Morphelines: Demons of the Night By Darktayle

by Blackstory

-RESUBMISSION- They're strong. They're fast. They're deadly. Carriers of an infection that mutates any human to one of their kind, Aurora is one of the many forced into service as a forcefully-changed recruit. And then she escapes.

Title: Morphelines: Demons of the night

Category: Books » Warriors

Author: Darktayle

Language: English, Rating: Rated: T

Genre: Fantasy/Adventure

Published: 06-15-07, Updated: 08-07-09

Chapters: 34, Words: 55,098

Chapter 1: It takes one simple bite

This is a new story I thought up, I quite like the idea.

Aura the human looked up at the sky. The moon was rising, glowing brighter with it's ascent. It really was late, and the woods were a dangerous place at night. She shivered, and took the band out of her hair, knowing that when loose her unusual silvery hair could help warm her.

Aura began walking down the path she had come from, unease running through her and chilling her blood like ice. The moonlight seemed frosty tonight... It shone on a fork in the road that Aura had not seen when she had come to the clearing in the woods. The thing was, it shifted in front of her eyes, and seemingly became an exact copy of the path she was following.

Suddenly... things got confusing. An unknown force was jumbling her head, but even as a magicless human she could sense the waves of darkness and shadow emminating from this force. The path on the left was the one that had appeared... so that was the one she should not follow. But then... why did the path on the left look like the one she was supposed to be following, while the one on the right looked like a mere gorge in the ground, smooth enough to be mistaken for a path?

It had to be a trick of the moonlight. The path on the left was the path she had to follow, and so she did.

As Aura continued walking, the sense of unease and oppression grew and grew until she was gripped by full fledged terror. Why she was scared, Aura didn't know. She just told herslef she was being silly, she had followed this path so many times before.

Aura suddenly noticed that the path seemed much longer than usual, but again told herself it was just because she was tired. But it went on and on... until the path met a huge hollow, where the trees parted way to form a large circle around this hollow.

Aura looked up. There was no starlight, every one of the tiny silver fires in the sky had vanished, and all that remained was the moon. But the moonlight was cold... harsh...foreboding... It wasn't a silver shine of hope as usual.

The hollow was very strange. Very strange indeed.

There were huts constructed there, made from branches and twisted into shaps not unike primitive tents, triangular yet curved. There was a small opening in the branches on every one of them, each curtained by a large leaf that fluttered in non existent wind. There was not even the slightest breath of wind here, not even a small breeze that would rustle the leaves. Yet the curtain leaves still fluttered, as if they possessed a mind of their own.

The entire hollow was lit by silver moonlight, which seemed a haunting sort of light, with an unexplainable shadowy feel about it. Suddenly, Aura saw something move in the corner of her eye. She nervously swivelled her head around, and saw nothing but a large shadow in the deathly moonlight.

Wait... a shadow where the moon was shining?

This was too weird. the shadow had a definite form, it was large, muscular, and dangerous. She saw a long and thin line of shadow swish, like a tail. Then there were two small flashes of blood red light, which disappeared instantly, as if blinking. The silence enveloped all, so much that Aura could hear the crackle of dead leaves under soft yet heavy objects coming closer... and the shadow with them.

As the shadow met a place where the trees cast darkness onto the edge of the clearing, the moving shadow vanished, and then Aura could not even hear the crackle of leaves under weight any more. Aura was getting very nervous, and decided to turn back. Somehow, she had taken the wrong path.

She broke into a run as fear and oppression urged her on, and she could have sworn that she saw a shadow flash through a small glow of moonlight then disappear again, close behind her. Aura told herself she was seeing things.

It became apparent that she wasn't seeing things and something heavy landed on her back, heavy enough to make her stagger and fall painfully to the ground, breath forced out of her so she couldn't scream.

"Well! So this is what was creeping around the Hollow in the night..." Hissed something mysteriously, and Aura felt something hard and sharp as a giant thorn break skin.

"Let me go!" Aura cried desperately. She felt a huge paw turn her over, and Aura screamed when she looked into two glowing red eyes that had no face to belong to, no body. Yet there were invisible paws preventing her from escaping, like a cat trapping a mouse.

"Now, why would I do that?" Asked the creature mockingly. "It's rare that humans stay so long out at night, and have the chance to be confused by our illusions. Why would we let prey go, when it seals it's doom by wandering into our midst?" And then it bit Aura's arm, hard. She could have sworn that had it pulled, it would have amputated her arm.

She felt pain, terrible pain... and saw her own blood pouring out around her. But she also saw silver vlood start pouring instead of red blood, and that silver blood quickly formed a silver scab on her shoulder... which sprouted silver fur. Aura watched with horro as her veins turned silver, as her skin became pale as the full moon because the red blood was no longer there to make it brown.

Wherever the silver blood went in her body, a long streak of silver fur would follow it. Her clothes were torn and pushed aside as fur took their place, and constricting her...

Aura's bones dissolved itno miniscule pieces with terrible pain, and that pain continued as the bone granules re-arranged themselves inside her body. Aura was screaming. She was screaming in pain and horror, and the creature was sitting by looking satisfied and mildly interested, as if this were a favorite show of it.

Aura became small... small as a insignificant cat. Once she sprouted whiskers and her nose became small and pink, and her ears became pointed and sensitive, she realized that she was becoming a cat!

The pale silver fur spread until it covered her entire body... and then her tail began growing... That was the most painful bit by far, because her bones were not re-arranging, they were growing.

The transformation was finally complete.

She was a small silver cat. Her fur was such a pale silver that it might have been white, yet it was easy to tell it was pale silver and NOT white. Her eyes were a clear baby blue colour, and they glowed like blue lanterns in the night. Her whiskers were completely snow white, as if frost had coated them and would never let go. Her ears were huge! They looked quite odd, such big ears perched on top of such a small head. Another weird thing was what appeared to be a small ice-blue brystal on her forehead, about as big as her nose. It twinkled like a star.

Her tail was very long and had quite long fur on it. Aura was gaping at her new form and didn't notice the creature grip her scruff with its teeth and lift her violently from the floor, carrying her carelessly back to the hollow.

There were a great many of the shadows in the moonlight there now, eyes glowing like colored fires. The eyes were the only visible thing on the creatures in the shadows.

The last thing Aura remembered was a cruel, harsh, and thin voice hissing through the still air, and one particular shadow getting so close that Aura could feel it's breath.

"So, Nightbane. I see you have us a new Morpheline."

Like this beginning? Review if you want it to continue!

Chapter 2: In the dead of night

And so it continues.

Aura watched fearfully, wondering what would happen to her now. Who was this one who seemed to have dominance over Nightbane? Nightbane nodded respectfully.

"She was the one who entered our Hollow, Medothen." Nigtbane announced. A cruel, high laugh rang from the one supposedly named Medothen.

"Foolish. Oh well, it means Condor won't be needed to go abducting tonight. He can train that new one we found yesterday instead. Hey, Bittersting! Go tell Condor that he doesn't need to go bite anyone tonight. Nightbane's already found one." Aura saw a pair of glowing green eyes in the shadows dart off wordlessly. Medothen studied Aura carefully.

"Small, thin, and scrawny. She'll be useless at tackling, but may be a fairly good hunter and good at weaving around quickly to disorient enemies. What's your name?" She evaluated.

"Aur... Aura." Aura squeaked. Medothen snorted.

"That's a stupid name! Change it to something that actually means something. Like Condor is named for his swiftness and strength, and Nightbane because he tends to get irritable at night. And like I am named in the old tongue, my name means Plague." Aura's mind raced. She had to change her name?! Why?! Oh, whatever. She should make up a new one, and use it now.

Aura was part of the word Aurius in latin, which meant golden. Aura had been named for her unusual golden eyes. Now that those eyes were blue, it didn't fit her. She was silver... Aha!

"Aurora." Aurora announced. It sounded a lot like her old name. Medothen looked thoughtful.

"Never thought you would know any of the old tongue. Silence, eh? let's hope you live up to it."

Aurora was confused. As far as she knew, an aurora was a many colouredlight that appeared in the north and south poles. But maybe it did mean Silence in this 'old tongue'.

"You there! What's your name?" Medothen demanded, shooting her comment towards a pair of glowing amber eyes.

"Am... Amberlight." Came the stuttering reply of a terrified sounding female.

"Right. You're the one that Bittersting brought in yesterday, right?" Aurora saw the amber eyes move up and down, indicating a nod. "Thought so. So now you're training under Ardesca?" Another nod. "Good, you'll now be training with this Aurora. Tell Canyon that he's to train her and you with Ardesca." Medothen ordered, and Aurora immediately saw the amber eyes dart away.

"Train?! Don't I get a say in this?!" Aurora yowled. She saw a pair of blazing eyes turn towards her, and then felt the skin on her cheek open up on account of a whirring claw by Medothen.

"Shut up! I thought you were supposed to be 'Silence'? You stay with us now, and you'll die with us. Nightbane bit you, you turned into a Morpheline, and now you're a recruit. If you carry on complaining i'll rip out your vocal cords so you stop." Aurora was stunned into silence. They were holding her prisoner!

There were a number of other terrified apprentices in the hut. One smelt her, it had amber eyes. This was the one that she was supposedly training with.

"Oh, hi. I suppose you're that new one from earlier? Aurora was it?" Asked Amberlight. Her voice sounded oddly familiar...

"Erm... yes." Aurora replied nervously.

"I expect you're still confused about what happened. Say... your voice sounds familiar... from somewhere..." Both Morphelines scanned their memories, and realised the identity of the other at almost the exact sam moment.

"Mandy!" Aurora exclaimed.

"Aura?! They got you?!" Amberlight gasped.

"Well... You know how I tend to like watching the sunset from the lake. I stayed out too late and took a wrong path into this hollow... I think the guy that bit me was called Nightbane. But anyways, what happened! You went missing weeks ago... your mother's gone into depression. I was miserable and all - we all thought someone had killed you or something."

"I was in bed. My window practically opened itself on it's own, and then I felt something clap over my mouth. I couldn't scream. It took me out of the window and into the forest, then it bit me and I became one like it. I think it was Bitterstong that bit me. But anyway." Amberlight shuddered. "Medothen is horrible. She has the True Morphelines go and turn people into them, and then abduct them. It's horrible... she's going to take over the country!"

"What?! How - I mean... What about... there's... what about the army?" Aurora spluttered.

"The army can't do a thing. They're useless. Especially since Medothen has so many disposable warriors." Amberlight sniffed.

"What do you mean?"

"She has her warriors that were born as Morphelines turn humans into Morphelines, and then she forces them to train under her warriors and build her army. She kills you if you try to escape. There's more than fifty of the Morphelines now, and they don't stop abducting... Humans are useless fighting against her, because she can just bite them, and hey-presto they become compacted into a body they have no idea how to use. She sends the Human-Morphelines into battles, knowing full well most of them won't return. She doesn't care. All the ones that she abducts are disposable. We have no importance. It's only the True-Morphelines that are important, like the pieces of a puzzle she needs to be complete."

"Heck, that's scary. But what are the Morphelines? I mean, we look like cats but... the others seem so much bigger." Aurora asked.

"Morphelines... they can change into any kind of animal in the Feline category. As well as a mix between any one of those felines and a human. As a hybrid, they're basically about two times bigger than a normal feline in that species would be, and they have humanish fingers with claws and fur. The fur on their heads is much longer if they are female, and sort of make a mane. They can stand on hind legs in hybrid forms... but not much else."

"That's weird... How can you decide what form you want to be in all the time?" Aurora urged, becoming quite absorbed in the information of this species.

"Most of the time you just discover a form you feel really comfortable in. Medothen is a White Bengal Tiger most of the time, Condor is a lynx. Bittersting is a panther... I could go on for ages. The only ones that could jave a hope of defeating a Morpheline is a cat, more specifically a clan cat. Oh, wait. You don't know what the clans are yet." Amberlight remembered,and began talking about them without being asked to.

"There are four clans of windcats in the forest around Sanctuary lake. ThunderClan, WindClan, ShadowClan, and RiverClan. They are all fighters except for the elders, kittens, and the medicine cats. Those cats heal injuries and illnesses. They have the smae sort of system this group has." Amberlight randomly changed the topic. " No-one really knows what to call the Morphelines, because we aren't really a Clan we can't call ourselves NightClan or something... A few of us have taken up calling us The Tribe Of Creeping Shadows. Others are calling us the Demons Of The Night. Personally, I quite like Demons of the Night."

"That's great, But why do the Calns have a chance of beating Morphelines?" Aurora asked.

"Because it's only humans that change when they're bitten. The cats just bleed, as if Morpheline fangs didn't contain the unstable DNA. I think that's what changes us, anyway. I think the Morpheline's fang make wounds that their saliva gets in through. Saliva is DNA, and i'm guessing that the DNA us so unstable that it changes you the minute it enters you. I also think that 'cause our species is very succeptible to mutation, you wouldn't know it 'cause it's night, but Medothen started growing wings when she got a bit of bird blood in a cut she had. She won't let any of her warriors try it, though. She can actually fly, it's really weird."

Aurora was starting to feel dizzy with all of the information. Mandy allways was a genius when it came to science...She thought drowsily, then promptly fell asleep.

How do you like it? I find the 'disposable' part pretty creepy. REVIEW!

Chapter 3: To give a human

I like this fic . I like the idea.

"Get up!" Snapped a voice. Aurora blinked drowsily... and was startled to find the face of a brownish caracal. Then the past night's events flooded back. She had been transformed... and captured. Now it was training time...

"He said get up!" Hissed another voice, this one female. Aurora squeaked as a claw ran across her cheek and she quickly got to her complaining feet. "I'm Ardesca, this is Canyon. We're you and Amberlight's mentors, now get over here!" Ardesca informed. It seemed they were all snappy. Aurora heard Canyon whisper 'useless' before the silver she-cat hopped over, fear growing.

"Where's your lunkhead apprentice, Ardesca?" Canyon asked.

"She's out making dirt, I think." Ardesca paused. "Hey! Blade, go check and see if Amberlight is trying to sneak a bit of fresh-kill." A jumpy looking grey tom nodded feverishly and scampered off. Aurora noticed briefly that everyone looked slightly more strained by daylight than they had the last night. Aurora didn't, though. What's more, she could see everyone's colours. Amberlight was a dark sandy she-cat, her pelt amost orange. Her amber eyes were stunning. Ardesca was in the form of a caracal, but her fur was more red than would be normal for a caracal.

