accusations thrust upon his shoulders. Anger seethed in his eyes- Nettlepaw could only look.

Granitepelt was whirlwind-like, and his words spouted from him like a rainstorm. Pitchstar, a lost uncle. Ghostpaw, his sister's namesake. Poppypaw. Tornadopaw. By his father's paw, dead, the lot of them. Disbelief clouded Nettlepaw's baby-blue eyes, and he had never felt so small and childish. His mother was crying, wailing, adamant in denial and then heartbreak; Nettlepaw felt as if he should be wailing too. Flintpaw, close by, spoke of how everyone hated her, about how Granitepelt was right.

Reputation, bloodline, all intertwined. Nettlepaw could only watch as, beneath his father's bloodstained paws, every cat who liked him would have their opinion soured. Granitepelt's words were rotted and death-drenched in a way Nettlepaw had never heard before. Because Granitepelt had always been hardy, had always been stern, had always been distant- but he would not do this. He would not.

And yet, and yet- his mother believed it. His mother believed it and she was crying, and Nettlepaw looked to the cat who had hurt her. Looked to his father. And Granitepelt was speaking to him, then- Nettlepaw, he said. Everyone was screeching- it was too loud for him to gather his thoughts, to cobble together an answer. Starlingheart spoke for him.

You're disgusting, said his mother. Nettlepaw felt as if she had said it to him, unable to blink the image of her mate out of her son's figure.

"Stop shouting!" he spat at the Shadowclanners yowling in anger, clamouring to cast out his father, barely offering him a glance. Anger broiled in Nettlepaw's eyes, anger he'd never wanted to be there. All the blue in his eyes dripped out in tears.

They would look at him, angry now, and see a murderer. They would hate him when all he wanted was to be liked. They would never trust him if he wasn't smiling. The moment he made a mistake, he'd just be another Granitepelt, wouldn't he? The moment he slipped- they would throw him into a clearing like this. Tear at him. Blame him. Condemn him.

Knowing he couldn't slip, Nettlepaw forced the anger out of his eyes. He looked at Granitepelt again. You know I care for you. Did he? What was caring? A critical gaze, a glance now and then? He didn't know. Granitepelt wouldn't lie to him, not now, his seams split, his heart threadbare in front of them all. Granitepelt must care. Why would he lie about it?

And yet, he said only to Starlingheart that he loved her. He'd said that without the murders, Starlingheart would have never. Would have never. My brother, she had wailed. The pieces clicked together in Nettlepaw's head.

Would have never had us. Jay-blue eyes flicked to Ghostpaw, to Flintpaw. Apprentices like us died for us to exist. They had been silenced to keep the flame between his father and mother kindling. A flame that had spat out three embers- and who was to say whether those embers were wanted?

"Do you love me?" Nettlepaw's voice was hauntingly stable, and he looked his father dead in the eye as he said it. If Ghostpaw hadn't died, if Ghostpaw had told Starlingheart what he apparently knew... but he'd died for this supposed knowledge.

He'd died for a kitten who was an ideal mirror-image. Died for a kitten whose father wanted to change her in every way. Died for a kitten whose father could not even tell him he loved him.

If his own father could not say it- then who else was pretending? Who else looked at him and saw Granitepelt sitting beneath, saw a destined murderer, a destined kidnapper, no matter how brilliantly his smile shone, no matter how much he toiled just to get someone else to crack a smile?

The yowling of ShadowClan was closed off to his ears. He stared at his father, still and cold, waiting for something- anything- to pull him back into reality, if the cold spilling of tears wouldn't do it.​

penned by pin ♡​

 

[APPLEJAW]

Her mentor rants and raves. He speaks of Pitchstar— a name she has not heard in moons— and how he stripped his last life from him. He speaks of Chilledstar, unsympathetic and uncaring toward their clan. He speaks of the kits, her sisters; how he'd brought them to Sootstar, and how they would've livde a life more honorable in WindClan than it would've been in here. He speaks of Ghostpaw, whom she'd only known vaguely as Starlingheart's former friend, someone that their own Ghostpaw had been named after. Poppypaw did not die solely by bears. Tornadopaw was no accident. He says that they deserved it. He says he regrets nothing.

The worst part of it all, is that she does not disagree with him too horribly.

ShadowClan was tainted, it hadn't taken her long to learn such. Pitchstar had been before her time, but that did not mean she escaped the tales of his insanity, his paranoia. Applepaw would've hated, under him. She would have hated and hated, even more than she did now. Chilledstar's gaze did feel cruel— unkind. If Applepaw felt this way, what were her little sisters bound to think? The ones that were so much frailer; more emotional. Halfkit's stupid grin had been wiped from her face by the time she'd returned. Surely, she'd realized there was nothing for her here, too.

Applepaw does not think he's lying. She does not think he's delusional. She does not think him a fox - heart, nor scum. He is... frustrated. Applepaw understands.

Did that make her evil?

She did not want to be looked at the way the clan looked at Granitepelt now. But again— they always had. They had before he even deserved it at all.

And as if he knows what she is thinking, he looks at her. You know I’m right. Applepaw cannot nod, the way she has learned to wordlessly agree with him over these moons. You’ve seen it too, and her jaw is slack. It's more than she has learned to afford, the clumsy step forward she takes. " I— "

The voice of her sister is soft— Childlike. Garlicpaw still believes each and every thing their mother told them. Well, their mother is dead.

Siltcloud, as always, stands by her brother— even in accusation; in exile. She speaks of the kits, of Applepaw's siblings. This accursed place, where even their own siblings belittle them. Applepaw shakes her head. That was not her, was it? She has never said a hateful word— only thought them. In the daytime. Exchanging Granitepelt blow for blow, lettting frustration fuel her strikes. In her nest, when she recalls how she'd spent half her life sleeping beside her mother, only for that mother to be gone.

