sensitive topics rise up dead man .. DEATH

[S A B L E T U F T]

can we leave it behind? — // tw for violence, blood, death, the works!

Having his shadow back at his heel returned the sense of fulfillment Sabletuft had been lacking before. When Swanpaw had come down with yellowcough, in truth the tuxedo had low hopes that the sleepy tom would survive. They had only just begun the true foundation of his training, teaching him signature moves to surprise an opponent in a fight. Swanpaw was rather unassuming in a fight (or any skill for that matter) because of his drowsy demeanor, which only contributed to Sabletuft's fears for his survival. Irony laid itself out in his recovery. Despite knowing and training the Deputys son to utilize this part of him to keep others guessing his abilities, he had fallen for it himself.

"You know, when your dad came back, you were the first he asked about." What a grim return he had, Sabletuft wondered if any of the other Clans had similar welcomes. "The fact you're alive might be all that's keeping your family afloat after everything, so I need you to really focus on our training for the next few moons to get back on track alright?" Surviving yellowcough just to get cut down by a fox or rabid raccoon would be a waste, and Sabletuft would not let himself see another failed apprentice.

He paused once the pair tucked away in a patch of tussocks, eyes glancing up at the pale cloudy skies. The trees had started to become brittle, most shedding their leaves to coat the muddy ground.

"When you're up to start battle training again, I'll have you go against Ashenpaw. But for now we're going to play a game, make sure you still got your senses. Count to a hundred for me, and when you do, you're going to try and track me down." They both knew the older tom wouldn't make it easy, either. Covering tracks in the mud wasn't easy but it wasn't impossible. When Swanpaw began his countdown Sabletuft turned to head toward the stream that stemmed from RiverClan, flowing through the tunnel of the Thunderpath. Nothing like putting a body of water between them to carry his scent, adding more to the puzzle. He carefully padded over the cold, slippery stones and brushed nettles over the prints he left behind with low swishes of his tail.

When he came closer to the thunderpath between ShadowClan and WindClan he paused, noticing a presence nearby. Burning ember narrowed as he turned around, looking around with slowly bristling fur. "Don't bother hiding, I'll find you." He grumbled under his breath, feeling the bare trees closing in on him as his sights began to tunnel. A rush of silvery fur winded him, faster than he could even comprehend and he scrabbled to get back on his paws, coming face-to-face with the other cat.

Stinging red slashes grew hot on his cheek, leaving stained streaks down his chin. He huffed, spitting out what blood caught into his lips before standing ready to fight his attacker. — tags​

 

[Bluepool]

TW: for emetophobia / mentions of blood and death
Usually, Bluepool does not go out alone. Not anymore. Her shadow, her apprentice, is normally right by her side or a patrol is trailing behind her or at least any other cat is with her. Today though, as fate would have it, she is alone. She had given Featherpaw the day off. Rest is just as important as training after all, and the red furred progeny was still young. She could not - would not - push her beyond that of which she is capable of. So she goes for her early morning run alone. She races across the moors as is the typical fashion for her, pretends that she is in an epic battle against the sun. Can she run to the border of ShadowClan and back before the dawn sky breaks? She would certainly try.

Feet pound at the dirt and her breath comes out in steady huffs, painting the air with steam as she makes her way to the boundary they share with the pines. When she draws near, she slows. She would stop here for a moment, collect her breath, maybe even mark the border before returning home. A scent catches on the breeze though, a faint rustling of undergrowth on the other side of the border demanding her attention. Golden eyes turn cold when she realizes who it is.

Familiar black and white fur draws a scene to her memory. She had not been there but it is easy to imagine from the things she had heard afterwards. A black and white warrior standing over her sisters corpse as she lies dead on the ground in front of him, her blood staining his paws. His voice as he mocks her death so coldly at a gathering. And when she sets her sights on him she feels a rage she didn't know she had lying dormant within her.

He has not scented her yet, she is down wind of him and his cloying smell threatens to suffocate her. ShadowClan. They were disgusting creatures weren't they? Still, she keeps her body low to the ground as she slips through the heather on her own side of the border, following him as he made his way closer and closer to the thunderpath. As if she were hunting prey, she closes in, draws closer. And for a moment she thinks of doing nothing, of turning away and pretending as if she were never here, but then ember eyes turn and his voice slips from his maw. The very same mocking tone he had used at the gathering. 'Surprised they didn't leave you for dead after all that. Congratulations.' He had certainly tried had he not? Tried to rip her family away from her, tried to take one of the few cats who she had shared her early life with. Whether or not she agrees with Sootstar now is irrelevant, all the feelings of anger and rage are flooding back into her mind and she is springing from her hiding place.