Aurora decided it was one of the things that seperated Morphelines from felines. Blade suddenly returned.

"Amberlight is doing as she said." He informed nervously, before zipping off to a secluded part of the hut. Canyon (a dusty brown cougar) sniffed.

"Which one of you kooks is Aurora?" He barked.

"Erm... me." Aurora replied, and the brown head turned towards her.

"Come on then! Let's not wait for the grass to grow, we need to get some training in." Aurora quickly scampered over to him. The large cat strode off with a pace very hard to keep up with, so that by the time they had reached a clearing Aurora was quite exhausted. He sat down.

"Before you can learn how to change form you need to master your mind training. Without control of the Morpheline telekinesis you cannot change." He announced. "But I suppose you don't know about that, being the idiots you transformed ones are. The Morphelines have the ability to communicate telepathically, and lift objects as heavy as a rabbit or less. We all have crystals on our foreheads, that's where our telepathic energy is stored." Aurora nodded slowly, concentrating on it all.

"Seeings crystals have many colours when they catch the light, our ones change colour according to our emotions. When there are many colours mixed, that just means neitral. Red is anger, blue is sadness, grey is fear, pink is love (which hardly ever shows up) Yellow is happiness, purple is confusion, and orange is pain. Now, I want you to talk to me through telepathic link." Canyon meowed.

Aurora just sat, her crystal assuming a purple colour as she wondered how to contact her mentor through the mind. Maybe she should think thoughts at Canyon? She decided to try it.

-Hello? Can you hear me? Am I doing this right? Hello?- Aurora tried, but Canyon's expression did not indicate any change.

"Don't think your thoughts at me, think your thoughts at my own psychic energy." Canyon insisted.

-Is this right?- Aurora tried, yet again, no results. She concentrated her mind towards Canyon, she could somehow feel something... silvery there. Aurora tried to touch it without moving...

...and found her mind slipping away. With a startled expression, she quickly called it back. She concentrated unblinking on her mentor a bit more. She was sure that the silvery glowy thing had been this 'psychic energy', but how could she think at it? She supposed she'd have to send her mind out to it.

But what if it went wrong? What if her mind got trapped between space and time, floating endlessly in limbo? What would happen to her then - would she be a mere body like an empty shell? Living, but without being able to think or act for herslef, until she died from thirst or starvation?

But still... they would kill her in battle anyway. She had nothing to lose here...

She sent out her mind, bracing herself for limbo...

-Hello, Canyon?- She tried, once she felt confident that her mind was touching his. That it was within that silvery glow. -Can you hear me? Have I done it right?- She saw what seemed like a brief startled expression flash across his face.

-You have very powerful spirit energy. We do not expect furst day apprentices to be able to do that. Try lifting something with your mind, stay with a twig for now. Use your mind like beofre, but this time use the silvery aura of it to extend and grasp the object.- Came Canyon's voice in her head.

Aurora briefly whooped with joy silently before focusing on her new task. She looked at a twig, and extended her mind to it. She felt her conciousness brush it, brushing the simple existence of a non-living thing, it was there for manipulation, simply because it existed and was there. Aurora tried to compress the enrgy of her mind into a single, fluid motion. She found to her surprise that her conciousness seemed to melt into a state which seemed like shimmering liquid frost, like water that ould be manipulated to twist around something.

She felt the 'liquid' of her mind seep around the twig like silver blood had done to her body, and waited until the stick was compltely encased in the silver aura. She then willed the aura upwards, and since the twig was in it the twig physically rose into the air, surrounded by a thin glow like frost in the sunshine that only Morpheline eyes were capable of seeing.

Canyon was flabbergasted. How could she have mastered her mind training already?

Chapter 4: Quite a fright

Aurora returned to the hollow (by force) exhausted by a day full of mind training. She understood how to use her psychic enerhy, and for a first day that was something to be proud of, though she didn't know it. The sort of training exercises she'd undergone were things like trying to contact Canyon at a distance, and trying to find Canyon in his hiding place by sensing his psychic energy (with eyes covered by leaves).

Aurora collapsed on the floor of the hut, then saw a small mouse land beside her, courtesy of Blade. She was so hungry that she idn't even notice herself gulping the raw meat doown, then when she noticed what she'd been eating she almost hurled it back out. Almost. That was before she discovered the surprisingly tastiness of the rodent.

Aurora was starting to doze when Amberlight entered the room, looking thouroughly exhausted too.

"Hi." She greeted wearily.

"Hi. What did you do in training?" Aurora asked, feeling quite refreshed after the mouse.

"Mind training. I still can't contact Ardesca, I can't focus on it. I hate it when you get that feeling of your mind slipping away..." She shuddered. Aurora cocked her head, faint purple glimmers formulating in her crystal.

"But how hard is it? I've mastered mine. It's kinda scary when your mind slips away... but nothing really happens to you." Aurora announced.

"You what?!" Amberlight looked her in the eye. "You have to be lying. According to Ancient that's never happened. Never." Aurora was puzzled. Had she made morpheline history?

She decided to prove it, and extended her mind. It slid fluidly and smoothly, like a snake. It coiled around Amberlight's psychic energy, whose aura did not seem as vivid as hers or Canyon's. Aurora briefly realised that somehow this aura definately belonged to Amberlight. Mainly because when her mind touched it an image of two amber eyes appeared in her head, and with her mind she could somehow 'smell' Amberlight's scent on the aura.

-I'm not lying. See? I'm in your head. Talking to you.- Auraora watched with amusement as Amberlight stared wide-eyed, and stood silent for a bit.

"Teach me how to do that!" Shr breathed.

Aurora hesitated, then agreed to help coach her best friend, from the human world, and a world in which they had only each other.

-------------------

Two days later, Aurora was walking hesitantly towards the largest hut. (Leader den) She had been told to go there at moonhigh, but had decided to come slightly earlier so it was certain she would be on time. She suddenly heard voices from within the den.

"- Canyon tells me his apprentice is unusually gifted in telekinesis. She was able to contact him and lift basic objects on her first day." Came the voice of the deputy, Shadow. He was a large black panther in his favorite form.

"Hmm. Very unusual... and possibly dangerous for us. No matter, just send her -" What she would be sent on, Aurora never found out, because Medothen had lowered her voice so she could not be heard. Aurora silently took a few long paces away from the hut to wait for Shadow. He suddenly poppe dout of the den.

"You, you're Aurora, right?" He asked with a commanding tone.

"Y...yes, Shadow." Aurora replied nervously. She had already been imprinted with a permenant feeling of inequality and fear to these creatures...

"You, Amberlight, Blade, Kinto, Virr, and Twi will be joining the attack on the clan ShadowClan today. Tell those apprentices this: We aim to kill until they run away. It will be more convenient for now if the majority of them flee, but kill as many cats as you must to make them do so. Your General is Nox, and he has his own Unit of recently made warriors."

(General in Morpheline terms is a single good fighter in the 'suicide battle' that must stay alive at all costs. Apprentices must give their lives for the General, or their own will be taken by Medothen later. Unit is basically group. Aurora has the honours of summoning the apprentice Unit.)

Aurora nodded, fear slowly spreading thorughout her body as she walked stiffly back to the apprentice hut. She and Amberlight were to go on a Suicide Mission? Those attacks on which the 'disposable' felines were gotten rid of? Amberlight saw and felt the tension building in Aurora's body, and asked what was wrong.

Aurora raised her voice. "Listen, all apprentices. Shadow has given me a message to pass on." With the mention of the word 'Shadow' everyone looke dup. "Me, Amberlight, Kinto, Blade, Virr, and Twi will be going on the upcoming Suicide Mission. We will be lead by Nox, who has a Unit of new warriors. We plan to drive as many of ShadowClan as possible from their homes, and kill the ones that refuse to go or are unlucky enough to be caught." Aurora announced, her voice low but steady, yet with a clear nervous edge to it.

All of the mentioned apprentices held evident looks of horror on their faces. Aurora watched as practically every crystal in the room suddenly whirled with many different shades of grey and silver. Instantly, the apprentices started wishing each other good luck, and even saying such things like: "If I don't return, please don't do anything stupid." and "You will always be my best friend, no matter what happens."

It was quite sad. And then, of course, it was she and Amberlight.

"Good luck." Amberlight whispered.

"You too... my friend. I wish we could escape from this... maybe find refuge with the clans, They sound nicer than the Morphelines... But Amberlight, let's make a promise."

"What?" Amberlight asked softly, eyes glimmering with unshed tears.

"Promise that we will fight together until the end. We will die defending each other, and should one of us pass on... the other shall avenge that death." Aurora replied, her eyes suddenly lighting with burning fire. Amberlight's eyes did likewise.

"I promise." And then the two best friends shared tongues, and a meal, for what seemed like the last time.

------------------

Nox the puma stood tall and proud before the Units.

"I will say the names of those supposed to be here, and check that all of you are present. Aurora, Amberlight, Blade, Virr, Kinto, Twi, Fidel, Zephyr, Pyrite, and Murk. Everyone there?" A loud chorus of 'yes' rose.

"There are only five warriors accompanying us? We're against a whole Clan here!" Amberlight whispered incredulously.

"I know. But we should be better off because us two and Kinto are the only three apprentices that know how to ShapeMorph. Have you tried any of them yet?" Aurora asked.

"I've tried plenty. Lion, caracal, lynx... None of them feel right." Amberlight replied.

"In the battle, try fighting with a few others. Maybe a serval, ocelot, or cougar. I'll try some new ones myself, i've got snow leopard, clouded leopard, and cheetah on my list of things i'd like to try changing to. Do you know what form Kinto prefers, incidentally?"

"I think it's an Ocelot. I think." Amberlight replied, wrinkling her nose.

"Shut up, all of you!" Yowled Nox. Everyone immediately quietened. "That's better. We have the advantage today, not in numbers, but in power and surprise and abilities." He apused. "Some of you may not know that we Morphili are strongest at night. You all know that we do not require sleep at all. We can all se the olours of each other's pelts perfectly, but this is only because of the lantern like eyes native only to our species. They are one of the only two things that make you detectable to foes at night. So try to squint.

To others, you will appear as mere shaped shadows in the moonlight. Should you go into a shadow, they will no longer be able to see, smell, or hear you. Again, all they will see is your eyes. Now! Now, we go to battle. We will fight for the honour of Medothen and the Morpheline tribe, and for dominance, glory, and pride!" This was the battle cry. Apparently nearly every General said something along those lines before a suicide Mission.

Aurora and Amberlight ran with the others. They ran as if the hounds of hell chased them. They ran to a battle, and perhaps their death.

Like that chapter? By the way, see anything forming with the chapter names?

Chapter 5: Night was upon the forest

Aurora could see all the sent cats. Their eyes sparkled like jewels in the night, the only thing that would be visible of them to an outsider. The full moon had been yesterday, and purposely Medothen had chosen the blackest night of the moon to attack ShadowClan, the time when their strength was highest.

There had obviously been a patrol found, this was noticeable by the snarls of anger and shrieks of pain from up front. It took a while for the noises to stop, but then the Unit had a scent to follow back to their camp. Aurora shivered as she walked past the three bodies of the ShadowClan patrol, every one of them maimed to a point when they were barely recognizeable as cats.

It was hard for the apprentices to keep up with the long strides of the bigger felines in front, Aurora was helpful by becoming a large siberian tiger and giving some apprentices a ride on her back. Amberlight became a lioness, and Kinto became a large black panther. Each of them ferried the apprentices.

It was a long time in the eyes of all but Nox to get to the camp, each of them expected to die on this mission. Especially then untrained apprentices.

Nox stopped after a while, then let back his head with an eerie wail unlike anything Aurora had ever heard before. it was long, sad, and mournful, as well as quite high pitched. It was the signal that they had reached the camp. Aurora's heart beat faster as she heard the snarls of approaching cats... they were coming. Nox stepped into a small beam of thin moonlight so he could be seen.

"Who are you, and what are you doing on our territory?!" Yowled some cat. Aurora watched as a russet she-cat stepped forwards, fur bristling. She had a large amount of angry warriors behind her.

"I am Nox, and I bring with me an army." Hissed Nox in a unearthly voice that made everyone shiver. "ShadowClan will be no more by the time the sun rises, we will let you flee, if you want. If it comes to a battle, then you are free to run away any time."

"Flee from our own territory? I think not. You shall be the ones leaving tonight. There are few of you, I can tell by the number of eyes." Came the reply, echoed by defiant and angry yowls.

"Indeed, you cannot see us? There are more of us than you think. Go on: Listen, smell, try to see them. While in the shadows, we become invisible in every sense. You cannot find us. Have you taken into account how high up our eyes are, and how big that must make us?"

"Fool! You think I believe that you have invisible warriors? You're just trying to intimidate me! You cannot intimidate me, I am Russetstar, and this is my clan. leave while you have the chance, or meet my clan in battle." Russetstar yowled.

"I think i'll choose the latter, thank you. Unit Night, kill Russetstar. That is the goal that is most important. then kill however many more is needed to trigger their retreat. Attack!"

And so it began.

Aurora, flanked by Amberlight, leapt into battle, heading for Russetstar. She was intercepted by a tom cat, who squealed in alarm as he found out how large she was.

"I'm a tiger, and you are a midget. Go away before I kill you!" Aurora hissed, and roared loudly. This intimidated the little pipsqueak, but he stil began attacking the silvery tiger. Aurora was hesitsant to kill, but to save her own life she had to. She didnt kill him, it was Amberlight who dealt the last blow to his throuat, leaving him as maimed as the patrol cats earlier.

Nox was surrounded by a large amount of body guards, each of them killing those in their path to get to Russetstar, who had currently disappeared.

Where was Russetstar? She wasn't the type to flee. Aurora reached out with her mind... and felt Russetstar hurtle towards her! She swivelled round just in time to intercept what would have been a crushing blow to the neck. It was Aurora who ended up breaking the paw that had attacked. Soon, Nox and his bodyguards were hurtling towards Russetstar, ten of ShadowClan already down. Six had been killed, four had fled.

Amberlight pounced on Russetstar and held her down while Aurora bit her neck, snapping it. She was dead. Aurora's chest puffed up with the pride of being the one who accomplished the mission's main goal.

"Get on your guard, fool! The leaders here have nine lives!" Nox hissed. Indeed, a second later Russetstar sprung up again, catching Aurora by surprise and pinning her down. However, Aurora was much larger and repelled the blow, breaking the leader's neck again. Nox rushed up and ran his panther claws down her thrat and did not remove them until they had sliced a cut all the way down her belly. She was dying mny times now.

