This is probably my first published attempt at a fan-fic, and unlike some of my previous work, I plan to see it though to the end. Enjoy!
At night the forest was as still and as ominous as the moon itself. Darkness and silence hung over the waters of the oil black lake like a thick blanket. Nothing stirred, the forest was asleep. The low hoot of an owl in the distance broke the silence for a moment, but like everything else that too subsided.
Through the dead to the world forest stole a cat with the grace of a swan. Her long fur was surprisingly well kept for a wild cat. She paused for a moment, and lifted her muzzle to drink in the air. Someone was waiting for her; it was just a matter of her finding him. She waltzed along the bank of the lake, when she saw something stir in the bushes. Her fur rose slightly in anticipation - was it him?
She poked her head around the cluster of river weeds, expecting to see her leader, but instead, there in a shard of moonlight, her jaw fell. As she approached it, the entire atmosphere felt unnaturally cold. She even noticed the faintest rising of frost around the object of her attention. What she was looking at was clearly lifeless, but even so she crouched down near it with some caution, for she was faced with a monstrous creation. Was it an omen from StarClan, or perhaps one from the dark forest?
It was a raven with its beak buried deep into the ground and one broken wing fanned out wide. She peered closer and recoiled like she had touched an electric fence. The bird wasn't a raven. It had been hit by lightning.
The bird had been half burnt open, so that its blackened spine is visible. The feathers are charcoal black and frayed, ash from the bird's feathers scattered on the ground. Quickly, she stuck out a paw and batted it, snapping her paw back to her body almost immediately. The bird had been burnt, but it was as cold as ice. Her green eyes wide, the she cat backed away, hissing and spitting at the dead bird. She backed up, not into a tree, but into flesh. Warm flesh.
She hissed and spun around; aiming a swipe at the thing she had butted into in fright. The instant her paw had made contact with the other cat, she realised her mistake. It was her leader, Ghoststar, the cat she had been waiting for.
"What's got you so on edge?" asked the pale tabby tom
The bird was in the other clearing, out of Ghoststar's sight. The she cat decided not to mention it. It was probably just a bird that had been hit by lightning and had cooled down in the rain afterward. "Nothing" she lied, trying to push the ashen feathers, burnt, shrivelled eyes and strangely angled wing out of her mind.
He chuckled a little. "You're usually quite calm. It's no matter, really." but then his tone turned serious, and his olive eyes hardened, "But you and I have business to discuss"
She nodded, still not sure why they had to meet at the dead of night as opposed to just talking in the leader's den, but she didn't mind.
"I'm going to check if that clearing is isolated enough" he said, "Wait for my signal before following me"
The ghostly pale tom cat stepped into a large clearing, deep in the heart of ThunderClan territory. His olive green eyes scanned the area. It looked safe enough. He mewed a signal for her to follow, and then he waited.
And waited.
His brow furrowed in confusion. He had waited at least two long minutes for her. All of a sudden, his ears were greeted with a deafening crack, a crack with the same velocity as the sound of a cricket ball being met with a cricket bat on its sweet spot. The crack was followed by the most ear splitting of screams and then silence. Startled, he sprinted back to where he left her and found her, still and lifeless, her neck broken and flipped right back in the most unnatural of ways. A little bit of her spine had split her skin and jutted out of her throat, her lifeless eyes staring at the stars in horror.
Ghoststar recoiled in horror, his bottle green eyes wide. The sound of a twig snapping came from behind him, and the tom wheeled around in fear, only to be met with nothing. Suddenly, he felt his legs snap and give way underneath him as something fell from above him onto him. His attacker had leaped from a tree, down onto the unsuspecting tom cat. The killer wasted no time. The killer slashed at Ghoststar's neck, whose skin split like a grape. The killer burrowed its long muzzle into the howling leader's fur, latching its hooked teeth onto his wind pipe. The killer gave a sharp tug and pulled the inside of Ghoststar's throat out, before vanishing into the shadows, leaving behind nothing except two lifeless corpses.