She does not bother to check for monsters before her silver paws hit the blackened path. She only has one thought on her mind as she lunges for him, careful not to touch his side of the border and keep to the blackened ground that would mask her scent. No, instead she goads him forward with one swipe after another. Claws extending to scratch and then jumping backwards so he would have to advance if he ever had any chance of fighting back. "Is that really the best you've got?" she calls out to him with a laugh. He had managed to land a blow on her, but she had quickly jumped backwards away from his claws that had moments ago ripped through flesh and reopened old scars. A trail of blood makes its way through her fur but there would be time to worry over wounds later. Right now she was all fight.

It is with sick satisfaction that she watches as he crosses the thunderpath, as he comes over WindClans border, so driven by a need to fight that he probably doesn't even notice. The second he is over she launches herself at him again. He puts up a good fight, she'll give him that. On more than one occasion she feels pain lace across her pelt. A scratch on the cheek, a bite to the leg. She is a battle-hardened warrior though, and she is much faster than he is with much more endurance. He tires before her. She can see it in the way his moves start to get sluggish, how his reaction times start to diminish.

Finally, their struggle is almost at an end. She purposefully leaves an opening to be had, pretending as if she didn't notice, and he takes it. Teeth bared he lunges at the same time she does, except only one of their jaws meet flesh. Hers. She sinks her fangs into his throat, watches as the life seeps from his limbs and lets go to watch his body hit the ground. His eyes stare wonderingly up at the sky and she cannot help but speculate on who or what he sees. She watches him for a moment, and then she turns and she loses her breakfast.

She had acted in a blind rage, judgement clouded by anger and a desperate thirst for revenge, but it did not make anything better. Killing him had not made anything better. Sootstar was still going to be slipping away when she went back to camp, WindClan slowly going down with her. The tom laying here in a pool of his own blood, life leaving his eyes, was not going to change anything.

Disgusted, she turns away, a story already running through her head as to why there was a dead WindClanner on their territory. He trespassed. She would say. She caught him trying to steal prey and had engaged in battle. Instead of fleeing he had fought back and she had ended his life. It was kill or be killed, that much at least was true. She regrets the act but the second her claws had come out she had been unable to take it back. He would have ended her life had she not ended his first, of that she is certain.

With one final look at the body, she turns and she leaves the scene, racing on silver paws back to WindClan's camp.

// permission given to powerplay! Please wait for the okay from Poe to post! RIP Sabletuft </3 Also I would like to add that her scent should not be found on ShadowClans side as she never stepped off the thunderpath!

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[S A B L E T U F T]

can we leave it behind? — // ty everyone for watching sables story with me!! swanpaw will have discovered sabletuft's body, as long as thats acknowledged by ur character feel free to post ^^

The steps taken that led him to where he laid were coated with the slippery descent of irony. Self tangled in his own bitterness, compelled by his own stubbornness. It ate at him like a parasite. Feeding on his heart until there was hardly anything left, dried and shriveled into nothing.

The pain had grown distant after a while. Breathing had become a second thought and when his chest heaved for air he had to fight against choking on his own blood to fill his lungs. A distant stare had looked beyond the physical environment around him, looking into a sky that was not there. Bluepool had left him to waste away in the patch of heather, just as he abandoned the moorland queen as her Clanmates dragged her away into the fog.

Except he had no one here to return him home. Not right away. Fangs sank deep into the throat of his social status, eliminating the respect and admiration his peers had once held. Potential lost in the throes of a selfish battle, but not even Sabletuft expected him to go out any other way. He had watched himself dig the grave he now rest in and he would consider himself without a brain if he believed his life would end differently.

Despite all the work he still wanted done, the Clanmates he fought to protect and feared to leave behind, none of that mattered when the sky fell in.

_____________________________________________________________________________________________

Soft, plush grass caressed his paws and suddenly he was standing upright. No longer gasping or sputtering for air. He looked beside him at the disheveled form of himself and grimaced. "Hmph." Was he left to wander as a ghost now? Would he haunt the marshes, his only legacy being a phantom carried in the shadows?

"Kept me waitin' a long time, y'know." Drawled a voice he was convinced he would never hear again. "Why are you just standin' there like a rock? C'mere dummy!"

Sabletuft blinked in shock. The starry pelted tabby descended from an invisible incline to greet him, voice giddy as she rushed forward. He remained rigid, still in disbelief at what he saw. A startled grunt pushed from his maw when her spectral body collided with his. At once the tension, the rage, the self-inflicted agony of endless grief he poured himself into... melted away. His chest rose with the heat of emotions long since buried and the overwhelming sensation of her affections brought sparkling tears to his eyes.

"... I'm sorry." Was all he could hiccup through the dense fur against his muzzle. "I wasn't all right- wasn't fair. I'm no good." The molly pulled him in tighter, purring louder than his sniffles.