"Sh... ShadowClan needs a new deputy so the clan can survive. I say these... wor... words before the body of Rowanclaw, so his spirit may hear and appro... approve of my choice... ShadowClan's new dep... deputy is Cedarheart." With that, she died for the last time.

Cedarheart had been shocked, he was now leader!

"ShadowClan, Retreat! They killed Russetstar!" With that, he fled. Six of the remaining eleven cats followed him, but ended up being scattered by the warriors, sending them in different directions.

"Aurora! Amberlight! You can both change, go kill that tom Cedarheart! We need to deal with the brave ones that stayed." Nox snarled, and Aurora and Amberlight promptly turned into cheetahs and raced after Cedarheart. They could detect his scent trail, running way out of his territory. But he had had one heck of a headstart, and the duo still hadn't caught up to him.

They ran for a very long time, a VERY long time. They had literally ran across the whole territory, and the sounds of battle could no longer be heard. They finally caught up to Cedarheart, thirty meters over the ThunderClan border. Amberlight pinned him down and prepeared to kill him, when a thought came over Aurora.

"Wait, Amberlight. Don't kill him." Amberlight looked surprised, but refrained from biting his neck and stepped off of him, Aurora had his tail pinne ddown under a large paw. She looke dinto his terrified eyes... she knew this was wrong, and she couldn't do it. She took her paw off his tail.

"Go on, Cedarheart. I won't kill you. Go, find the scattered remnants of your clan. You need to re-build ShadowClan somewhere else, the forest is no longer safe. They will drive all of the clans out, but i want no part in it." Cedarheart was completely stunned.

"Are you crazy?! Aurora, they'll kill us!" Amberlight hissed.

"It's true... if we're caught... they will kill us. But it's not righ, this is the clan's home. We're very far from Nox, I want to run away. We'll die in the end, anyway. So if they catch us... well, at least we'll die in the name of honour." Aurora murmured.

"But..."

"Amberlight, we couldn't outrun a regular cat as cheetahs for night's sake! We're almost dead, yes dead, and you know it. We might be able to find shelter in the clans... come on, Amberlight. Before Nox catches us. You, go!" Aurora added the remark to the stunned clan leader, who promptly ran off.

"I suppose... I suppose you're right. We have to get going..." Amberlight agreed sadly. "From now on, we're fugitives from Medothen and her tribe."

Aurora added the final lines of nobility. "And we'll fight until death if they catch us. We will leave, we will run, and we will survive until death claims us."

They decided to do the right thing!

Chapter 6: Darkness draped over the trees

Aurora and Amberlight had no idea where to go in the territory, apart from away from the Morphelines. Amberlight had a very low endurance for long periods of time without food, and she was now so exhausted that she wheezed and shook with every step. Aurora was worried about her.

Aurora herself was low in energy... but not that much. She suddenly stopped, well aware that Amberlight was on the point of collapsing.

"Amberlight, you need rest. I'll go hunt, then we'll find some way to get safely up a tree." Aurora announced. Amberlight merely nodded, and let her legs fold beneath her, letting a small and weak sigh of relief at rest.

Aurora and Amberlight knew it was a fact that no morpheline born as one could climb trees, it wasn't that it was impossible for their species, they just didn't know how. But Aurora and Amberlight had been typical little scamps and had climbed trees a lot, and that was without claws!

Aurora rushed herslef, not wanting to leave her best friend helpless for too long. She ended up catching a mouse, a vole, and a pidgeon. She rushed back to Amberlight, and realised that she had overexerted herself in the hunting and was almost at the point that Amberlight was at.

She handed Amberlight the mouse and vole, knowing they took less energy to eat than a feathered pidgeon. She began clawing off the bird's feathers while Amberlight dug into her mouse hungrily.

When a layer iof feathers had been removed, Aurora bit into the pidgeon and relished the metallic taste of the blood. Blood? Something stirred in Aurora's memory, she couldn't quite remember but... something told her it was important.

That was it! One of Amberlight's comments to her. Morpheline DNA is so unstable that when medothen got bird blood in a wound of hers, she grew wings!

Wings would be very useful... besides, she'd always wanted to fly... and it would be an ideal way to escape if the Morphelines came after them. She shrugged, and placed a silvery claw into a vein in the pidgeon, which had a small drop of blood starting to drip from it... Aurora had made sure the blood was from it's wings, just to be certain.

She began trembling with trepedation, and quickly brung the claw over to an open cut on her back, and waited for it to drip. The wound was very open, so the red blood spread a pinky hue to the silver blood of a Morpheline, until it spread out enough to be seen as silver, not red.

Nothing happened. Aurora was more than a little bit disappointed, she'd really been hoping for wings... wait a second. Wait... weird tingly feeling approaching...

(Censored)!!!!! PAIN!!! (Censored)!!!!!! Purge the darkness, but that HURT!

Aurora gave a loud, pained yowl and dug her claws into the forest floor. Amberlight squeaked with alarm.

Aurora couldn't put into words how painful her back was at that moment, it was even worse than the Changing into a Morpheline, she didn;t think anything could have been more painful than that.

Amberlight was on her feet, asking repeatedly what was wrong, and getting more and more terrified as no answer came, and Aurora's cries became increasingly anguished and painful.

Aurora thrashed around, claws out, eyes wild, her crystal whirring madly with the colours of fear, pain, and confusion. She rolled around repeatedly, trying to quell the pain in her back by compressing it onto something hard, namely, the floor.

It didn't work, and the pain became increasingly violent. She scrambled wildly to her feet, and began coughing up silver blood, which seemed to be slightly satisfying the mild pains that had spread to her chest.

Amberlight was shrieking now, she and Aurora thought she was dying... she wanted it to end... to stop... to die... Death would end the apin, she knew... why wouldn't darkness claim her quicker?

She stopped coughing up blood. The pains were very slightly less terrible now, but her back felt increasingly painful and weird, and the pains were somehow spreading to something above her body...

The pains eventually died down, and aurora collapsed, hyperventilating and sweating badly, lying in her coughed up pool of silver blood.

"Aurora! What – what the heck happened?!" Amberlight shrieked, she had collapsed too now, hyperventilating just as Aurora was, due to her frenzied reaction to Aurora's pain.

"Amber...light...tried...what Medothen...did...with the bird blood... hurt...so much...can't move...need sleep..." Aurora wheezed weakly.

"You grew wings Aurora... it worked... it worked..." Those were the last words Aurora heard before blacking out.

"Hey, look, she's waking up!" Exclaimed a voice.

"Quiet, Cindertail." Hissed another.

"The other one isn't stirring yet... do you think she'll be okay?" Asked Cindertail.

Aurora assumed the 'other one' was her, since she wasn't moving.

"I don't... really know." Replied the other she-cat.

"Hey..." Murmured Amberlight. Aurora heard a crackle on dry leaves of Amberlight trying to stand up, then the thud announcing that she had failed. "Aurora! Hey, stonehead! Wake up!"

"I don't think she's concious." Said the she-cat whose name had not been mentioned.

"What... how did we get here?" Amberlight asked quietly. "And who are we with?"

"A patrol found you and you friend unconcious... in a pool of what smelt like blood, but looked silver. They brought you back here, and you've been in my den for a sun and a half." Answered the unknown one.

"I'm Cindertail, and this is my mentor, Leafpool." Announced Cindertail. Aurora decided now would be a good time to try and get up.

"'She' is completely fine." Aurora meowed gruffly, trying in vain to get up.

"Oh." Leafpool meowed, sounding fairly surprised.

"I may have puked up half of my blood, but I think it's replaced itself now. I'm completely fine." Aurora meowed.

"Cindertail, go fetch Bramblestar." Leafpool ordered. (Yep, Firestar died! Oh, another thing, Lionpaw, Jaypaw, and Hollypaw do exist in this story but they have no special powers, Jaypaw isn't a medicine cat and isn't blind, and they all have their warrior names!) The grey she-cat limped off. (Yep, limped. I'm assuming that's what happens after the prologue of Dark River or whatever it's called)

"I'll be the one who decides if you're okay or not... let me see..." Leafpool said, and inspected Aurora's wounds closely. "That's odd, they're much more healed than they were earlier... you have a remarkable recovery speed. You too." Leafpool meowed, indicating Amberlight.

"Only natural. It's natural for our speci-" Amberlight began, to be sharply interrupted by Aurora.

"Shut up! We don't want them knowing... you know." Aurora whispered the next bit. "That we're not actually cats..."

Amberlight looked guilty. "Oops, I keep forgetting that we're not safe from them whoever guards us. Assuming you are a clan, right?"

"Erm, yes... I'm the medicine cat of ThunderClan. You were unconcious in our territory. By the way, your wounds may have healed remarkably, but you still can't leave the den." Leafpool replied. Aurora immediately bristled.

"You have no right to say what I can or can't do! From what I hear, you doctor cats can't even kill an apprentice! I can kill warriors, probably maybe a few lives from this 'Bramblestar'. He is the leader, right? That's why he has star on his name?" Aurora's rage became curiousity as she unknowingly calmed down.

Chapter 7: The only sound in the silence

I'm hoping that this will be a quite interesting chapter.

Leafpool looked quite nervous as she replied the affirmative, and suddenly Aurora sensed two beings approaching. Like Leafpool's, their conciousnesses were white, not silver. That meant they were not telepathic and could not tell if she read their minds or not... but she couldn't be bothered to do that at the present time.

Cindertail entered, scampering behind a huge broad shouldered dark tabby.

"So, they're awake." Commented the tabby, presumably Bramblestar.

"Yes." Leafpool replied, sounding a lot less nervous.

"So, you're Bramblestar? Leader of ThunderClan?" Aurora asked dismissively.

"I am." He replied, sounding confident and prideful. Aurora was a good judge of character, and could tell that this tom carried himself with so much pride it was a wonder it wasn't too heavy for him to walk with. He had power, that much was clear. His muscles showed strength beyond what Aurora had in cat form, and probably any other cat in the clans. This pride made him believe that nothing except a whole clan was a threat to him.

"Well, Bramblestar. I suggest to send a patrol to the ShadowClan. You may find something interesting." At her own comment Aurora laughed quite bitterly. Bramblestar looked puzzled, but shrugged.

"We'll be doing that anyway. Greystripe'll be ordering that patrol at around sunhigh." (Yes, Greystripe is now deputy again. He's a tad old, but oh well) "But anyway, I'd like to know where you came from, and why you were in our territory." Aurora curled her upper lip as a sign of distaste.

"Well, there was a battle in which me and Amberlight almost died in, and eventually escaped into your territory. We passed out, and there you are." Aurora replied frostily, slightly twitching the wings on her back. The wings were strong, and the normal grey colour of pidgeon feathers had been paled to match the exact silver shade of her fur, the colour of a telepathic mind. She could press them so close to her body that those wings looked like long, feathery fur. she noticed that her fur had become feathery around her chest and on her head, and her ears had almost visible feathers glancing off them.

She had a line of feather fur up the underside of her four legs, and at the end of her tail there was a wide fan of silver feathers that worked just like a fan: they could be folded underneath eachother to look simply like a thin bit of tail. Bramblestar didn't look satisfied. He was about to speak when some cat yowled.

"WindClan attack!" (Yes I know they're supposed to be friends, but Lionclaw had an affair with Heatherfur in WindClan and she joined ThunderClan. Now WindClan are at war with ThunderClan for nicking a warrior)

Bramblestar appeared shocked and dismayed. "Cindertail, Leafpool, stay here! I'm off to fight." And the tabby shot off. Aurora bristled.

"I'm not missing the chance for a good fight! Coming, Amberlight?" Aurora asked, and the pale ginger cat jumped beside her.

"You bet! My limbs are stiff, they need a warm up." And before the speechless medicine cats could stop them, the two had dashed out of the den to the battle scene. The ThunderClan warriors seemed suprised at their scents, but who could blame them? Aurora feverently wished that it was night before making do with a simple shadow by a cliffside. It wasn't a night-shadow, so it only hid her partially. But still, she was practically invisible, and only a faint flicker of her scent was there.

She leapt out at the first WindClan warrior she found and bit his neck, able to have good aim because the startled cat had not been prepared for her. She raked her claws that were now larger and sharper down his back, and then let him go to run for the bushes. She transformed into a lynx and waited patiently in the shadows for her next prey.

By chance she stumbled upon the WindClan leader, who yowled in suprise and confusion as he felt something far larger than all the leaders put together pounce on him, and Aurora simply put a paw on his throat until he entered the trance of life losing. She found a darker shadows to be invisible in while the leader got up on his next life and sprang for Amberlight, who promptly crept into a shadow with Aurora, then transformed into a mountain lion where no-one could see her do so.

Aurora watched as the WindClan leader prepared to bite the throat of bramblestar, less than a meter away from her. She hesitated, then tranformed into a huge tiger and lashed out a huge, silvery-orange paw. (Depending on the colour of their fur in cat form, whatever they change into will have an unnatural fur colour, more the cat-form colour than the natural colour.) She caught the leader by his leg, and pulled him into the shadows, away from the startled Bramblestar who thought he had seen a paw nearly as big as his head.

Aurora gave the leader and sharp konk on his head, and that was enough to make him stumble dizzily away, ears ringing and head hurting. How would you feel if a six foot tiger whacked you round your skull? Aurora hadn't wanted to cause him brain damage or something, so she hadn't hit very hard. That leader didn't know how lucky he was.

Aurora fanned out the feathers on her tail and brushed them across Amberlight as a signal to assume cat form. They became their FirstForms in unison.

----------

When finally the WindClan cats retreated, the best friends were approached by Bramblestar.

"You two are formiddable fighters. You did very well." He commented. 'Better than you, Mr Perfect.' Aurora thought with a smirk.

"Amberlight chased off six warriors, and I chased off four and took a life from the leader." Aurora announced. Amberlight nodded.

"That was one good work out. Nothing better than a good battle to unstiffen the limbs." She added. Bramblestar seemed momentarily stunned, but shook it off.

"If i'm correct, you have no-where to go?" He asked. Amberlight nodded instantly, and Aurora glared at her and hesitantly nodded her own head. "Thought do." He meowed, then began leaping up to a stone ledge.

"Let all cats old enough to catch their own prey gather here beneath the Highledge for a Clan meeting!" He caled, and the injured warriors, apprentices, and a few queens emerged. "We drove off the WindClan attack successfully today, but many of you may have noticed two outsiders fighting alongside us. They are the two we found unconcious yesterday, and have proved themselves to be formiddable fighters. I have decided to welcome them into the clan as apprentices."