Her head shakes and shakes. That couldn't be her. Ashenpaw was the one with the loose tongue and fragile heart. They are but kits again; Applepaw with tears in her eyes, telling her mother that it wasn't her at fault. That it wasn't her doing. Applepaw has never done anything wrong.

That girl is awake and present, when she hears her brother. Swanpaw calls, and she looks to him with glassy eyes. She rattles like a windswept branch, insisting, insistent, No, no. She's done nothing. Knew nothing. She just wanted to be strong. She just wants to be strong. Granitepelt may be the smartest cat here, still. He may still be.

She is my littermate, and she owed me her loyalty.

She steps away from him, and she steps toward Swanpaw. Wouldn't her mentor understand? No, no, her head says, and she shakes. She's done nothing, knew nothing... But she wants the same.

Flintpaw flaps his gums. His jaws snap closed around a thing he has no right to demand. Applepaw thinks Smogmaw ought to apologize for a great deal. She thinks she ought to have stayed. She thinks he shouldn't have left her here with someone, only to throw them onto the ground before her very eyes. She had never said a word though. What gave Flintpaw the right to demand anything? " What does he have to apologize for? " fear and anger, she shouts back, claws sunken into mud. It could not be the both of them. It could not be them both.

( one track mind, one track heart ) ༊ ( if i fail i'll fall apart )

• 
  

• 

• ( CAUSE I FEEL LIKE I'M THE WORST, SO I ALWAYS ACT LIKE I'M THE BEST ) APPLEPAW. apprentice of shadowclan. eldest sister to swanpaw, ashenpaw, and garlicpaw. ( + birdkit, halfkit & tanglekit )
  —— she / her; confused by the use of others.
  —— currently 8 moons old as of 11.17.23. ages every 17th.
  
  longhaired blue torbie with a white chest, paws, and underbelly. A young cat you would describe as " bossy, " Applepaw is quick to take charge of any situation she sees herself as the probable head of. Naturally talented, and a rule - follower to a T, she thinks herself better than the majority of her peers. Not ignorant enough to think herself above a warrior, but seeks to gain that status as quickly as possible. Intensely self - motivated to be the best in a mixture of blind, childish desire, and never wanting to be afraid of anything ever again.

​

 

[Briarthorn]

BRIARPAW — hello, my old heart.
Murderer! Kidnapper!
The thunderous accusations ring around camp, bouncing off of the dens in a way that would shake a grown warrior to its very core.
Shedding her shaded concealment, Briarpaw steps from the shadows with large ears perked high, amber-struck optics flickering wildly about the scene.
The crowd had grown rapidly, and the lithe apprentice found herself having to weed through her gathered clanmates just to get a good view.
There is a crisp metallic scent swirling around already murky air, and Briarpaw’s eyelids flutter in surprise at the sight before her.
Granitepelt stumbles, his jaws hung loose as he rants and rants.
Shocking revelations revealed, gasps of anguish and horror echo around her- but Briarpaw cannot look away just yet, not wanting to miss a moment of this miserable man’s downward spiral.
It is only when the ashen warrior begins to plead with his kin to join him in pathetic exile does Briarpaw finally glide her optics to his children, Nettlepaw in particular. Her peer had always been on the softer side, how would he handle this?
Flintpaw, who tried his best to be the reflection before him, how fragile were they?
Ghostpaw, the ignored daughter.
What a treacherous beginning. She cannot help but think.
His blood screams back at him, pleads with him.
When Applepaw yells in response to Flintpaw, Briarpaw would finally move in an act of solidarity, of pity she would tell herself.
A sweeping motion of ebony, she’d come to stand slightly in front of her blue-hued clanmate, scalding gaze directed at Applepaw.
"Don’t be so ignorant." The ebony apprentice shoots back in vague defense for Flintpaw, wondering how the other would feel to see Smogmaw in this position- forced to process all of her emotions in the heat of one public moment. Rolling eyes landing square on Granitepelt once more.
A new rage comes over her, sweltering as she gets a good look at him for perhaps the first time.
Craning forward, the young apprentice would aim to spit at him, if not on him.
Whether or not her minor assault landed, Briarpaw would step back. "Anyone who joined you would only be drowned in your misery." She hisses, though mostly to herself as her words are quickly overpowered by her much larger, older clanmates.

"speech"

tags​

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[Skunktail]

—————————————————————⊰☆⊱————————————————————

Smogmaw is rarely so angry. He was surly and foul tempered at times, but his rage was subdued and almost docile, he had never taken him serious much before but for once he finally befits the image of terrifying deputy with how easily he hauls the gray lead into the camp with blood stained teeth and unsheathed claws. Murderer. Kidnapper. Granitepelt took the kits. It's already a horrifying thing to learn but it only gets worse with each admission uttered, each guilty verdict decreed.

