Smogmaw is no stranger to dramatic entrances into camp. He's seen his fair share, done his fair share, and caused a good few himself. For maximum impact, all a cat must do is step into the clearing with no context or preamble, wear a sullen look, and insist upon the presence of an authority figure. It's a foolproof method for drawing everyone's gaze, and one which Starlingheart employs masterfully. Observing her expression alone—a sole eye framed by the tracks of wiped-away tears, anguish tormenting her jaw with steely tension—he concludes within heartbeats how severe the matter must be.
Assertive strides take the tom to the crowd's heart. With it, he merges stiffly, shouldering past clanmates to assume position befitting of a deputy; a fox-length from centre stage, yet close enough to glean unobstructed details. At this range does the blood in her scent reach him, a familiar, nauseating whiff which sears all too sharply beneath his nose. But he cannot see wounds on her figure from which it seeps, nor does she appear harmed in any way other than distress. Haunches are coaxed onto the ground in preparation for a grisly unveiling.
She speaks. She speaks, and Smogmaw's senses rebel; reason grips in his chest whilst ears force the words outward, driving him to react reflexively in his muscles, in his gut. Her account cuts through the air with a piercing clarity. The cycle of life has run its course for Granitepelt. All too abruptly has a void gotten torn into his lens on this world. He's left disappointed, reeling. Irritation scorns his flesh, while resentment consumes his thoughts as if in retribution. How fucking anticlimactic. The ultimate evil, vanquished by its own idiocy, felled by the smallest of foes, a mere infection.
Smogmaw tastes bitterness. Seething inside him for moons unending, the wicked lust to impart the fiend's final blow thrashes itself awake. Fuming at its immediate lack of purpose. Frustrated and hollow, and left to brood upon wasted time and fantasised vengeances. If only the fleabag had perished like a warrior, instead of wasting away like some histrionic elder. That kit-stealing, apprentice-killing, mate-maiming, rogue-flirting coward. Death should've served its meaning, dealt a reminder, instilled an idea, ensured vindication as it took its claim.
"Wasn't even well-wasted," drawls the deputy, curt and dreary. "Dying like a sick kit, holed out in Carrionplace. But if he came to know a fraction of the humiliation he's caused us all, as he went out? His death'd at least mean something." A stark scoff passes Smogmaw's teeth, bared in blatant contempt for Granitepelt's passage. He leaves it there, hanging like a branch in the breeze, along with a hollow glare which feigns dispassion.
Suggestions on what to do with the cadaver arise swiftly. That some clanmates would think to dignify him with a proper burial prompts the deputy to scoff again. A more fitting course of action would be dragging his remains into the moors and dumping them into the gorge. Or simply neglecting it for the rats to feast on. Leave him there to decay into nothing, nothing like his character, like how his legacy ought to be. "Burial is what we gave Pitchstar, and Ghostpaw, and Poppypaw, and Tornadopaw. No, he deserves no such honours."
Flintpaw stands decimated. Shock maims the apprentice's face, terror leaves her pupils tiny; but she does not wail nor flounder, nor shed tears—she observes, breath held fast as her father is spoken over without dignity, his corpse trivialised as if it's nothing and nobody. As it should, mind. "If he is buried, let it not be in a grave, but underneath twoleg waste. He has earned his place among the rat droppings and filth."