Aurora slowly sieved through his words, searching for something important. Four words caught her attention. 'Into the clan,' and 'apprentices'. Amberlight was looking relieved, but quite discontented. Aurora knew why, but didn't bother to be polite and voiced her discomforts.

"Wait a minute! Don't we get a say in this? We've been captured before and forced to stay as apprentices, and it ain't nice! I'll be dead before that happens again." She hissed, thoroughly suprising Bramblestar.

"If i'm correct, you said you had nowhere to go. And we're not forcing you to do anything." Replied Bramblestar, sounding a bit uncomfortable at being addressed so rudely by one so young. Aurora glared menacingly at him, her gaze frosty and sharp.

"We will stay with you, but not as apprentices. We deserve warrior status at least." Yowls of outrage rose. "Let me inform you of our accomplishments. I have killed seven fully fledged warriors, drove off six, and taken five lives altogether from leaders. One of them from the WindClan leader today. Amberlight has killed five warriors, driven off eight, and taken off three lives altogether from leaders. Can apprentices do that?"

Silence. More silence. Most shuffled their paws or gaped, some trembled slightly. Some seemed slightly intimidated but not scared. Aurora and Amberlight were the only ones who were unchanged by their words, Amberlight's eyes burning with fierce and defiant fire and Aurora glaring at all who harboured anger, the chill of her eyes quickly reducing it to fear. Both their crystals were a myriad of red shades, swimming and spiralling in rays which made the floor illuminate with faint red light.

Many noticed their crystals, and knew that normal cats didn't have those. And there was no telling what else unnormal cats could do, so they stayed quiet.

"All right. You can be warriors." Bramblestar meowed finally. Amberlight relaxed, letting her tense muscles slide back into inactivity. Aurora simply sat down, expression changing from fristly glare to pride, satisfaction, and a twisted glimmer of interest. Becoming a Morpheline had changed her personality drastically. While not being cruel, evil, or twisted, she still had a large tendancy to get moody, and like the other morphelines carried with her an air of dominence.

Aurora fanned her tail wide, then quickly flicked it back to normal. She touched her tail to Amberlight's side, and the two walked off to hunt.

------------------

Hunting on their own was good for them, because they could test various new forms and decide which were best for hunting, and they could catch a large amount of prey.

Aurora showed mild interest in the warrior Stormfur. His scent was ThunderClan yet not quite. RiverClan yet not quite. She identified the rest of his scen as Tribe scent. Why there was a Tribe cat here she didn't know... especially since the Tribe of Rushing Water had been wiped out by the Morphelines months ago. (There's the reason why Stormfur and Brook left. They were escaping)

It was one day when Stormfur approached she and Amberlight in the warrior den, speaking with a low voice as not to be overheard.

"Who are you? Or better still, What are you?" He hissed quietly. Aurora gave a startlingly defiant chuckle, and it suprised Stormfur, because laughter was not well known to cats.

"Why ask something for which you already know the answer, Tribe-cat?" Stormfur's ears falttened, and he hissed slightly, then left.

What do you think?

Chapter 8: Was the whisper of wind in the leaves

Something that stirrs the plot a bit happens this chapter.

In her night-time invisibility, Aurora twisted and turned on her bed of moss. Morphelines were practically insomniacs, and didn't need to sleep. If they wanted to they could spend their whole life without sleep. But that wasn't to say they couldn't sleep. When Morphelines were barren of energy, sleeping often helped them heal injuries and regain that energy faster.

But this seldom happened because all Morphelines apart from the once human ones frowned upon this 'laziness'. But it was doing she and Amberlight a world of good to sleep, they awoke each morning with their skin melding back together and the scars quickly fading and allowing fur to return. But quicte basically, she was asleep and she was dreaming. Not very pleasantly.

Skin was ripped from flesh by cruel and frenzied claws, sharp fangs parted lives from their bodies in a battle too even to win. Then there was a silver cat standing in a shaft of sunlight and death.

Aurora woke breathing heavily. That dream had taken part in a clearing rimmed by four ancient oaks, and the scents of three clans - not four - had mingled with the scents of blood and fear. She didn't know what the dream was about, but it wasn't from this time. Aurora got to her feet which were then visible, she was up early and no other cats in the den were awake. She became gradually more visible as she stepped from the shadowed corner where she had her nest.

Aurora didn't wait for Amberlight today, she stepped outside and sniffed the crisp morning air. She saw Stormfur exit Firestar's den, and look at her with a unreadable expression. Aurora went back into the den and woke Amberlight.

"Morning Aurora." Amberlight murmured sleepily, a yawn beaking through her words.

"Actually, the sun has only just come up. I want to test out my wings, there's no use having gone through that pain if i'm not going to use them, eh?" Aurora meowed palyfully, wincing slightly as she remembered the agonizing pain of the wing growing. She couldn't help but wonder why it had hurt as much as her human-to-morpheline changing, her DNA had shifted then as well. Maybe it was just the fact that a body consisting of completely unstable DNA, maybe it somehow made a difference...

"Okay then... where are we headed?" Amberlight asked. Aurora paused.

"Sky Oak. If I fall out of the sky I can land on a branch." She replied, then promptly exited the den with Amberlight behind her. Once out of the quarry thing that was the ThunderClan camp, Aurora shifted quickly into a cheetah and sped off, Amberlight doing the same and trailing slightly behind her. (Amberlight was more stocky than Aurora so had more weight to run with)

Aurora veered sharply to avoid crashing into the huge tree, skattering dust as she skidded to a halt. Amberlight did the same thing in another direction, only misfortune claimed her as an inconvenient rock tripped her.

"Hey - Amberlight, you okay?" Aurora meowed worriedly, padding over to her best friend in several form. Amberlight got to her feet.

"Course I am, i'm not that soft!" Amberlight retorted, then gave Aurora a playful swipe around her ear. "Now, why don't you start trying to fly?" Aurora returned the swipe then walked calmly over to te largest clear space, and unfolded her wings from her back. She winced, they were stiff from disuse and were complaining about the sudden move, aching like mad. She exercised each of her wings until they stopped aching, then started trying to fly.

She tried to flap them both at the same time, but her left wing flapped first and the other after and she rose one foot into the air and swivelled wildly to the right, ending up upsidedown on the ground. This would be harder than she thought.

Flash in her mind. Flash from her crystal. Flash in her eyes. Invisible to others. Stars in her head...

Symbols of the start of telekinetic communication. But something odd followed. When stars appeared in one's mind, it meant someone was about to talk to them via telekinesis. But this time there were more symbols... There was a star with its points seperate to it, lying around it. The star itself was a myriad of flaws and cracks which would cause it to break apart if it were moved. Aurora had been briefly taught about the Ancient Symbols... And this symbol had to mean Death that was not Death. How could that be?

The next symbol was a diamond in the shape of a star. There was an odd pattern that its faces formed, Aurora recognized the pattern and the diamond together as a symbol of time. But there was something more to it... The Time Diamond rested on nothing, no surface but nothingness. If it had been perfectly flat on both sides, it would mean the present. If it had been bumpy on its top side, it would have been future. But it wasn't. This Time Diamond was bumpy on the bottom, which meant it was implying Past.

So this person contacting her was telekinetic, dead but not dead, and from the past? Aurora was confused, but sat still, waiting for the message. Then the voice came. It scared her, it was so identical to her own, but older, sadder, and quieter.

-You must flap both of your wings at the same time. if you get it even wrong by one second your flight chance will be ruined and your wings will fail.-

-Who are you?- Aurora asked with her mind, trying to contacxt the other mind... which was oddly non existant, as if it existed but part of it was not real. She supposed it was to do with the dead but not dead bit.

-I don't know. Now, continue your assignment. Continue for me in the place where I failed...- Said the voice. Aurora tried to contact her again, but it was blocking her. Aurora shrugged, and tried time and time again to flap her wings at the same time, but she couldn't do it... But Aurora was too stubborn to give up. She finally got the timing right and rose a meter into the air, and began decending until Aurora flapped again, getting the same perfect timing. after that it was easy, she knew how to get her wings to flap at the same time so she did just that repeatedly, rising higher and higher into the air.

It struck Aurora taht currently she was basicallly justgetting higher, not going anywhere. She suddenly had an idea. She stopped flapping for a moment, then tilted her stretched wings down a bit on the left side, and leant forward. She promptly started gliding left, until she was basically just flying in circles and decending, so Aurora decided to flap her wings and even them out so she was flying straight, but this time straight was in a different direction because she had turned.

Aurora quickly got the hang of changing directions, but wanted to know how to go down without ceasing to flap her wings. Aurora leaned downwards and tilted the top of her wings downwards too, and flapped. She quickly began decending. One problem, she couldm't land at this angle, she'd just crash... So Aurora leaned upwards and made her wings do the same and Aurora smoothly began ascending with a lot more grace than her first take-off. She began turning about, diving and climbing in the air, living in the pure exhiliration and freedom of it...

... But turning took energy, because the force of her turn wasn't stronger than the drag it produced. Aurora looked back at her tail. Her considerably stronger, feather tipped tail. This time, as she turned left she thrust her tail to the right with a mighty force, making the turn swift, gracefull, and effortless. Amberlight watched in wonder as Aurora flew around in the air, her stunts gaining more and more skill.

She did loop-the-loops. She did barrel rolls. then finally, she landed. Amberlight had never seen her friend so thrilled and happy, flying was so good for her... she'd be in a good mood for days! And that was rare. very rare indeed.

What do you think of it? REVIEW!Chapter 9: Glinted two eyes in the moonlight

The adventure continues... I WOULD LIKE TO POINT OUT THAT THIS STORY HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH MY OTHER STORIES EXCEPT FOR THE FANTASY BIT ABOUT IT.

Amberlight stared in wonder at her friend... she seemed so happy. It made her wonder what flying was like.

"That was amazing! I can't believe you actually flew!" Amberlight exclaimed.

"Well, i've got wings, so it does make sense." Aurora meowed pointedly. Amberlight shook her head.

"Medothen has wings, but she can't fly. According to Shinkara she couldn't work out how to do it." Shinkara was Medothen's young daughter, Aurora knew. Medothen thought she liked her but Shinkara actually hated her. It was quite ludicrous actually, in one sense.

"Well, that certainly helps. it means she can't fly after us if we're caught!" Aurora announced. Amberlight raised an eyebrow.

"'we'?" She asked curiously.

"No duh. Me - large cat and flying. You - small cat and on my back. Simple." Aurora replied. "Want to try now?" Ambrlight shook her head vigourously.

"Sorry, Aurora! but I like living too much!" Amberlight replied.

"You like living?" Aurora asked incredulously. "After all that's happened to us, you like living? I cary on because you do, maybe for the flying. But if it were'nt for those things, I might fly above a cloud then never flap my wings again."

"Aurora, I always knew you were depressed, but to actually consider suicide...! By the darkness Aurora, but that's even scarier than Shadow. PROMISE me you'll never commit suicide, no matter what happens." Amberlight meowed fiercely. Aurora glared at her, then sighed.

"I promise." She meowed, then took off into the air with a silent leap.

"What are you doing?" Amberlight called.

"Finding my true form! I've still got Clouded leopard, siberian tiger, snow leopard, mountain lion, and bengal tiger to try!" Aurora replied, and promptly began morphing, her crysal flashing dimly at every change.

She was a clouded leopard. bengal tiger. mountain lion. Then a snow leopard -

Something stirred within her. A feeling of rightfulness. A feeling of comfort and belonging. A feeling... of her. She was Aurora, the snow leopard. She began whooping in her favourite form, looping the loop numerous times and snatching startled birds from the air.

"I'M A SNOW LEOPARD!!!" Aurora yowled loudly. Amberlight cringed.

"Shut up! It's great you've found your form, but you don't want clan cats hearing someone exclaim that they're some form of great clan cat!" Amberlight hissed. Aurora twitched her new curvedears and flicked her new bushy tail to acknowledge her comment, and continued celebrating silently.

She looked like a normal snow leopard, apart from the fact that for her age she was bigger than one. And she had wings and feathers on her tail. The distinctive misty silver fur remained, making her body silver around the spots. Her belly was pure white, with no spots nor silver on it. She began diving into trees and robbing their birds while thinking about who had contacted her earlier. Who could it have been? Amberlight realised her friend wouldn't be coming down anytime soon, and began hunting herself.

By the end of it, Amberlight had caught four mice, two voles, and three rabbits. Aurora had found good prey in the trees, her catch consisted of ten sparrows, three thrushes and two pidgeons.

"C'mon, I think we should go back now." Aurora meowed regretfully, changing back into a cat and walking back with her friend, their jaws hanging with prey, some of it Aurora carried under her wings and on her back. She dropped the prey under her wings when they were outside the camp, and clamped her wings tightly to her back. They put their prey on the fresh kill pile, then fetched the rest.

"Aurora! Amberlight! Bramblestar wants to see you." Stormfur meowed loudly from the other side of the camp. Aurora growled.

"Blow him! I swear, if we ever get at war with ThunderClan i'll be only too keen to fight him. he's probably blabbed that thing about the Morphelines destroying the Tribe to him. We'd better go now, eat later." Amberlight nodded her agreement, with red flashing in her eyes to indicate anger. Then they walked into Bramblestar's den.

"You wanted to see us?" Aurora asked, bowing her head slightly. Amberlight copied the gesture. The large tabby flicked his ears and sat up higher, probably trying to intimidate them with size. he was probably fairly surprised when they did not change in expression or anything.

"Stormfur told me about something curious he has seen. Apparently, you are never in the den at night. If it happened once, it could be dismissed, but every night? I think you're spies from another clan." Aurora stared at him, then laughed heartily.

"So Stormfur didn't tell you? That surprises me, though i'm not complaining. Ah, Bramblestar and Stormfur the stupid. Ever tried listening? you might have heard our breathing." Aurora saw Bramblestar bristle at her comment, and begin to form a retort. "Amberlight, think our secrecy has outgrown us? I myself want to see his expression."

"I think so, Aurora. Let's see if a tiger can scare the kin of a tiger." Amberlight agreed.

"Well then, where should I start? Let's say, we're not cats. We're part cat, but mostly Great Clan Cat and shadow. We are abominations that evolved in darkness, creatures who can render twolegs defenceless and weak. we can talk to them, kill them, torture them, whatever we want really. But most of all, we transform them into creatures like us." Aurora opened her mouth in a malevolent grin, her larger than normal fangs glinting in the sunlight. "Oh, and for an extra fact our race exterminated The Tribe Of Rushing Water, but it seems Brook and Stormfur escaped. that's why they hate us."