Granitepelt killed Pitchstar. Several other cats, among them apprentices who did not deserve to die before their time, but his brother was the one who struck a chord in him; it rang out with a clamorous sound - thunderous in volume and his heart pounded in his skull so violently he saw stars, illuminated white pinpricks of light in his vision as if even the heavens above too cried out for vengeance.
It is Starlingheart's voice that pierces the void, the dark numbness of his thoughts, and then Lilacfur's joins her - his sisters scream in outrage, Frostbite yowls a threat for his lost apprentice, several younger cats are crying among them his own blood flinging accusations to their father and within it the cat that had been welcomed into his family through his sister is quiet. Until he is not and Skunktail almost preferred his silence to the absolute poison he begins to pour out onto the clan. Weakness, lack of unity, a coldness that sinks in and he hates that he shares similar sentiments; that he has felt the clan divided since his mother's death, Pitchstar's maddening grief unable to draw them back together. To kill him for this...to slaughter their clanmates in this paranoid fit...the ends did not justify the means. He was insane.
Granitepelt's kits demand answers, Flintpaw shoots an accusatory question at Smogmaw, Nettlepaw cries for an assurance he is loved, Applepaw defends her father from the sudden turn of words and he can only watch. He can only watch.
ShadowClan was being torn to pieces in front of him and he can only watch, he wonders if Briarstar and Pitchstar are watching; did they see this, did they wish they could do something? Did his brother find peace in knowing his murderer was about to finally be punished and his complacent sister would join him? He doesn't even offer Siltcloud a glance, a harborer of vile crimes, she is just as bad as the tom insisting he was some savior to them.

For once Skunktail has no words, no voice to add, no screaming fury, no demanding questions. He has heard enough and it is overwhelming. He staggers to a stop next to his apprentice, mouth open and eyes wide, but he can not conjure up a response.

☆ ———— promise me she's not your world ☆ ———————— 'Cause Andy, you're a star

•  
• 
  
  
  Skunktail
  —⊰⋅ Warrior of ShadowClan
  —⊰⋅ He/Him
  "SPEECH", 'THOUGHTS', ATTACK
  —⊰⋅ SH Black & white tom w/spearmint green eyes
  

​

 

[GRANITEPELT]

Murmurs of confusion bend and twist into pointed claws. Monster, his Clanmates hiss. You are no good, a phrase he’s heard since kithood, since anger had nestled inside of him and begun to scorch the surface of his soul. Granitepelt lets their words drip like blood from wounds. He does not take his gaze off of Starlingheart, for her words are the only ones that matter. He waits—he waits for tears, for sadness, for a pained expression. He waits for her torment. He waits for her slow, reluctant forgiveness.

He receives none of that.

“He was my brother!” Granitepelt flinches from her scream; he stumbles backward as though Starlingheart had stricken him with her teeth. “How? I loved you enough to keep it from you, I—I never wanted you to know this way,” he protests, his words feeble, his green eyes wide with shock. Starlingheart’s agony is palpable—she sobs, crouching against the dusty floor of their camp like a kit being beaten over the head and shoulders.

And then she looks at him, and her voice is like an organ torn from the body. “You’re disgusting.” Granitepelt’s jaw falls open. “You don’t mean that. You can’t mean that,” he gasps, and now—for the first time since his littermate had perished—a fine gloss of tears shields his eyes, wavers with his erratic breaths. “I love you. I did everything I did for you.” The tears slip from the corners of bruised eyelids. He bares his teeth in a sickening howl, his claws beginning to shred the earth beneath him. “I LOVED YOU! DON’T YOU UNDERSTAND?”

He forgets about his kits, then, about Applepaw, about Siltcloud who stands stock-still beside him. He does not notice the tension burning through his sister’s body, does not notice her anger, her outrage. He hears the cats who call for his blood—he feels the murderous glint of their eyes searing his fur—but they do not exist to him, because the only cat who does has forsaken him. Starlingheart denounces him. His Starlingheart. His mate, his his his, she takes what is his.

Granitepelt goes mute, then, his jaw clenching tight enough to shatter the teeth inside like glass. The tears run dry, and all that’s left is an empty green darkness, a void lacking light, lacking anything but murderous intent.

Flintpaw. She loves Flintpaw. She loves Nettlepaw. Now he aims to take them both from her. Granitepelt turns first to his look-a-like child, her own mismatched eyes brimming with fury. “They can’t tell you it isn’t true, because it is. They will never forgive you, especially,” Granitepelt spits, “Your deputy.” Still, he does not know what Flintpaw demands an apology from Smogmaw for. And Applepaw—for every moment Granitepelt had thought she’d had potential, she snaps, defending her gruesome father from Flintpaw’s wild, demanding shriek.

Granitepelt turns then to Nettlepaw, his enormous blue eyes like snowmelt, blind with pain. “Do you love me?” Me. Me. He’s momentarily disgusted by this display of weakness, and he blames Starlingheart—he always has, he realizes, for Nettlepaw’s failings. The beaten lead warrior blinks. “Of course. I would never ask you to come with me if I didn’t. Do you think this Clan loves you? Do you think they will after today?” He shows his teeth in a bitter, misplaced smile. “No. Your place is with me, Nettlepaw.”

, ”​

​

 

[LIVIDPAW]

There was too much noise outside of the nursery today. How was he supposed to take a peaceful nap when chaos was yowling so loudly out there?. Curiosity was not an emotion that come to him naturally not like his brother Basilkit who always seemed to love being anywhere there noise happened. Whilst his brother got drawn towards it Lividkit rather went the other direction towards the silence. Unfortunately a such blessful life happened rarely around here lately. There always seemed to be something going on these days. Today was no different he figured.

Often he would ignore but today was difficult. It felt importand somewhat or maybe it was his own bemusement over his clanmates lack of giving him what he so deeply desired for that fine day that brought the kit to his paws to walk on over to the exit of the den to found out what his dramatic clanmates was fighing over this time. Shouldn't they all be calm now when Halfkit and Tanglekit had got returned back to them?. A calm after the storm...

No, another storm had broken out after the last one has past.