"Well don't start getting all soggy on me now! You can make it better, just follow me home." Rye spoke so easily, gently guiding him away from the thunderpath and upward with her. Sabletuft looked up at her with a dumbfounded expression, hesitating as he looked behind them. The small pale figure of @swanpaw nearing what remained of him in the living world. An unfortunate win to his game.

Sabletuft sighed and turned back to face Rye with a nod of his head, padding after her into the stars. — tags​

 

[smogstar]

Sabletuft is dead, his mortal remains spoiling the soil underneath. The grisly expression now forever worn into his face narrates a tale of struggle, and Smogmaw must wonder if it was a self-inflicted one, much as the other hardships to have befallen him so. Clawmarks riddle his flesh in a brutal display. Delicately, a lonely stream of blood trickles down his snowy chin. It is a sight worth pitying. Yet, the capability eludes him. Sabletuft hadn't amounted to more than carrion even before his final day. To view him in this current state - the ultimate conclusion to a tom so rife with shortcomings and disappointments - feels unremarkable in itself.

Nape slanted downwards, eyes soaking in the morbid scene directly ahead, the deputy forcefully expels a throaty grumble. "You just... found him here? Like this?" he probes softly. The apprentice lingering nearby, his own son, was the question's intended recipient. Swanpaw trained under the departed warrior's watch (rather, he used to), hence the assumption arises that the younger feline must have seen him alive last. "Must've heard something, boy. Any hissing? Yowling? Anything at all?" The planed end to his muzzle creases, scorn splintering through his stoney expression, as he continues to survey the corpse.

Now, in just the preceding moons alone, Smogmaw has observed firsthand cats who've fallen to dogs, bears, and eagles. Sabletuft's wounds, though great, appear atypical of any beast larger than a cat. That notion gives him more pause than seeing his battle brother bloodied and beaten. Were his nose in a better working state, perhaps an incriminating scent would lunge out at him and seize an explanation.

"We'll scour the area, look for tracks 'n whatnot. Need to learn, quickly, if it was a rogue or another clan to've done this." Lips pursed, he steps away from the gruesome discovery. There's but one takeaway he can glean from this, and it's an all too sobering one: death is rapidly becoming the norm in this accursed marsh, and his sons and daughters, as apprentices, sit at the forefront to each bloodletting. ​

 

[Frostbite]

Frostbite hadn't known Sabletuft as well as Smogmaw, but the sight of seeing him mauled like this tugged at his heart. He was a good warrior. Sure, he had something going on with that Thunderclanner, but Frostbite was in no place to judge him. He had still been a loyal warrior who served his clan well, and didn't deserve to be left like this. He emerges from the shadows of the marsh to join Smogmaw by his body. There's a boiling anger in his chest.

The stench of the thunderpath hid any scent that would identify his attacker, and there seemed to be only two options. Windclan, or rogues. He could not confidently accuse either of them because the chances of both were always likely. He wouldn't be surprised if Windclan did it OR rogues got him. Hell, maybe they even worked together to kill him.

But he cannot point fingers with so little evidence.

"I'll look around the area. If I find who did this, I'll bring you their body." He says, stalking off.

Shadowclan keeps getting picked off one by one, like a herd of sheep being hunted by wolves. By sickness, by rogues, by clan cats.... It is a good thing then, that he has been elevated to his position. He will be the dog that guards the herd from the wolves. He cannot fight sickness, but he knows how to hide bodies.​

 

[Briarthorn]

BRIARPAW — hello, my old heart.
Briarpaw had seen death, though.. perhaps not one so violent. For moons, her home had been plagued with sickness.
Yes, the raven apprentice had seen death, but the aggressive shake of regret that jars to her mind to a complete stop is something entirely new to the adolescent.
Drawn over by Smogmaws hollering, an upset mentor undoubtedly on her heels after abandoning their hunting expedition, jade stone eyes grow distant, her head tilted at the grizzly scene before her.
Frostbite swears his vengeance, his words contorted as Briarpaw struggles to free herself from her shock.
"Sabetufts dead." The most unhelpful phrase is finally spoken when she’d feel someone flank her, whether it be Skunktail or some other poor soul who was only here by happenstance.
Smogmaw declares a search of the area, but Briarpaw doesn’t move from her stomach twisting front row view, brows coming to a confused scowl. The scent of Thunderpath was overwhelming in all its foulness, what was her deputy hoping to find?
Finally her steady gaze breaks, searching for Skunktail in hopes of some reassurance.

// mentor tag — @Skunktail

"speech"

tags​

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[Swansong]

( ☁︎ )　 It's strange, returning to training after everything. Did his limbs always feel so sluggish, his mind so faraway? It feels as though a piece of him was left among the stars that nearly claimed him.