Brambleclaw was flabbergasted, and he seemed to be preparing for a fight.

"You might as well know that we were once twolegs, and the Morphelines captured us and forced us to fight for them. So we ran away while they attacked ShadowClan. There was too much blood for them to track us down, so you needn't worry about that. They'll just assume we're dead." Amberlight meowed. Aurora nudged her, her eyes gleaming with amusement.

"You think he cares about that? Look at him, he obviously thinks he has to fight us! Don't worry, Bramblestar. We won't kill you. Or any of your clanmates. But the thing is, you need to prepare your clan. The Morphelines destroyed the tribe for their territory, they destroyed ShadowClan for the territory. soon, they will destroy you and the other clans for territory. You will all die unless you prepare, the clans are the only things that can stop them. Twolegs cannot do a thing to them: A morpheline just has to bite them and they instantly become trapped in a body they don't know how to use. Cats will not change when bitten, you can be thankful that you have a chance against the tyrants."

Bramblestar was looking dazed. "So... there's a Clan of creatures trying to destroy the clans?" he asked. Aurora smiled grimly.

"Trying - and succeeding. They think they completely wiped out ShadowClan though, but we let the new deputy who had been made after Rowanclaw escape, while we escaped into your territory. I am grieved to say that I aided in the killing of ShadowClan... But whatever, the clans are much nicer than the Morphelines. Amberlight, care to explain their powers and customs?" Aurora meowed.

Amberlight nodded, and Bramblestar turned to her. "You see with have these coloured stones on our heads? Well, those are crystals. If you took a Morpheline's crystal off, it would sort of be like taking off their front two legs, and just as hard to do so. Morphelines are something called 'psychic', which means they can lift small things no bigger than rabbits into the air without touching them and talk to other animals without being heard." Amberlight levitated a stick to demonstrate, her crystal whirling. It soon fell to the ground.

"There have been stories of great psychics who could lift twolegs with their power, but by the laws of the world that is impossible. Only a select few are psychic and even fewer can control it, the Morphelines have long been able to control theirs, and know exactly how to teach others how to do it. The telekinesis of the Morphelines is the root of their power. Without it, they would be as strong as their current form. Let me expand on that topic. Morphelines can transform into any kind of cat, that includes Great Clan Cats like lions, leopards, and tigers."

"So that's what you meant by tiger scare the kin of a tiger..." Bramblestar mused. Amberlight nodded.

"Again, the Morphelines need their psychic energy to manipulate their forms into different cats. But all of the time the Morpheline is slighly larger than the normal size for that animal, and often a different colour. All Morphelines are born as cats, little kittens like the ones in the nursery here. But they grow very fast, in two moons they would be nearly as big as you, and would grow a bit in their next moon and stay that size then begin training."

"The fur colour that the cat was born with will stay with them their whole life, for instance, if there was a black cat, and he changed into a lion, he would be a black lion. Every Morpheline will one day discover a form which they like the most. I'm a mountain lion, like Sharptooth, and Aurora is a snow leopard, which is a fluffy leopard that lives in snow. Most of the time. Also, if a Morpheline happens to get the blood of any animal other than a feline in their bodies through a wound, then they change shape slightly and look more like that animal. the change will stay with them in every form. Aurora was one of the two that did that."

Aurora opened her wings (which were each as long as her body) and swung her tail in front of her, fanning the silver feathers. Bramblestar gasped.

"Aurora can fly, and her prey preference is birds, though she never eats pidgeons because that would be to you like eating a cat. Twolegs cannot fight Morphelines because if they are bitten by one they change into a Morpheline. For some reason, only twolegs chang einto them when they are bitten. No sort of cat does, because they are already so much like Morphelines. Also, when ever and where ever there is no light Morphelines disappear. If they did it intentionally, you wouldn't be able to hear them, smell them, or see them. But every Morpheline can see another in the shadows because we have specieal glow-in-the-dark eyes, often they don't have pupils."

Amberlight stepped into a shadow in the den, and disappeared.

"where did she go?!" Bramblestar growled at Aurora. Aurora turned into a snow leopard and walked over to the shadow, and disappeared too. She could see Amberlight, but Bramblestar couldn't see either of them. Amberlight stepped out, so that she was visible but in the darkness. Her bright green eyes glowed, and Aurora's glowed in the clear blue colour they held. Amberlight was currently in her favourite form like Aurora was. They stepped towards the light and came into full view, their eyes returning to normal. They became cats again.

"StarClan." Bramblestar breathed. "What is going on?!"

HAHA! Bramblestar got boffed! Don't ask me what that means 'cause I don't know myself. REVIEW! Chapter 10: A large nimble shape rushed past

Author's note. No this story IS NOT being discontinued. I'm going on holiday (Vacation) for four weeks. It will be internetless. This means There will be no updates for any of my stories for four weeks AT THE LEAST. Sorry about that!

Chapter 11: There was a beating of strong wings

Aurora and Amberlight were bombarded with angry, mistrusting glares from ThunderClan. Aurora sighed.

"Did he have to tell the Clan what we are? it was supposed to be confidential. I swear... if we ever war with ThunderClan, I won't leave or die until I've killed Bramblestar at least once." Aurora promised to her friend. Amberlight nodded in agreement, then sighed in a tone much like that of the sigh Aurora had sighed a minute ago. Aurora looked at the moon. It seemed too bright for this time of the month... and why were some of the stars dimmer?

"C'mon, lets get some sleep. I heard a whisper Bramblestar's going to tell what we told him to the entire forest at the gathering tomorrow, and have us there as proof. We'd better get some sleep." Amberlight meowed. Aurora nodded. She wasn't sleepy, but Morphelines never were. When they collapsed in their moss nests (Aurora deciding to be a snow leopard for warmth) they fell asleep instantly when they used mild hypnosis with their minds.

Aurora drifted into a dream.

Claws ripped through skin, fangs tore lives from bodies in a fight too even to win. Then there was a silver cat, standing in a shaft of sunlight and death.

It was that dream... again. Again, she saw the image of a clearing rimmed by for huge oaks, a large rock in the middle. There was a silhouette of a cat there, and the sun was directly behind it so any distinctive features it might have had were invisible. Aurora assumed it would be silver. Then with a jolt, she recognized the voice which spoke the ominous lines in a prophetic tone. It was the person from yesterday - the one who had told her how to fly! It was eerily like her voice, she realised again. But it was older and laced with sorrow and shame.

History would be repeated as the Betrayer of All looked into the eyes of her enemy, and fled while the Balance shattered. Elements clashed in ways they had never done before, and lives were taken where once they had been spared in bitter peace.

A great anguish and shame fell over the voice, and the image of the battlefield faded... Until a dark nothingness was all she could see in her mind's eye. But she knew someone, something, was still there.

-Who are you? Why can't I see you?- Cried Aurora, much more scared in her dreams than she could be in the waking world.

-Those who share bloods are nothing, little, or all of the other. Abyss, shadow, or full.- Replied the voice.

-What do you mean?!-

-Power of the mind can make bloods nothing of a form, part of a form, or all of a form. Dust, feather, bird. Dust, fur, animal. Animal, fur-and-feather, creature.-

What the heck? That was even more confusing than the first statement. Suddenly, the consciousness faded. it was not there anymore...

Aurora woke up. It was dawn, and everyone (including Amberlight) was still asleep. She decided to think over the voice's words while Amberlight slept.

Those who share bloods.

That could mean kin, but then what did the bit after that have in connection with kin? Aurora suddenly noticed the significance of the uncommon plural. Bloods. Technically it was incorrect, but maybe here it had an explanation... Unconsciously, her mind wandered to the memory of the pigeon's blood dripping into her body...

That was it! Bloods... A Morpheline had the blood of every single big cat and cat in them, so that was more than one blood... and Morphelines could turn into all those they shared blood with...

"Hey, Aurora. Patrol at snakerocks?" Amberlight asked, making Aurora jump. She'd woken up. (a rocky clearing close to ThunderClan territory in no other clan's territory that ThunderClan claimed and named after the place in the old forest)

"Sure. I heard there are plenty of mice that hide there." Aurora replied, and so the two friends walked outside and took their true forms, then zoomed to snakerocks. Aurora flew onto the largest rock. It was pleasantly warm. "It's really warm!" Aurora announced, laying down on the smooth rock. (It's sort of a mix between sunningrocks and snakerocks)

Aurora yawned. "I winder why they called it snake - arghhhh!" Aurora yelled, feeling a nasty pain in her tail. She whipped round to find a small adder with its teeth embedded in her tail. Amberlight immediately ran forward and stamped on it, causing some nasty internal bleeding in the snake. "No Amberlight! don't step on it -"

Too late. Blood came up the adder's throat and dripped from its dead mouth and into the wound it had made on Aurora's tail.

Amberlight watched in shame and horror as Aurora began her painful metamorphosis to become part snake. Amberlight crouched beside Aurora, tying to offer comfort as her friend writhed in pain. The changing seemed to last so long to her... but in reality it was only two minutes. it wasn't as painful as her other transformations, so she assumed she wasn't growing or losing any legs.

Aurora finally got up, gasping. The wound made by the snake had done almost nothing, because Aurora was now part snake so the venom didn't affect her.

She didn't look different at all... but heck did she FEEL different! She could feel that her front top two fangs had enlargened, and they pulsed with venom that she could choose whether to release or not. her tongue was not forked, but she could smell so well! She could now tell apart the scents of female and male prey, an if they were pregnant or not. She could small how long a dead leaf had been dead for. She could smell even water! But there was something else... it wasn't visible but was definitely there.

Aurora had an idea of what it was, and extended a claw. she poked it through her belly fur, and instead of meeting soft flesh it met hard scales. Her fur was growing on scales!

"I have scales!" Aurora exclaimed.

"You what?!" Amberlight asked incredulously. Aurora brought up her paw and licked the fur aside to reveal what had once been skin. "Silver scales..." she murmured. Silver? She supposed their colour had been influenced by Aurora's fur colour, like her feathers. Aurora then opened her mouth wide to reveal two abnormally large fangs. "By the Moonshell..." Amberlight murmured. (The Moonshell is a Morpheline thing. more on it later)

"Well, today had unexpected surprises. Let's catch some prey." Aurora craned her neck to smell for prey, and suddenly noticed that her body was now longer and more flexible than before. She smelt two mice by a hole. They would dart inside it if she tried to catch them.

She picked up more possible scents: a bluebird above, a mouse eating a seed by a bush... a peregrine falcon descending from the sky? Without hesitation, Aurora took off. She zoomed towards the falcon, arching her neck then striking it forward, her fangs longing to release their venom into the prey they held... Aurora prevented the venom from seeping into the falcon, and she killed it quickly with a paw to the neck.

Amberlight was running up.

"Great catch!" She mewed. Amberlight suddenly noticed an odd look in Aurora's eyes. It was a neutral, calm, accepting look. A daring, canny, bracing look. Amberlight suddenly knew what Aurora was hoping to do. "Are you crazy?! You know how much it hurts!"

"yes, but this one won't hurt very much." Aurora meowed softly, and extended a claw to the falcon's neck, slicing through the skin and looking at the red blood which laced her claw.

"how do you know?" Amberlight demanded.

"Because there will be only small changes. No extra limbs." and before her friend could protest, Aurora scratched a cut on her wing, and put in the blood.

She was right, it didn't hurt. it hardly hurt at all compared to the other transformations, it was like the pain of a large gash being torn in her side by a ShadowClan warrior. Nothing worse. Aurora was not enveloped by pain, so she could feel the changes rather than the pain. She felt her laws become retractable talons, her wings get unbelievably strong, fast enough to rival a cheetah. Everything suddenly got more focused, he eyes were like binoculars, and like binoculars she could zoom in and out. he had never heard of falcons being able to do that, but oh well. If it wasn't something native to the species then it was a small mutation caused by her changing DNA.

The changing was over very soon. Her feathers were now speckled with darker grey, but there was no visual change aside from that.

"See? That didn't hurt." Aurora told Amberlight. Her friend grumbled.

"You crazy devil... You could have lost a leg!" Amberlight laughed.

I just returned from France and I wrote about 5 chapters of this story on the laptop (with no internet) while I was away. Unfortunately for the readers, I will be departing to Egypt tomorrow so chances of another update in the next two weeks are at zero. I hope you enjoyed this chapter.

Chapter 12: Then the shape flew away at last

Due to Aurora's new bloods, a lot of prey was caught. Aurora could strike fast as an adder with sinuous movements. She flew so fast Amberlight had trouble keeping up. Aurora had dug at her scales with her strong and sharper than claws talons until it hurt. And it took a surprising amount of force to do so. Her scales were very good armour... and less fleas! But still, all of the animals she had transformed into were fast, but not strong enough to pin things down. For instance, if Aurora had merged with a constrictor snake, she would be stronger. if she had merged with an eagle, she would be stronger. But she was still unable of pinning anything except prey and cats down, the latter only possible in big cat forms.

She was unbelievably fast in both foot and wing, and could probably outrun or outfly anything in the country (except a cheetah). But she wasn't very strong. that was her main weakness. Aurora was still thinking about what that person in her dreams had said. Those who share bloods are nothing, little, or all of them. Aurora was convinced it meant she could transform into any animal she shared blood with. She supposed it would be the same sort of thing as transforming into different cats.

"There's a fat mouse by a hole. It went down the hole before I could catch it." Amberlight told her regretfully. Aurora sniffed the air.

"Yes... it's male, approximately twenty centimetres underground. Stay here, I want to try something." Aurora meowed, then padded down into a small alcove where the mouse had rested. Amberlight couldn't see her. Aurora searched her mind, and faint shadows of images of animals rushed through her head. Those that stood out the most were ones she used frequently, liked, or those most foreign to her body. The image of a wood pigeon made of smoke passed in her mind. A falcon made of smoke. A snake made of smoke. Mind images were usually smoky like that. Aurora 'dove' into the image of the snake, and felt the tingly feeling that enveloped her whenever she changed shape.

Aurora suddenly couldn't see very well. She could see better than snakes usually could, but still not very well. Her eyesight was equivalent to that of a human. Her sense of smell was even better than it was in her catforms, and there were tiny sparrow wing sized wings folded against her back, tiny feathers fanning on her tail tip. The sun glinted on her scales, which were the colour of polished silver, bright and metallic. her forked tongue flicked from her mouth and she tasted the scents of plump mouse. With a thin hiss Aurora slithered down the mousehole.