Lividkit showed little emotion when his eyes caught a glimpse of the chaos outside. Everyone hissing and snarling while Granitepelt spat out words that was confusing for a kit to fully comprehand not when it was about a time before his own existence. Everyone looked upset, beyond furious at this stage. Accussions of treason, murderer of their own kind. That was as much as he was able to grasp after having listened for a while. Granitepelt was not presented in a good light, a beastly snake who had hidden behind a noble facade. Now he had been exposed to show his true colors to all of them but that was not enough. He wished to bring the whole family down with them. The clan getting accused for not loving any of them through gritted teeths.
Everything, he took in everything he could forgetting all about time and space until...a voice come from behind him, a voice well familliar to him. " Lividkit?, what's going on out there?." Ears perked up. Basilkit had woken up from his slumber. Lividkit tore his attention away from the outside as he turned back around so he could reunite with his brother.

"Nothing" He did not wish for Basilkit to see what was going out there. He had a bad feeling that something ugly was going to happen out there soon. So it was better for them to stay in here and not take part in any of it. Let the adult handle it. That was why they where here after all. " Just another boring argument between adults." He placed himself beside his brother nd gave them a look and spoted their curiosity. " There's nothing out there to see so just go back to sleep." That was for the best. Wait until the storm is over. Eventually it would come to pass.

And peace would come until another storm broke out.


​

 

[Halfpaw]

The aftermath of her return is not something Halfkit could have ever expected. There is yelling - so much yelling and when she peers past the other kits out of the nursery she sees Granitepelt being held down by her father, claws digging into gray fur. She sees Starlingheart with tears in her eyes, voice more fierce than she thinks she has ever heard from the black and white molly and she flinches away from it. Her fault, she tells herself. All of this is happening because of her. She does not dare look away, does not dare to seal her ears to the cries of her clan. This was not just some game, this was reality and wether she liked it or not she would have to live in the aftermath of today.

Cats cry out in outrage at Granitepelts words but her pelt just twitches in discomfort. Was it wrong that she doesn't totally disagree with what he is saying? She is too young to be hearing these things, she thinks, too young to listen to the way the disgraced warrior spouts out venom from his lips, how he says their clan is toxic, too young to agree with him. There were so many moments where she felt this way, unloved. And perhaps that is why she had been so okay with staying in WindClan, because there at least cats seemed to like her. Even if it had been fake, they had at least never once compared her to the ghost that had come before her because there they had not known who she was. They did not know the name Halfshade.

When finally she feels she can bare no more and is about to turn away she hears a familiar voice pique from the crowd. Cinnamon and white fur separates itself from the sea of angry faces and there, upon Nettlepaw's face she sees something she had not been prepared to see. Desperation. Do you love me? he asks his father, and she recognizes in his tone something she sees in herself nearly every single day. The desire to know someone cared for her. Even if that someone was a murderer and even if that someone had done terrible things to a cat you cared for. "I love you Nettlepaw" she cries out from where she stands at the entrance to the nursery, her voice defiant, as if daring someone to challenge her words. Funny how she could not say it to her father, but that she felt comfortable enough saying it to someone who was not her own blood. But it's true. He had never judged her for who her parents were, had never put her down or told her she was too loud or too much. She would not allow Granitepelt to force her friend into believing there was not a single soul in all of ShadowClan who cared for his son, because as long as she was here there would be. "I don’t want you to leave" this she says softer, her voice betraying just how young she truly is. A kit clinging desperately to a cat who she considers to be one of her best friends.

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[ASHENFALL]

˚⊹₊‧ 𖦹 It was as he thought, Ashenpaw realized. Someone was after them, playing mind games with them and conspiring for their suffering. There was a sick satisfaction to be had in realizing his suspicions were justified, the same satisfaction that came with sticking his paw into a hole to get himself bitten by an adder. Granitepelt writhed and hissed like an unearthed snake himself, drooling blood and poison from his mouth as he ranted and raved about his justifications for what he did. They would have to die, he knew, because the rogue had to die for killing Snakefoot, and because Sabletuft had to die for no reason at all. Still, his ears lowered at the tolling bells of judgment, anticipating the bloodshed that was only moments ahead.

Ashenpaw was content to perch uneasily on the assumption that Granitepelts monologue was merely the ravings of a madman, crazed by his self-pity and fueled by bloodlust to destroy the clan. Siltcloud then speaks up, cold and clinical in her hissings of self-defense, "Those kits - they would've lived far better lives in Windclan then here, in this accursed place, where even their own siblings belittle them, where they are unloved." His heart drops, oil and bile fill up his lungs and press up into his throat. Ashenpaw fixes his eyes away from the star-cursed she-cat, afraid to find them meeting hers as she says this. It was obvious that she did not include Garlicpaw and Swanpaw in her concoction of this accusation. He was the belittler, the unloving paw the abductors—the murderers—felt justified in stealing siblings from. They had been watching him, assessing him in all of his thoughtless fits of pathetic behavior, and concluded that the Tyrant Moor Queen would serve as better kin for his sisters.

He lowers to the ground, digging his claws into the mud below, "... Didn't mean to-..." To what? His murmurs are to no one, they are nothing more than shameful whisperings of a paper-thin self-defense. His lack of impulse control and incurable perpetual spilling-overs of acid had once again doomed everyone he cared for. He lay stripped bare to bask once again in his own self-hatred as the interrogation barreled forward.

The accused thrust violent stabbings of love at those he betrayed, and the clanmates around him burst into a frenzy of rage at everyone at their flanks—a frenzy he may have joined himself. But Ashenpaw had already fallen deep into the tide below to drown, and the chorus of wailings from the massacre of hearts was merely white water ripping at his limbs and tossing him against the rocks. It pounded at his ears and pummeled into his lungs and he could only look to one place for any hope of rescue.