But he is back now, everyone wants him back. His family was so glad to see him, and his mentor is quite eager to return to training. It's routine, following after Sabletuft like a shadow. "The fact you're alive might be all that's keeping your family afloat," says Sabletuft, and Swanpaw does not doubt it, even if he does not quite feel alive. He will work for it, if he must. Train, if he must. A game is an easy way to start, and he welcomes it. Closes his eyes, focuses his ears on his mentor's movements, breathes barely-audible words.

"One... Two... Three..."

— ☾ —​

For a long while, Swanpaw does not speak. Barely moves, sluggish blinks and scarcely-moving mouth the only thing betraying his life. His eyes are fixed downwards, his paws too close, staining pristine alabaster with red. Hovering vulture-like over the corpse, curving spine over body protectively, soft breaths quietly ruffling dark fur. There is a gash across Sabletuft's neck, the soul ripped out of him forcefully. Not a gentle death; few of them are, it seems. Swanpaw murmurs soft words of reassurance -- of prayer -- to the still form. Wishes of a peaceful after. The stars will hear him, he knows; he is certainly close enough to them, having glimpsed the beyond himself.

He is witness once again, pallid eyes imprinted with too many corpses for one so young. Bearing the curse of the marshlands, of the star-forsaken. A herald of death, half-ghost creature that should not still live, the grasp on his lungs not quite ceasing. And yet, and yet. He is draped in the white colors of mourning, of the stars. He is here, to usher his mentor forwards on the living's end, while another takes him deeper among the stars.

He does not feel the same hurt as he did with his mother, but the cold settles into his veins nonetheless. Another piece of himself shed, a relationship that could have been: mentor and apprentice, severed and gone. Swanpaw shivers in the leaf-fall chill.

Cats arrive, and it feels almost sacrilegious. Smogmaw speaks, tone a quiet grumble much befit of the scene, but the declarations of search come far too soon. Swanpaw's answer is belated, voice hushed. "Yes, I..." A thick swallow. He speaks slowly, eyes still fixed on his mentor. "Sabletuft was... already gone, when I found him. I didn't hear..." Anything at all. Should be ashamed of that? Should he have done better? His guilt feels all wrong; more ashamed of living while his mentor joins the stars than anything else. His chest feels hollow. "He, um... He... He told me to count. To wait, while he hid, and then to... track him. A game..."

"I did as he asked. He was already gone, when I found him... Already growing cold..." Too lat to hear anything. A far too routine report, like a patrol -- too impersonal. His mouth twists. He doesn't know the words to bless the soul, to give him a proper sendoff. What a lousy psychopomp he makes. Swanpaw lets his paws redden with his mentor's blood, and does not move from the body even as those around him call for a search, to find the culprit. They can hunt the living, his gaze is still fixed upon the dead.

I WANNA BE HAUNTED ☁︎ I WANNA BE LOVED ! 【 11.6.23 】

• //
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• "SPEECH"

• ☾ 　⁺　₊ 　⋆　SWANPAW.　APPRENTICE OF SHADOWCLAN.　HE / HIM / HIS.
  7 MOONS & AGES ON THE 17TH.　PENNED BY SATURNID.
  
  

  

  ☾ — A PALE, ELEGANT CREAM TABBY WITH PERIWINKLE BLUE EYES.

  
  HALFSHADE xx SMOGMAW. LITTERMATE TO APPLEPAW GARLICPAW & ASHENPAW. OLDER SIBLING TO HALFKIT TANGLEKIT & DREAMKIT.
  
  MENTORED BY SABLETUFT​

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[ASHENFALL]

˚⊹₊‧ 𖦹(CW: EMETOPHOBIA MENT ) Another day, another day the death bell tolls in the haze of the marsh. Ashenpaw's pupils shake as he watches the mangled corpse before them pool with blood, just another Shadowclanner turned to meat for the worms. His stomach turns unpleasantly, squeezing and threatening to upend his breakfast here on the edge of the Thunderpath as he commits the image to memory—whether he wants to or not.

Was this it? Would he die like this too? Cold and crooked with no way to explain himself, tossed alongside the apathetic sprinting monsters who would not slow their thundering nor turn their gigantic muzzles toward the departed? Sabletuft had saved his life not even a moon ago, swept him up from beneath the claws of a murderous stranger, and kept him from being snuffed out protecting the territory of a clan that had no obligation to honor him. He told him that he was capable of being brave and amazing, if only he conquered his own mind. Yet here Sabletuft laid no more than half a moon later—carrion. What was the point of conquering one's mind if this was all that awaited them the next sunrise?

He lingered like a ghost—trudging in behind Smogmaw and now standing swaying beside his brother, vision blurred with hot and bitter liquid. "This... This is Windclan's border. They-they probably d-... It has to be them, they hate us..." He said—sniveling and so, so angry. The poisonous scent of the Thunderpath flooded his nostrils, mocking them for even attempting to sniff out a culprit for this meaningless execution.

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!

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