She smelt the mouse retreat, heard its frightened squeaks. Smelt its fear. She slithered faster, until the mouse was very close... Her neck twisted into the shape of an S, and then she struck. A small amount of venom seeped into the mouse, and it died quickly. Because she was still part cat, she was capable of holding and carrying the mouse instead of swallowing it, and so she picked it up and carried it up the tunnel, then slithered up some rocks and curled up about a meter behind Amberlight. Aurora hissed, and Amberlight jumped round. she was about to attack when the snake fanned her wings, and her odd blue eyes glinted with amusement. There was a very small crystal on the snake's forehead.

"Ssssurprised?" hissed Aurora. "I morphed into a ssssnake."

"Great Moonshell Aurora! What the shell have you done?!" Amberlight spluttered. (shell is an abbreviated version of Moonshell, used like we would use 'heck')

"Morphelinessss can turn into whatever they sssshare bloods with." Answered Aurora, turning into a falcon. She certainly looked odd as a falcon, her belly scales had no feathers on them. Aurora turned into a pidgeon, then back into her normal mixed snow leopard form. Aurora liked shapeshifting, but the sacrifice of pain that had to be made wasn't very pleasant. Aurora wondered if she would ever get any other forms, she certainly didn't want to be a rabbit or mouse. Nor a squirrel, sparrow, shrew, vole, and so on.

"How the shell did you work that out?"

"Falcon, pidgeon, and snake are in my smokeforms." Replied Aurora. Smokeforms were the hazy images of animals that were used to morph. Amberlight sighed.

"I think we have too much prey for the clan. let's call the day quits and have a sleep, they can't exactly say we have to hunt after we've got all this." She meowed, flicking her tail to indicate the pile of forty prey. Aurora grinned.

"I agree. Let's go fetch a patrol to bring back the food." Aurora replied.

"Better still, you fly to the camp and I'll guard the prey." Amberlight corrected. Aurora gave a curt nod before turning into a falcon, and zooming off to the ThunderClan camp at an incredible speed. Aurora was quite anticipating the clan's reaction to her metamorphosis.

"Falcon!" cried someone. Aurora smirked.

"Hide the kits!" Said another.

"and the young apprentices - that thing is huge!" Aurora suddenly noticed she was the size of a fish eagle, not a falcon. She grinned to herself and watched as all the playing kittens ran into the nursery. Warriors watched as Aurora descended with powerful flaps of her wings, and she landed on a rock and folded them. This surprised the cats, but a few made to attack. She held up her wings, and he crystal flashed.

"Peace, ThunderClan. I am no eater of your kits. I am Aurora." She growled, in cat language. They jumped. "Save your surprise. It is simply a Morpheline ability. Now, me and Amberlight have caught forty prey at snakerocks, we need help to bring it back."

"Forty? That will feed the clan for a week." Murmured one cat.

Aurora eventually got a patrol to come with her, and a little later she and Amberlight were dozing in the warrior den.

"hey you two, wake up. The gathering awaits news." Growled Brook, and the two abruptly got up. Tiredness never ailed them, so they could get up easily. Aurora morphed into her snake form and flitted around Amberlight's head before coiling around her neck and sitting there, deciding she would take a lift. Amberlight raised an eyebrow, but complied and acted as a bus for the little snake.

Aurora slipped off when they reached the lake, and swam happily through the water, liking the feeling of the water glancing off her scales. She turned into her cat form and walked dripping next to Amberlight, who took their place in the large clearing. She looked around. There were many more warriors than she had thought. maybe the clans had a chance after all.

"There's a lot of them." Commented Amberlight. Aurora nodded, and suddenly picked up a strange scent. Frowning, she sniffed again. It was WindClan scent, but had an undercurrent scent which only she could smell because of her good nose. It was Morpheline. She looked sharply at the cat from whom the smell came. It was a young tom who looked quite odd. He was black with fiery red stripes, not unlike Squirrelflight's fur colour. And he had a crystal.

"Amberlight! There's a half Morpheline over there. He smells part cat but look, he has a crystal." Aurora hissed to her friend, who quickly looked at him. "I'll see if he knows how to guard his mind. If he does, then he's a spy."

Aurora promptly sent out a tendril of thought to the cat. He looked uncomfortable as it touched his mind, but he didn't know what it was. she proceeded to scan his memories. She was rather surprised. She had heard about the sole Morpheline who had escaped, a strange coloured female named Keega. Or Blooming-moon in the old tongue. What a name to be cursed with! Keega was the mother of this cat, she had mated with a WindClan cat named Blazetail. She had another son besides Nightpaw, and his name was Crescentpaw.

"Keega is his mother. He knows nothing of his origin. But he needs to. He could play a vital part in this tale, the side of light could use him." Aurora whispered to her.

"I know what you mean. So it is agreed?" Amberlight asked. Aurora nodded.

"We join WindClan when the moon wanes."

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The fact that ShadowClan was not coming caused dissent, but Bramblestar insisted the other leaders tell their news before he explained. They all said it quickly, so they would hear this news of his.

"So, Bramblestar. Where has ShadowClan gone?" Growled Onestar.

"ShadowClan was destroyed by creatures worse than Blood Clan. They are very powerful... I do not much understand them. We have two of their outcasts here in our clan, they will explain. Aurora, Amberlight, please come onto a branch." Bramblestar meowed. A lot of murmurings appeared and swept through the cearing. ThunderClan was free of them. Aurora spread her wings and flew onto a branch, Amberlight climbed up to a branch beside her.

"Clans of the forest. I am Aurora, and beside me is m friend Amberlight. We were once a part of the tribe that plagues the forest, and it shames me to say that we assisted in the destruction of ShadowClan. Though understand, we have great reason to hate this species, because they tore our lives apart. The creatures call themselves Morphelines, and they are evil. Some of them are good, but are forced to do the killing of innocents. We managed to escape from them in the battle with ShadowClan. They think us dead." Aurora let Amberlight speak.

"The Morphelines have abilities that you could not hope to match. They can shift shape into any one of the great clan cats, you could be facing a cat then a tiger in the blink of an eye. If they walk into a shadow, you will not be able to see them. they are creatures of the night, and become invisible, unsmellable, unhearable whenever they step into darkness. There are two Morphelines which are more than just a mixture of many great clan cats. those two are Medothen, their leader, and Aurora who stands next to me." Aurora spoke again.

"To understand Morphelines, you must first understand the element called DNA. DNA is what makes you different from the cat sitting next to you. DNA is what makes up your looks, strengths, and body. Every drop of your blood is DNA. Every strand of your fur, even your saliva. The DNA of a Morpheline is very unstable. If they bit a twoleg, that twoleg would become a Morpheline because their DNA is the most different from that of a Morpheline, so unstable DNA in a twoleg causes them to change." Aurora meowed.

"How can you know that?" demanded some RiverClan cat. Aurora growled.

"Because me and Amberlight were once twolegs."

There was a huge uproar of yowls that did not stop. Aurora's crystal reddened, and she summoned the wild part within her, and opened her mouth wind. She let out the mighty roar of a lion, plunging the clearing into silence.

"Here I am, trying to make clear what doom you are in, so please SHUT UP." Aurora hissed. "As twolegs, me and Amberlight were happy. We lived only in fear of illness and evil twolegs. Then Morphelines bit us, transformed us, and took us from our homes. The pain of changing is indescribable. Worse than the pain of being shoved in a blazing fire. Ten times worse than giving birth. So great is the pain that you lead for death, anything to end the pain. Unfortunately, when you are transformed you survive, and the Morphelines force you to battle for them. Those who were once twolegs are disposable to Medothen. She sends untrained apprentices to destroy clans with a few warriors and one of her best warriors. All but that best warrior usually die on those missions. She is brutal."

"If the blood of another animal's blood were to enter the body of a Morpheline, then they would have another transformation, and gain a few points of that animal. For instance, Aurora has adder and falcon blood. Because of that, she can turn into those animals, but whatever form she takes, she has scales under her fur and she has wings. Aurora also has venomous fangs. Medothen only has wings, but she never learned how to use them so she can't fly. she is basically a normal Morpheline with huge power." Amberlight meowed, and Aurora turned into a falcon to demonstrate, then back again.

"The Morphelines so far have killed three groups of cats and uncountable numbers of twolegs. They destroyed ShadowClan, The Tribe of Rushing Water, and BloodClan." There were gasps. "They want territory, They want control over everything that lives. Twolegs cannot fight them, they will only get bitten and change into a body which they don't know how to use. Sometime soon, the Morphelines will attack you too. They want your territory, and if you move somewhere else, they'll hunt you down and kill you to take that territory too. The only thing you can do is fight, they can't transform you." Aurora meowed.

"But one problem, you'll have to fight together, or else you will all die. You have a chance... as long as you heed my advice. Do not wait for them to attack you, attack them first and catch them unawares. They do not know you have knowledge of them. Attack them in daylight, their power waxes and wanes with night itself. A untrained apprentice is only a cat, one of your warriors could defeat an untrained apprentice. A new warrior would take two, maybe three warriors to defeat. One of her generals, her best warriors, could probably take on ten of you. The best warrior, Shadow, would take fifteen. And Medothen herself could bring down twenty-five of you without too much energy spent."

Uproar. More uproar. Aurora sent a jet of psychic power to the ground. It created a small crater, silencing the crowd.

"It might be good for you to know that Morphelines never sleep. They don't need to, but sleeping makes them recover from wounds and illnesses faster. I'm bored, so I think me and Amberlight will leave now." With that, she turned into a snow leopard upon her flight from the branch, Amberlight sat grimly upright on her back. Aurora flew to the shelter of a tree inside ThunderClan territory, by the WindClan border and they slept there till dawn.

Chapter 13: But something was amiss

When Aurora woke it was as the sun left the ground, and she nudged Amberlight to wake her. With a silent message sent between them, they got up and headed for WindClan territory. It wasn't long before they ran into the Dawn patrol.

"What are you doing on our territory?" Asked one of the four, sounding quite nervous.

"We have a proposition." Growled Amberlight.

"ThunderClan is cruel to us. They hate us for what we are and scorn us. We noticed WindClan did not seem to hate us as much as the other clans, we want to join WindClan." Aurora meowed. They appeared shocked. "And I swear by Starclan we are not wanting to spy, or harm any of your number." She added.

After some time there was a reply. "We will take you to Onestar, and see what he says." growled the patrol leader.

-

There was a lot of wide-eyed whispering going on when the two Morphelines entered camp. They were led to a rather cosy hole which held a surprised WindClan leader.

"Ashfoot? What is this?" He demanded. The deputy bowed her head.

"the Morphelines want to join the clan. Apparently ThunderClan is very cruel to them. They have sworn in Starclan's name that they mean us no harm." Replied the black she-cat. Onestar studied them carefully.

"Why should I let you join?" He asked.

"For one thing, we can catch more prey than there are cats in your clan in a single day." Amberlight meowed.

"And I can fly much faster than rabbits. I think we would be rather useful to you." Aurora added. Onestar held her icy gaze for a while.

"Very well, you may join the clan."

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When the news was heard, very few spat at her. Most were just accepting, some welcomed them and some seemed anxious to make friends with them. Apparently the two half-Morphelines had been made warriors after the gathering. They were Nightflame and Crescentclaw. Crescentclaw was very unusually coloured, he was black with odd curving silver stripes, the shape of a crescent moon on his head, the space upwards. His eyes were green.

She and Amberlight managed to corner both brothers in the warriors den and talk to them.

"So, can you um, really inject poison like snakes?" Crescentclaw asked. As a reply, Aurora opened her mouth to display her large fangs, and let a drop of venom from one, sinking into the ground.

"Since i'm much bigger than snakes are, and i'm not fully snake, the venom isn't very strong and there isn't much of it. But, yeah, it's enough to add a bit of pain to an enemy's system. Problem is, it's a one use thing really, I have to regenerate my venom after using it, and that takes a long time" Aurora meowed/

Crescentclaw appeared fascinated. "And the scales?" Aurora licked aside her paw fur to display shining silver scales.

"Dig your claw on my leg. Don't worry, it won't hurt." Aurora said. he hesitantly tried to claw her leg, and felt his claws hit the scales, and slide off one. He suddenly found a large gap in which to spike his claw. Aurora winced slightly. "Yeah, that's the main weakness. Claws slide and then find the gaps, and I doubt enemy warriors would just prickle me." Aurora chuckled.

"Have you got any other animals in you?" Asked Nightflame to Amberlight.

"'Fraid not. I certainly don't want to have to have the transform pain again." Amberlight replied.

"Anyway, you two. I heard your mother was a loner." Aurora interrupted.

"Yeah... she did as the oldest cat that ever lived in the clans. She was thirty-two turns old." Crescentclaw meowed sadly. Aurora and Amberlight stood up.

"Come with us. We need to talk to you, and your clanmates cannot be allowed to hear." Aurora meowed. The two were puzzled, but followed the Morphelines into an abandoned badger sett. She let them be next to the exit so they knew they were not being cornered.

"Yes?" Asked Nightflame. He seemed uncertain.

"Us Morphelines can read minds. We also know of a certain thing which means whoever holds it is definitely a Morpheline." Aurora growled.

"Which is?" Asked Crescentclaw. Aurora extended a claw and tapped her crystal with it.

"These." She meowed. They seemed confused. Aurora sighed, then tapped both their crystals with her claws. Their eyes widened.

"Your mother was the only one apart form us to escape from the Morphelines." Amberlight told them.

"We're...we're Morphelines?" They breathed.

"You are half Morpheline But you have the abilities of a Morpheline, that much is clear because you have crystals. It would be a shame if you never fought the invaders with your true power. me and Amberlight will mentor you to use your abilities. I think you are not as strong as full Morphelines, because you do not vanish in shadow and your eyes do not glow in the dark. But you are almost stronger than your clan leader."

The two looked at each other, and sighed. "teach us, then."

And so, unknown to the clan, the two warriors learnt how to transform and use their psychic powers. They taught the warriors the MindTouchSymbols, the stars that appeared as information on whoever was contacting them. The old tongue was taught, as well as many other things. There was one lesson Aurora put a lot of weight on, it was the lesson about the Moonshell.

"What is the Moonshell?" Asked Nightflame.