Chilledstar lay dying in their den, and there remained only one arbiter of justice to sink teeth into those guilty. From his place withered on the sidelines near his siblings, he looked at Smogmaw. Tell me what to do, he implored with a horror-dilated stare, Tell me I need to dig my claws into their fur to make this right. It didn't matter if the thought of blood slicking his paws again made his stomach turn with black bile if the blood would wash away the sins etched into his soul.

FOLLOW THE TIDE ˚⊹₊‧ 𖦹 WITH THE MONSTERS ON YOUR SHOULDER

• OOC:
• 
• 
  — ashenkit . ashenpaw
  — ftm transmasc. he/him. 8mo apprentice of shadowclan
  — longhaired muted blue torbie with heterochromatic pale blue and amber eyes
  — smells like rainsoaked ferns and swamp milkweed
  — “speech”, thoughts, attack
  — icon by nya fullbody by tropics sticker by saturnid
  — penned by eezy
  — currently in an era of grief and anger, approach with caution. all ic opinions!

​

 

[lilacfur]

There is nothing within the cinnamon tabby that speaks innocent. She doesn't even speak at all as the killers kin tore herself away to stand with him. United within each other's crimes. She felt lost for air as her head buzzed in overwhelming grief. She could feel her heart heavy against her chest and all at once she was just a little girl again. A girl without her father, without her mother and too soon after without a brother.

"You knew. This whole time you knew what both of you had done and still let me love you..." She bit her tongue as she felt tears threaten to overwhelm her. This wasn't how it was supposed to be. This wasn't how their story was meant to go. Siltcloud was to be her princess. Gentle and kind despite her hardships and Lilacfur was meant to protect her from the rest. Her betrayal quickly turned to seething anger as Granitepelt turned to speak to their kin and if Ghostpaw had remained she would had stood protectively behind her niece.

Don't talk to them! Her sister spat back and she felt the power return to her body as Starlingheart condemned her mate. So many innocent lives lost to the madness of his mind, wrought tragedy after tragedy to their Clan in the attempt to 'save' them from another madman. She would have found herself in the same track as Skunktail, understanding the decay of their Clans trust following the death fo Briarstar but... murder was not the answer. Pitchstar was not frothing at the mouth damning the stars like their moorland neighbors.

"Flintpaw..." Lilacfur can feel her heart break as she turned against her Clan. How far had Granitepelt rooted himself into his eldest's insecurities? Did he always know he would be found out, had he planned to use them all as leverage for himself? "Flintpaw, your family doesn't hate you. Your Clan doesn't hate you. I've loved you and Nettlepaw and Ghostpaw from the first day I've seen you-" The rosette paused, forcing her breath to steady as Granitepelt continued his rage. Trying to coil himself like a snake around her kin.

"Granitepelt has only brought this doom upon himself. He did not have to kill. And none of you have to go down with him." An amber stare burned deliberately at Siltcloud in her last words, bristled tail lashing before falling back to the three. ​

[ sad hello's and mad high low's ]​

 

[Garlicheart]

Her fur stands on end and she wants to run away from all of this, find someone to press into, but at at the same time she is rooted to the ground beneath her. She's staring at a madman, a monster. Siltcloud seems less of a monster, but she still helped Granitepelt.... She's just not raving. Garlicpaw feels herself trembling, her heart racing with fear.

So much anger and hatred being spat and yet....Still, she finds kindness in her heart.

Granitepelt and Siltcloud couldn't have always been like this, right? They were babies once. Someone must have hurt them, and thats why they turned out like this. Nobody was there for them. She can't deny that the clan is... Less than caring sometimes. It just didn't affect her because she had a loving family to go to. Did they not have one?

"I'm sorry you were hurt and that nobody loved you enough to care." She says to Granitepelt and Siltcloud. "You're right that the clan isn't as nice as it should be... But that doesn't justify what you did.... The clan isn't completely lacking love and warmth...It still has some...." She says, her voice soft but clear. "And you tried to snuff it out, with what you did....."

Starlingheart's kits are brought into the mix and Granitepelt tries to convince them to come with him into exile. He's wrong, they ARE loved... She doesn't even hate Flintpaw! No matter how easy it was to dislike her, Garlicpaw couldn't hate Flintpaw because she knows it wasn't his fault that Halfshade died. It wasn't Starlingheart's either.

"I don't hate you, Flintpaw." She says to him. "I don't even blame you for Halfshade's death... You were sick, it wasn't your fault. I'm happy you lived.. I'm still sad my mother died...But I never considered you or Starlingheart to be her murderer." She could never expect Starlingheart to condemn her child to death. Besides, Flintpaw was terribly sick, he likely needed the extra lungwort regardless. It was a horrible thing that happened, but she couldn't bring herself to hate anyone for it.

She looks back to Granitepelt, her brows furrowing. "You say you love your kits, but I know what a loving father looks like....I've never once seen you show them affection...You don't even look at Ghostpaw. How can you say that you love them now?" Her voice is a little more harsh, but still soft. It's true, she can't remember Granitepelt showing them any softness or love the way Smogmaw shows her siblings. The way Halfshade and Starlingheart show their kits. Did he genuinely love them, or was this just a trick to tear their family apart? To hurt Starlingheart?​

 

[Starlingheart]

There is a part of her, sick and terrible as he has revealed himself to be, that still aches to go to him. Even now, as poison flies from his lips, her heart twists in agony though it is not for the cat who stands before her now, it is for the cat he had pretended to be. The Granitepelt who would press himself against her when she needed support, who would be her voice when she was too afraid to speak up for herself. She had loved that version of him, and she knows that that part of him had been real. How could it not have been?