"You have StarClan, only a fool would not believe they exist. Like a fool would believe the Moonshell does not exist. The moon is glowing rock, all the way through. But it has evil will, an evil aura, the moon is evil. Because the moon is not alive, it cannot act on its evil, but it does influence the way of things that it shines on. All that is evil is only so because the moon makes it so. And the Morphelines worship the moon. It is a simple fact that if the moon was destroyed, it would release all of its evil, like something that emerges when an eggshell shatters. Everything that the moon had shone on would become evil, and terror would rule."

"Such is the curse of the Moonshell." Amberlight finished.

Chapter 14: Stars are now fading each day

It was a week after Amberlight and Aurora had joined WindClan, and they were accepted much more than in ThunderClan. They had demanded to have them back for some reason, probably their hunting skills, and Onestar had replied: "If you can steal our warriors, we can steal yours," and Aurora and Amberlight chased them off.

Amberlight, who had had about fifty boyfriends as a human, was not trying to hide the fact that she had a very serious thing going on with Nightflame. It quite disgusted Aurora, they seemed to have no modesty, flirting in view of the whole clan.

But there was a simple truth that Aurora did not want to accept. Whenever she thought about Crescentclaw, her crystal was flooded with pink. She usually ended up being in a bad mood when this happened, because she had been the most anti-boyfriend girl in the school, and had never had these feelings for anyone. She didn't like it. luckily, disciplined Morphelines cold prevent their crystals from showing colour when they wanted, so Crescentclaw knew nothing.

Amberlight was currently hunting alone with Nightflame... so Aurora decided to hunt alone. Aurora was missing most of the prey, caught by wandering thoughts of Crescentclaw and ending up making some loud noise that scared off her targets. Without knowing it, she was getting quite close the WindClan border nearest to a town. Well, it was a small city, not a town. Aurora eventually decided to sit down and eat one of her mice, a shadow of a thought thinking that Amberlight and Nightflame were probably sharing prey.

In her thoughts, Aurora did not smell or hear the danger approaching. She was only aware of trouble when an object hit her scales. Aurora heard the gasp of surprise as it did not penetrate. Aurora sprang to her feet. there was a pungent odour she couldn't identify everywhere, making it impossible to smell what was there. She used her mind to identify five humans, and she sprang snarling for the nearest one. She didn't bite, not wanting to subject him to the pain she had felt. instead she gouged at him with her huge talons. She stood over his unconscious body for a second, using her mind to attack the mind of another human. Human minds were weak enough to attack.

The man who she had mind daggered gasped with pain and fell over, out cold. She felt something else glance off her scales. Then she felt something sharp pierce her wing, and she screeched in pain, writhing for a few seconds. then she fastened her teeth on the object and pulled it out, she was feeling strangely tired. Morphelines didn't get tired, this wasn't natural... She looked at the object with annoyance and horror.

Foxdung. She thought bitterly. A tranquilizer dart.

Then sleep enveloped her and she staggered, falling to the floor.

Aurora woke up with shell loads of wires attached to her.

"It's woken up already? STEVE! The thing woke up!" Barked a scientist, dressed entirely in white. Another man looked round.

"what?!" He blurted. "But we haven't even got a blood sample yet! They only just brought it in!"

Aurora was too sleepy to do anything for the moment except snarl, displaying huge fangs. Some men took notes. Aurora used her good eyesight to read them.

. Wings of a unknown species.

. Fangs like those of native adder.

Aurora scowled, and a bit of her fur shifted to reveal her crystal.

"what's that?" One murmured Another got a small wooden stick and poked it through the bars, and touched her crystal with it.

A unexplainable rage gripped Aurora, and all her weariness suddenly vanished and was replaced by fury. She snarled viciously, then bit and scratched at the stick until it was withdrawn. She suddenly felt a prick underneath one of her scales, and looked round to see a syringe filled with silver blood, her blood.

"how dare you, human." she growled. so quietly they couldn't hear that she was using their language. Then she roared, and silver light pulsed from her crystal in a circular wave, spreading through the room. then it vanished.

"Sir, all the machinery has lost 40 energy." reported one scientist to what looked like a manager. Aurora growled lowly and watched the person put her blood sample in a machine, which promptly began buzzing.

"What does it say?" Demanded the manager, seeing the scientist's perplexed look.

"The DNA has multiple groups, sir. There is wood pigeon, peregrine falcon, adder, domestic cat, and every single other kind of cat, including the big ones. And... the DNA is very unstable. It's so susceptible to mutation it's a wonder this thing is still alive." The scientist reported. The manager didn't miss the huge smirk that erupted on Aurora's face. He was quite unnerved by it.

"You!" he barked at another scientist. "Has the IQ scan completed yet?"

"No sir, almost." There was a beep. "Ah! Ah... Oh my God." he breathed. "IQ 140."

"What?!" Demanded the manager. "It's smarter than some humans! alright, whatever you are, if you understand me, make some sign of it." ordered the manager to grinning Aurora. then she opened her mouth and spoke in perfect English.

"Firstly, human, please acknowledge I am not an it. I am a she. Secondly, I thank you for realising there are actually creatures on this planet with the same IQ level as humans." Aurora replied. Everyone in the room was gob smacked. whatever they had expected, it wasn't that.

"Erm... hey, Steve, did it talk or am I just insane?" the manager asked the guy who had done the IQ scan.

"N-n-n-no sir... it t-t-t-t-talked!" Replied the stuttering scientist.

"I told you, I'm female, not an It!" Aurora growled.

"Someone go fetch the manager." Said the 'manager'. Someone darted off.

"Ah, I thought you were the manager. It seems not. Anyway, will someone please fetch me some food?" Aurora demanded.

"Erm... what do you eat?" Asked one.

"Meat. I am purely carnivorous. Fish, too. And don't cook it, it's disgusting cooked..." Aurora replied. Someone darted off. Meanwhile someone threw a slice of ham through the bars. "I told you, cooked meat is inedible!" Aurora snarled, and from her crystal flew a jet of silver light which hit the ham and exploded it. The manager suddenly entered.

"Okay, what's all this nonsense about that thing talking?" he asked. Aurora's eyes narrowed.

"You would be wise not to underestimate me, human. You might find yourself in unmatched agony." Aurora told him. He stumbled. Aurora read his mind. "Your name is Tom. You've had a wife, but you divorced her, you have no children. Correct?" Aurora asked. This time Tom fell over in shock.

"how... how..." He spluttered. Aurora threw back her head with a wild laugh. She morphed into her snow leopard form, it was just small enough to fit in the cage. she noticed the bars had big enough gaps for her to slither through as an adder.

"My species is psychic. We can read minds and manipulate psychic energy to destroy small and soft things like flesh and vegetation. Unfortunately, the energy isn't strong enough to blast through metal." Aurora said. "I suppose I'm a Mammal, my species name is Morpheline, and my name is Aurora. I chose it myself." She looked around. "Any questions?" She asked it like a teacher to pupils.

"Erm... can you change into anything smaller than a cat?" asked one scientist.

"Cats are the smallest feline, correct?" Aurora replied.

"Do you eat humans?" asked another.

"Nope. My snake genes conveniently make it so I only have to fill my stomach once a week with things like rabbits and mice. Sometimes I kill them with my venom." Aurora replied. "Oh, and if you can't see me in here without light, it is simply because Morphelines become invisible when exposed to shadow." Scientists took note. "now you have had your questions, may I leave? I will not harm your pathetic humans. I only fight when provoked, and when I fight things get nasty. Bloody. You get the picture."

"You cannot be released because you are classified as dangerous, and we must discover how you shapeshift." Said the manager. Aurora growled. it seemed she'd have to escape. The manager said something to a scientist she couldn't hear. He hurried from the room then returned, handing a flask with paper on top of it.

Dumb idiots, they want to milk my venom. Aurora thought, rolling her eyes. she observed the man put positively huge gloves on and take the flask. He put the flash through the bars and towards her mouth, when she did nothing he shoved the flask against her jaw, trying to provoke her. She merely watched with her eyebrows raised, a sceptical expression clear on her face.

Then he did something stupid. he touched her crystal. for unknown reasons, Morphelines couldn't stand their crystals being touched. it filled them with rage and possessed them to attack whatever had touched the crystal. Aurora snarled and roared, she pushed the flak from his hand and smashed it beneath her paw, not feeling the glass cut her pad. She scratched a lot of the glove material away, and before the manager could escape, bit his hand. Her fangs got through. Her saliva got through. Not good. Aurora's eyes had been red, and they suddenly returned to blue and she gasped.

"Moonshell! Quick, someone fetch painkillers, lots of them. Quick!" She gasped. Some people hurried off. Aurora watched wide-eyed as the manager fell on the ground, twitching, his mouth open in a silent scream. The transformation was starting, but the ain he felt now was a tingle compared to what he would feel in a minute.

"Is he poisoned? Will he die?" asked someone fearfully. Aurora stared at him a bit before speaking.

"No. Worse. He will want to die to end it... let us just say that soon you'll have another subject to experiment on." Aurora replied.

"What?!" Gasped someone. The person re-entered with painkillers.

"Shove three down his throat. He's in too much pain to take them, and it's nothing compared to what will happen next." Aurora ordered. her words were quickly obeyed, and soon after he had the painkillers he began gasping, and writhing on the floor. Aurora cringed, she crouched down in a curled up ball, trembling.

"What's the matter?" Someone asked her. She looked up for one heck of a surprise. It was her 34 year old brother!

"Great crud! Dan!" She gasped. He assumed it was her mind reading.

"what's the matter?" he repeated. Aurora took one look at the man who was turning silver, and a huge shudder rippled over her body.

"That happened to me." she said in a tiny voice. "I wanted to die. it hurts so much, I hate to see someone in such pain because I lost control." Aurora broke into sobs, much to her brother's surprise. Aurora covered her face with her wings and hugged her tail, trying to block out the screams. Inevitably, the memory and pain of her transformation returned and she sobbed harder.

The scientists were turning white as the manager turned silver, and small strands of black fur started sprouting on his skin. Scientists began throwing questions.

"What's happening to him?" They demanded.

"The DNA of a human is as far unlike my DNA as possible." Aurora replied in a shaky voice. "My DNA introduced to his system has triggered a mutation." the scientists were shocked to know she was so learned in the DNA element.

"What sort of mutation?" Asked Dan.

"he is turning into a Morpheline."

The room broke into shouts. Aurora cursed her good ears. Suddenly, the manager's growing tail became visible with a particularly loud yell of agony. The scientists watched in amazement and horror as his ears became pointed and furry, his face became a cat's. And he shrank to the size of a full grown cat. Aurora used mindtouch.

-I'm sorry, Tom. Morphelines go insane when someone touches their crystals. I'm sorry. You'll be okay now, the pain will go away, I'll help you...- After telling him that, Aurora used hypnosis to make him fall asleep.

"Maybe the adults take it worse than children. I certainly didn't have that much pain when I transformed." Aurora remarked.

"When you transformed?" Asked Steve suspiciously. Aurora flinched. Oops.

"I shouldn't have said that..." She muttered, then raised her voice. Everyone was listening. "I hope you're listening, Dan. I was human once, I was bitten by a Morpheline."

"Who were you?" asked someone. Aurora fixed her steely glare on her brother.

"My name was Aura Oaksworth."

Dan fell over, gasping. He got up and scrambled over to her cage. "Really?!" He exclaimed. Aurora frowned.

"Yes, brother. For all those years you are older than me, you are certainly surprisingly stupid." Aurora replied with a touch of amusement. she'd said that to him so many times... She used mindtouch. -Tell no one, but Molly was also transformed. I live with her in the wild now. It is... harsh. if you do not kill then you starve. If you do not fight you are killed. my senses have sharpened and I have grown quicker and stronger, I am a warrior now. Think your answers and I'll hear them.-

Erm... can you hear this?

-Yes, I can.-

Aura... I'll help free you. Come home...

-My name is Aurora now, brother. I cannot come home. I have ties other than those of family.-

What ties?

-I have clan loyalty to consider. me and Amberlight live with wildcats now. And erm...- For the first time, Aurora thought of her crush on Crescentclaw, and for once did not hate it. For the first time, she embraced it. She knew that Crescentclaw liked her. A lot. So much was clear from the bright pink colour his crystal showed when he saw her. -And a possible mate pending.-

Oh. That's... unlike you. But anyway, I'll help you escape tonight.

-Thanks, but no need. I can escape easily on my own. you didn't think I'd tell these fools how I could escape?-

How can you escape?!

-Those who share blood are nothing, little, or all of a form.-

What the heck? Suddenly, Aurora felt a psychic mind contact her. It was a normal psychic. on closer inspection, it was Amberlight.

-Aurora! where the shell are you?!-

-In a human laboratory. They made convenient use of tranquiliser guns.-

-Oh. That isn't good. Where is it? I'll come an rescue you.-

-You don't need to. They put bars on my cage, the silver adder will escape today.-

-Crafty snake. You know, Crescentclaw's been worrying his tail off. I think he likes you.-

-Tell me something I don't know. He's practically devoted to me... it's quite embarrassing actually. Anyway, anything new? Your consciousness feels different...-

-Oh, yeah. We were driving off a fox and its blood got in a cut. I'm part fox now. I didn't grow nay new limbs so it didn't hurt nearly as much as the first transformation.-

-Lucky. I suppose you don't look much different because you're practically fox colour anyway.-

-Yep... everyone here is scared, they all expect Morpheline to jump out from every bush. Tension everywhere.-

-Mmm, there's a lot of that going around.-

Chapter 15: And nightmares become reality

Aurora exited the mindtouch to find every scientist staring quizzically at her.

"Sorry Dan, but this is necessary." Aurora apologised, then used her mind to knock out all the humans. She turned into a snake and slipped out between the bars. Morphelines can't do that to cats. Aurora thought to herself, then turned into a lion and whacked her paw against a window, shattering it. She had cut her pad doing so, but she was free so it didn't matter. She became a pigeon, even someone who was up at such a late hour would find nothing strange about a pigeon. Aurora flew high, trying to get a bearing of where she was. The moors were due far east from where she was, Aurora tried to spot her old home.

She saw the little house she had once lived in, and saw the tree she and Amberlight had climbed with a pang of sadness. Then, a way away from that, she saw the zoo. It was a big zoo, full of interesting animals. A thought sparked in Aurora's mind, and she flew into the zoo, swiftly changing into a falcon. There was no staff about, and most of the animals were asleep. Some of them were more active than she had seen them before. She spied the wolf enclosure, and chuckled, flying over to it.