He begs for her words to not be true and she has to look away from his face, to close her eyes and hold her breath. Still, a sob escapes her. She had lost the Granitepelt she had fallen in love with the moment he had confessed to the murder of her brother, the murder of some of her closest friends. He makes it out to be a kindness that he had kept Pitchstar's true death away from her and she laughs bitterly but she does not respond. There is nothing more for her to say to him. But suddenly he is not talking to her but to them, to her kits. The very thing she had just said not to do. "Don't-don't listen to him" she says, softening her voice for her kits, "He doesn't know what he-what hes talking about. As long as-as long as there is air in my lungs you will each have someone in this clan who loves you m-more than anything in the world." and hadnt she proven that? To them, to the whole forest? She would do anything for her children. Really, does that make her any better than Granitepelt himself as he stands here on trial for murders committed in her name?

Regardless, she stands her ground. She straightens enough to look Smogmaw in the eyes and it hurts, stars it hurts more than anything to part her jaws and say those horrible words. "Drive-drive them out Smogmaw. P-please" she would beg if she had to she wants him gone. Gone from her sights so she can stop herself from faltering, for forgiving him if only in a desperate attempt to return to the way things once were. To stop him from spitting more poison upon the ground, to stop him from trying to drag her kits down with him.

She just wants to collapse.

​

 

[smogmaw]

The vile confessions, the moral squalor, the venom, filth, and perversion flaunted in the asinine monologues gave way to a loathing, pure as it was foreign, wholly new in its might and specificity.

It is unlike the silent aversion he held towards every and all things, unlike the pervavise, anxious disgust brought on by someone's unsolicited, prying stare. This was visceral. This was a searing and festering sore exposed to the open air. He cannot mask it over with a veil of practiced calm. It is anomalous—there is nothing practiced about Smogmaw's condition in its current state, and he stands painfully naked and unprotected by the stoicism with which he has so proudly wrapped himself for so long.

The deputy's fundamental nature revolts against the unknown. He instinctively recoils from it, the way one does from a hot flame. The unknown is a wild variable that does not obey rational, logical progression. Perhaps this is why Smogmaw has not known such vehement loathing until Granitepelt laid bare the extent of his transgressions. Because, in the wake of his confessions, he became the antithesis to all he's ever understood about one's being.

Because, in the wake of his confessions, he became the antithesis to all he's ever understood about one's being. Granitepelt is a self-contradicting, causative, existential force of evil, guided by incomprehensible goals and governed by unfathomable reasoning. No gains have been yielded by his senseless misdeeds and murders, no ambitions progressed towards or completed, no matter how he may frame them.

For him to now lose everything - his mate, familial bonds, the trust and honour he'd cultivated - and then rejoice as though he'd won everything instead, speaks to a singular truth about his character: Granitepelt is broken beyond repair, an indisputable and irredeemable rotten piece of filth.

Smogmaw wishes to see the broken cat rot under the most scorching of Greenleaf suns, to see the life draining from his limbs the same way he'd drained blood from too many of ShadowClan's own. Only then, when he's ridden with pustules and covered in flies, will he embody the full extent of his vile nature.

He cannot name this disgust but he senses a crescent tide growing within him. More and more, with every new revelation, the brine fills the cavity of his body. Ghostpaw. Poppypaw. Tornadopaw. It is a daunting task to convey the repugnance one feels upon learning that so many deaths, attributed to accidents, were deliberate killings. How casually the words are spouted, too. Entire lives and futures snuffed out, and then recalled as nothing more than fodder for his depravity. Every word to leave his cracked and bleeding lips is a withering poison.

And then, that utter weasel musters the gall to say ShadowClan is tainted. He is not wrong, but he implies their clan is tainted in a way he has not willed himself. Is he blind, perhaps, to how the taint stains his pelt the worst? Is he unable to smell it, taste it, feel the slow burning decay his vicious actions have wrought? He has sown more seeds of division and discontent than he accuses others of doing. ShadowClan will never recover from what was done, what was dealt at the ends of his claw-tips. Their warriors will live in sorrow, apprentices in fear, kits in panic.

Breathing the same air as him is a grave error, and one that should be rectified as soon as possible.

Siltcloud, an ever eager collaborator. An opportunity presented itself to her when Pitchstar fell, one which would allow the clan to nip its growing, murderous rot in the bud. She did not take it, and ShadowClan has been made to suffer her cowardice. Her due shall be met in retribution. There will be an accounting for all the blood spilled as a result of her willful neglect, a price met. That her loyalties lie elsewhere, in an unrestrained butcher of the innocent, is the greatest disappointment.

Save for those guilty, Smogmaw stands as the focal point amidst the congregation. Chilledstar has given their life's final exhale, and with it, ultimate authority slips from their cold paws into his own. The irreconcilable hatred pulsing at his centre is now given a platform, upon which the tom will deliver their sentencing and issue the ultimate command. Overshadowed by the accused's corruption, however, he fears he shan't glean much satisfaction.

"SILENCE." The command resounds across the heartland. There is no space for arguments - his authority demands the spectators heed his ruling. Intent amber eyes hone in on the condemned, and for the briefest of instants Smogmaw finds himself on a higher cliff than the rest who are gathered. "The facts, shocking as they may be, rest clearly before us all. We have seen with our eyes 'n heard with our ears the depths of Granitepelt and Siltcloud's degeneracy. Neither of 'em shows the barest hint of remorse for the lives they've taken or ruined, nor for the grief they've put upon us all."

Flintpaw's pleas- no, demands for an apology remain in his mind as he addresses the culprits. May she find closure from her father's forthcoming punishment. "Granitepelt," he drawls, the name leaving a foul taste on his tongue-tip. "It's bafflin' to me how numerous your crimes are. Four murders - Pitchstar, Poppypaw, Ghostpaw, and Tornadopaw - each slain senselessly, selfishly, and, in most cases with premeditation."

A cursory glance sweeps the length of the assembled cats. Tears stain fur under bewildered eyes, whiskers tremble, backs bristle and paws claw impatiently into the frosted ground. "Killin' Pitchstar - our own leader - is a sin in its own right. But he was your mate's brother, kin of your kin. I also find you guilty of being a piss-poor mate, and piss-poor father on top of that." Salivated clouds puff out with every punctuated syllable, wisping above his snarl.

"Murder wasn't enough, though. Not for a scum-suckin' parasite like yerself. You also stand guilty of conspiracy—Sootstar lent her ear to you, and you put more trust in her than your kin 'n clanmates here." He would search for Starlingheart in the crowd, had he the time to do so. "Kidnapping, too. Your cowardice truly knows no bounds, waitin' for a sickened queen to die before stealing her kits away. My mate! My kits! Over some delusions of 'a better life', no less, but your actions are proof you don't believe in such a concept."

"Lastly, you're guilty of taking a life from Chilledstar. A life that was not at its due, a life they will never recover." As he had suspected, no relief comes from pronouncing Granitepelt guilty - no sentencing could fit the gravity of his misdeeds. There is no repentance, either, just cold apathy painted behind those empty, dark eyes. His pleas for his kin to join him are equally lacking remorse and genuine familial concern. "StarClan's brimmed with cats whose lives you've stolen. I'm not a spiritual tom, but I find peace in the fact you won't join them when you die."

Without a shred of reluctance does his gaze depart the disgusting specimen, and instead fall upon his partner-in-crime. No loathing shines in his eyes for Siltcloud. Only disappointment colours his disposition as Smogmaw regards her, shaking his head slowly. Her life is now defined by fatal inaction. How embarrassing. "Siltcloud," he begins, "I look you in the eyes and tell you that I would not do the same." A callback to the witless justification she'd given, spoken in a harsh breath. "ShadowClan has offered you something that your brother never will: security. Seein' how Granitepelt was so willing to betray the cat who he bore kits with, what makes you think he won't turn on you? You're charged with conspiracy as well, and you're an accessory to four murders. We would have three more warriors among us today, had you a sliver of decency in your bones."

Starlingheart's final appeal needs no repetition. He will do just that. "I wish death upon both of you, but doing so in camp would be too dignified an end." He raises his voice, then; the ensuing declaration is just as much an order for every soul in the swamp above kit age. "Instead, Granitepelt and Siltcloud, you are exiled. Banished. Putting your paws on ShadowClan soil is punishable by death from here onwards. And when you're both driven from camp, you will find your former clanmates lurking in the shadows, aching to put their teeth in your throats - similar to how you lived in the swamp for so many seasons."

Much like an owl would, the ashen deputy's head pivots to address the rest of the clan. "You will ALL take shelter among the shadows outside of the hollow," he decrees. Barring the medicine cat and her apprentice, but that really goes without saying. "I will give you until Granitepelt dries his pathetic tears. If either of these rats come within striking distance, give 'em the appropriate punishment for still being here."

"Skunktail, Roosterstrut, we're going to babysit these two. Everyone else out, NOW."


// granitepelt and siltcloud have been exiled! everyone except for @Skunktail and @ROOSTERSTRUT has been ordered to stealthily hide throughout the territory. the two exiled will be chased out by smog, skunktail, and roosterstrut when the go-ahead is given. expect that next thread soon :EVIL:​

 

[THORNPAW]

Shouts and cries from outside felt as though they shook the walls about her. Coiled tightly in a corner of the nursery, eyes wide and tail twice its regular size, was the shivering frame of Thornkit. Their chest was heaving with exertion and her stomach trembled with fright. Why is Dad yelling? What's going on? Despite the snapping of fangs and sobs filling the air, she tried to ease her racing heart. It's gonna be okay. Just go and make sure. Gathering her will, the tiny blonde tabby crept forward. Tail and ears lowered to her skull as soft belly fluff brushed the floor.

Slowly, she poked her head from the nursery and peered at the back of several clanmates. The most prominent being a Queen standing guard at the entrance. Not wanting to be spotted and ushered inside, she stayed perfectly still. Hoping the older cat wouldn't catch her eavesdropping. What is going on? It sucked away her confusion into curiosity as the spat phrases sounded more intelligible. A sudden numbness buzzed at her paws and crawled eerily up her entire body. They've been found? He took them? They did this! In the mix, Thornkit could hardly make sense of her siblings or parents' figures.

Thornkit's blue and brown gaze watered with sudden emotion. Breath hitching as reality seeped in. They're alive. Fat broken tears welled down her cheeks in waves. Relief and pain raked across her chest, and she fought for air. It was too much for her but also the best news she'd heard all moon. Sucking in the choking emotions the small kit did her best to quiet down, body shivering with effort. Why did he take them? I don't understand. The drawn-out spiel of Granitepelt makes her stomach lurch with disgust and frustration. None of it made an inkling of sense to the kit and she could barely hold back the small growl rising in her chest. Then the booming voice of her father zaps the kit's attention back in his direction.

Eyes widened with silent reverie while the deputy slammed each syllable down upon the crowd. She could only see the tip of his lashing tail, but could feel every word like thunder. A massive shadow appears over the youth's frame, causing her to jump in place. Looming above her was the queen who had been guarding the entrance. She was soon scruffed and brought deeper into safety, and was left speechless. Tail drooping with dismay. Where are they? Fear struck Thornkit's chest at the notion of her thoughts. She had far too many unanswered questions to rest.

//out​

 

[NETTLEPAW ♡]

Do you think this Clan loves you? Do you think they will after today?

Your place is with me, Nettlepaw.

His father smiled at him- an odd and misplaced look. For a moment Nettlepaw could not fathom a world where anyone could still love him, after this. How anyone could even like him. They would see his white-and-cinnamon coat, a likeness to Siltcloud- they would see his father, lurking beneath his skin and puppeteering him. Bright eyes wobbled with tears. His father was a murderer. His father loved him.

Nettlepaw was not sure what hurt more- watching the love that had given him life shatter before his eyes, his mother denouncing his father in front of everyone, or knowing that why it fractured was because of a horrible deed. On his father's part, his own father.

And his father was a murderer. Halfkit's voice broke through to him, like a bird's screech, sailing toward him on the wind. I don't want you to leave. His mother, she promised she would love him. Love him no matter what. Lilacfur, too.

Nettlepaw did not realise he had taken one step toward his father until he began to back away.

Like spring rain, tears wetted the white of his face- Nettlepaw's breath shuddered. If Halfkit, hurt so much by Granitpelt's actions in ways she probably couldn't even understand, could still accept him... maybe not everyone would look at him waiting for his claws to slit a throat.

Nettlepaw swallowed. "My place is here." Through it all, he managed to keep his voice steady. A breath. He did not want his father to leave. He did not want to be left behind- but he was forced to cut away the tumour. Forced to rip himself away, distance himself from his dad, the murderer, the traitor. "With Starlingheart."

If he had to choose, this was his choice. It would have to be- it was the only way, the only good and kind way. So why oh why did it hurt so much? Why could he not slough the love he had for his father away, like a second skin to rot in the sand? It should have been easy. It should have been, had he not loved so much, so irrationally.

His choice was made. His father was sentenced to death. To exile. It was as good as death in its separation. And against his better judgement, Nettlepaw still cried.​

penned by pin ♡​

 

[GHOSTMASK]

Ghostpaw is working—or what passes for working in a clan that still reeks of famine and carrion—when it begins. Lilacfur is just mumbling some banal suggestion into here, a welcome home gift for the new mouths they were being forced to feed. It's almost fortuitous that Granitepelt's beating interrupts such boring fodder. Her blue-black eyes are heavily lidded, watching Smogmaw's entrance with her father's stone pelt glistening with spilt blood. As she watches, her father is battered into the dirt and Smogmaw hunches over him, face alight with righteous fury. His roars blossom from his throat, flowers dripping in her father's blood, and she watches blankly. Ghostpaw waits as his judgement is dealt, as her family weeps and shouts.

Starlingheart begs and wails. Magpiepaw rushes to Chilledstar's den, newly promoted Frostbite condemns Granitepelt in a low growl. Her own mentor reels, gasping, demanding answers of the pathetic lump of cinnamon fur that is her other aunt. Siltcloud says nothing as the yowls and screams echo around the camp, damning her father.

When Granitepelt stands, it's with a smile eerily reminscent of his daughter's. The confessions spill out, murders and betrayals and kidnappings, mocking their leaders, swaying on his paws as he condemns his attackers. His pleas for Starlingheart, the names of his victims—they mean nothing. What she fixes on is that ghostly body rotting in the bog, the first Ghostpaw to walk the marshes. Dead at her father's claws. She remembers a long time ago, some chamber door dragging open within herself, a night steeped in greenleaf: "Are you asking that because of what I did? Are you asking that because you know?"

Oh.

Why her father has always favored her brothers in games. Why he had fled from her that night as though she, still bathed in kitten fluff and milk-scent, were some bog phantom. Why he has never, not once, breathed her name—that she can hear anyways. She wears his victim's face as her mask.

Then he begins to plead, stares at each one of their little family and begs them to come with him, blood dripping down his white chin. As she watches, Starlingheart denies him with tears streaming down her cheeks, calls him disgusting, and Ghostpaw watches it all with dead-beetle eyes. Typically, Flintpaw is unable to control herself; she has never known her sibling for his composure, and he splinters before them all as they watch, a warped audience. Nettlepaw asks Granitepelt's love in a haunting voice. Ghostpaw still watches; she anguishes not over the murder that birthed her.

The screams continue, her mother drawing ever further from Granitepelt, putting up walls against his sickened howls. Nettlepaw makes his choice as Smogmaw calls for her father's blood, organizes his exile with the cold precision that she knows the tabby tom to possess.

Ghostpaw exhales, steps forward next to her mother. She tips her head sideways, slowly, sickeningly. She inhales deep, peeling her eyes wide until she feels a dry sting and coaxed tears begin to fall. "It's—" she cuts the sentence off roughly, a manmade stammer. "It's alright, Mother. He can't hurt us anymore." She turns her face away, as though she simply cannot stand to look at Granitepelt. As though she doesn't agree with every crazed word he breathes, diluted by insanity, yes, but still so correct.

A faux sob. "I can't—I can't even look at you. Fath—Granitepelt, why? How could you do this to us?" Ghostpaw's voice hiccups, and she gives a last keening cry before she runs for the apprentices' den, seemingly consumed by emotion.

i found the man who created me ✶ ( and tore him limb from limb )

• in n out!

• 

• 

  ghostpaw ; apprentice of shadowclan
  x. she/her ; 6 moons ; tags
  x. slender black she-cat with white mask & pants and dark blue-black eyes
  x. played by dejavu
  x. daughter of starlingheart and granitepelt; sister to nettlepaw and flintpaw. apprentice to her aunt, lilacfur.

​