She descended quietly into the exhibit, and approached the mother timber wolf who had her cubs next to her. Aurora flew close to the sleeping beast, and slashed her talon through her skin, flying away with the blood clinging to her talon. She landed one footed in a small tree, then let the blood drip into her injured foot. This actually didn't hurt, no more than getting a nasty gash on the shoulder. She supposed it was the pain Amberlight had had, lucky devil. Aurora's fur grew much longer, and her muscles stronger, and her snout a tin bit longer. She then flew off to get a good few other animals to merge with...

--------

Aurora had got a little carried away with the merging. She had sensibly refrained from merging with a giraffe, not really wanting a neck longer than her body. She kept to animals that wouldn't induce huge changes, and so didn't make her look different at all. Aurora was particularly proud of her fennec and harpy forms, mainly because she liked fennecs so much and because harpies were so powerful. In the wild, harpies carried off sloths for their food! her wings were tipped in pure white now, thanks to the harpy. There were webs between her toes, thanks to an otter, and her tail was much stronger than before, thanks to a weird monkey. She had merged with a monkey that had a 'fifth limb' which was actually its tail, it could support its whole weight from a branch with its tail, thus Aurora could as well.

Oddly, some of her new forms were not silver, like the fennec, jackal, and harpy. They kept their normal colours. Beige for the fennec, beige and black for the jackal, and black and white for the harpy. She adored her fennec form, fennecs had been one of her favourite animals. They were like mini foxes with huge ears. Aurora chose the harpy form to fly out of the zoo and towards the WindClan border with the strength of wings that could lift a goat. She landed directly on the border, taking her fennec form. She suddenly smelt three cats. Well... one that smelt like fox and cat and two cats. Amberlight!

Aurora barked happily and ran up to her, recognising Crescentclaw and Nightflame. They bristled, while Amberlight looked at her curiously.

"It's a fennec. I guess one escaped from the zoo." She remarked. Meanwhile, Aurora walked closer, and her crystal flashed with laughter. All three Morphelines stopped dead. "You never told me you could turn into a fennec!" Amberlight meowed indignantly, turning into a bright orange fox. In reply, Aurora turned into a large timber wolf, then removed the wings from the fur in which they had been hidden. Aurora then turned into her extravagant cat form and purred at Crescentclaw.

None of them had expected her to purr. Aurora, the emotionless cat, purr?

-Hey, Crescentclaw, I finally woke up and realised that love isn't so bad.- Aurora said in Crescentclaw's mind, whos crystal immediately turned pink. Aurora laughed, turning into a wolf and playfully batting Crescentclaw over with her paw that was big as his head.

"What's with the sudden friendliness?" Amberlight questioned, helping Crescentclaw up (who was beaming).

"I woke up." Answered Aurora, her eyes shining happily. "By the way, if you're wondering, I paid a visit to the zoo."

Amberlight gasped. "Please tell me you didn't merge with a giraffe!" She begged.

"Don't worry, I didn't. But now I've got a new element to thrive in, that makes three. Land, sky, water." Aurora replied.

"Just what animals did you merge with?" Amberlight questioned, her voice lined with exasperation.

"Otter, fennec, jackal, timber wolf, harpy, red panda, some sort of five limbed monkey, polar bear, komodo dragon, artic fox, and a gazelle." Aurora replied. They were all dumbstruck for a while.

"So that's where you got those from." Realised Amberlight.

"What?" Aurora asked.

"Horns." Replied the half vixen.

"You what?" Asked Aurora incredulously, feeling her head with her incredibly long tail. Sure enough, there were two gazelle horns behind her ears. That's why her ears had felt funny! "Huh, oh well. Extra weapon."

"Shell, Aurora, but you've got a lot of animals to turn into..." Amberlight commented. "I envy you the harpy."

"fancy growing wings?" Inquired Aurora. "Once you've got wings, it doesn't hurt at all to merge with other birds."

"Erm, no thanks!" Replied Amberlight hastily, and laughing, they all went to the WindClan camp, where the warriors were sleeping. The four lied down in the warriors den, and after a while Aurora's sharp ears detected soft paw prints. She smelled, and found out that Nightflame and Amberlight were sneaking off. Aurora shuddered, and sat up. The two were already gone. Who knew what they were doing so late at night? Aurora had an idea. Crescentclaw sleepily sat up too.

"Where have the others gone?" he whispered.

"They sneaked off. We don't need to ask StarClan what they're doing." Aurora replied, with another shudder. Crescentclaw's eyes widened, and he lied down again.

"I know what you mean... unfortunately." he meowed. "Changing the subject, how did you know I...you know." He asked unexpectedly.

"For one thing, your crystal turned pink every time you looked at me. Quite honestly, if I hadn't been hiding it mine would have been pink too." Aurora replied jokingly. His eyes widened again.

"Amberlight said you'd mastered telekinesis flawlessly, but I had no idea you were that good! We all thought you were just emotionless, not that you could actually hide your Gemcolours!" he exclaimed.

"Shut up, you'll wake the others!" Aurora hissed. "Yes, my lack of muscle is amended by my psychic ability. I take pride in that."

"You should do." he murmured, and Aurora saw his crystal flash in a colour of silver and pink, admiration and love. Aurora felt an unexpected surge of affection, and through habit prevented it from reaching her crystal, then she relaxed, and the emotion flowed in brilliant pinks through her crystal.

"I was almost forgetting how to show emotion." Aurora admitted, her crystal sparkling. Crescentclaw yawned.

"Well, today was weird, but we'd better get some sleep while the moon still shines." He meowed, and he promptly fell asleep. Aurora cringed as the den went quiet, so her ultra sensitive ears picked up rather unpleasant sounds. She flattened her ears against her head to block them out, then put herself under hypnotism to get to sleep.

They woke up with Nightflame and Amberlight next to them. Aurora sighed, her sharp nose detecting the slightest change in Amberlight's scent. She knew that Amberlight had always been a grab-every-boy-I-like girl, but she'd never thought-

Such thoughts were better left unthought of, especially when you were a teenager by human eyes.

Nightflame had walked out to get the four breakfast before anyone could realise he was awake. Crescentclaw was still asleep, and Amberlight was looking at Nightflame walk off. Aurora walked closer to her. Amberlight jumped, then relaxed.

"Oh, it's you. Morning Aurora. You made me jump." She meowed, looking innocent as ever.

"hello Amberlight. I'm surprised you aren't tired, especially after last night." Aurora teased. Amberlight's eyes widened.

"Aurora!" She wailed.

"You should remember I can hear a pin drop a kilometre away, and if an ant farted, I'd know about it." Aurora reminded. "Oh, and by the way ,congratulations, you're pregnant."

"How do you know?"

"Firstly, I can smell it. Secondly, if you checked you'd sense two young minds alongside yours, and two more beating hearts." Aurora replied. Amberlight brightened.

"I can't wait to tell Nightflame!" she announced. "Y'no, I think Morphelines would make pretty good medicine cats, because we can sense bacteria and pregnancies and stuff. It's not really my thing though." Amberlight had suddenly fixed Aurora with an iron stare. She knew that Aurora had always been interested in herbology, and how wild plants could heal you.

"Good idea, it'll give me something to do, at least." Aurora commented. "Apparently Barkface wants an apprentice. But I think that kit, you know, Featherkit, wants to be a medicine cat."

"Well, I'm sure that since you've started to really like Crescentclaw you won't want to be prohibited a mate. You could have him teach you, but you'd stay a warrior." Amberlight replied.

"True. I'm off to try and get a teacher, see you in a bit." Aurora meowed, then turned into a fennec and ran off into the medicine cat den. Barkface tensed at the unknown creature, then relaxed when he saw the wings.

"Oh, it's you, Aurora. How can I help you?" He asked.

"I want to get medicine cat training. I want to know the medicine cat way, but stay a warrior. I'm interested in healing a lot, and I'm not squeamish at all. But I don't want to have to be deprived of a mate." Aurora meowed firmly. Barkface was looking very unsure. "I'd be quite useful, since I can smell if a cat is even starting to get ill and can sense if they're pregnant. Amberlight is pregnant, by the way." Aurora added.

"Another Morpheline thing, I suppose? It's never been done before... we can ask Onestar." Barkface meowed gruffly, then promptly ran off to the leader's den. He returned some time later, and nodded at her questioning look. "He says yes. So, where should we start?"

-------------

It was mainly from her rather good memory and IQ that Aurora learned much faster than any apprentice had before. Aurora had informed Barkface that Morpheline young only took about two weeks to develop and be born, which was a good explanation for why Amberlight was quickly growing bigger than Bramblestar.

During the days that passed Aurora became surprisingly close to Crescentclaw, and him to her. They were closer than Amberlight and Nightflame had been when... erm... that night had occurred, and Amberlight was constantly teasing Aurora by her slowness in relationships, which Aurora replied with taunts about how fast she took her relationships.

Aurora learned practically everything about herb lore in two weeks, by which time Amberlight still hadn't birthed.

"How much bigger is Amberlight going to get?" Asked Crescentclaw softly one night, when the huge cat and her mate were asleep.

"I have no idea. probably about as big as her fox form." Aurora joked. Crescentclaw licked her ear, and Aurora purred happily, licking his ear in return. Aurora felt one of her gazelle horns with her tail, feeling it was still satisfyingly sharp. she looked at Crescentclaw, and suddenly a powerful instinct surged through her, warming every drop of her silver blood. Aurora's blue eyes glowed, literally, they glowed. Then the pupils disappeared, and her eyes glowed more brightly. Aurora suddenly stood up, and walked out of the den, emotion still gripping her.

Crescentclaw seemed to be in the same state, and both of them walked out into the territory as the frosty glare of the moon failed to chill the emotions that ran wild.

Chapter 16: As the Balance now crumbles away

Much to Aurora's relief, both Amberlight and Nightflame were asleep when they returned. Nightflame refused to be removed from Amberlight while she slept with the queens. Crescentclaw nudged her.

"Checked yourself? You'd better do that, since my psychic energy isn't quite strong enough for lifescans." He murmured.

"Personally, I don't think I could levitate a leaf, let alone perform a lifescan. I'm exhausted, and i've not been exhausted since the battle with ShadowClan." Aurora replied jokingly, touching her left wingtip to his shoulder. "I'd sleep in a box, a human nest, anything! Just give me some sleep."

And so Aurora stumbled to her nest with Crescentclaw, who fell asleep before he'd even lied down, thus landing in a rather awkward position. Aurora used telekinesis to move his leg from under his belly, then lied down herself. Before she let her mind command herself asleep, Aurora looked at silverpelt, and shivered. Was it just her, or were some of the precious stars dimming? Something was wrong...

That was her last thought before sleep enveloped her.

"The Betrayal has passed!" Said something.

The voice seemed both telekinetic and vocal, a clear but low voice, echoing through a valley she could not see.

"The Balance crumbles again under the evil that pulses stronger. Only the chosen can fix it now. Time is no longer an asset."

Who was it? Familiar... but... who? No, this voice... it wasn't familiar, what had she been thinking? There was no familiarity in this voice. Actually, that tone sounded slightly familiar... No! It wasn't familiar! Something was messing with her head.

"Will light choose to fade, or shall it decide to rise to the rainbow? All is the choice of a heart twice broken. The promise cannot be be mended until the weight of a destiny is realised, and souls once forgotten are relayed by the morning at dusk."

Familiar... who was it? An echo of a previous time, in her childhood, perhaps? It felt like that... but not... no... no... what was wrong?

"Only a heart twice broken, once dead, can restore the promise. The Chosen is not complete. Disaster must occur for everything to be saved, else all will perish in darkness."

No! No! It wasn't real! This was a dream... disasters would not happen, not ones that would destroy everything... the Night Demons could destroy all fauna on the planet, but all else would remain! They would not perish... they would not die like this...

"Souls must be torn forever. Souls must be torn then mended by the withering demon. Tragedy will strike again, but the Chosen must not falter... or we will all die. Soon, the stars will not be able to contain the evil that pulses in the sky. We are not enough when the Balance is so broken..."

What was happening? She had a sort of half knowledge, she was hearing this voice and partly understanding in a way she could not explain. She knew... she knew without question that if everything was normal, then this voice would be making no sense... But there was some part in the back of her mind, like a best friend forgotten forever... some part of her keened in recognition at the ominous and senseless words that echoed here, in this silver world.

But it wasn't her. Or was it? too similar... How can the energies and psychic trace of any two be identical when each is unique? Some part of her recognised and understood these words... remembered a memory that had never happened. Was she being possessed? It couldn't be so... never. Not even the best psychics who join forces with elements could be nearly strong enough to possess... it was a simple fact, it would kill them.

Suddenly, in the midst of the silver world she heard a voiceless scream, a yell of agony that had no sound, no note, no noise. Everything was fading... she suddenly saw a flash of light and heard a sound similar to the shattering of pottery, but at such a great magnitude that it would shake the universe itself... drive everything good from all with life... the universe would be plunged into darkness, and stars would never shine again...

-No!- she yowled, with all the grief and anger and passion she had in her heart. Then everything vanished, like mist under the sun, and she woke up.

That... had been scary... almost real. Unlike all the other dreams she had had as a human, these ominous, prophetic dreams stayed with her, always. StarClan tormented her often, they came to her in dreams. She had met many deceased warriors, Bluestar, Lionheart, Firestar... They all told her of a great sadness she would face, and they didn't tell her what would happen. They just told her that she couldn't let it destroy her, tormented her with this lack of knowledge they forced upon her... Subconciously, Aurora bared her fangs.

Sometimes, the sheer impossibility of everything caught up to her. Her scales were soft, and slowed her down anyway. Her tail was very sensitive, apart from her crystal, was her greatest weakness, even if it was useful. She was determined to oppose the Morphelines, clinging on to that impossible thread of hope that a miracle would occur, that Medothen would die forever... Medothen was too powerful, Aurora knew too well that she was a hundred times stronger than her, and surpassed her greatest advantage too - speed.

Medothen could not be defeated. All her efforts would eventually be nothing, and Medothen would dismiss her life with a single strike of her paw... she could do it, too. With the speed and power behind her blows, Aurora's small body built for speed could not endure it. But that didn't mean that Aurora would bow down to her will, she would die fighting, like any true warrior. She would not submit.

She felt as if there was someone else, another person, smaller and weaker than the tiniest kit cheering her on. She blinked. No, she had not imagined it. There really was another heart beating with her own! She was expecting a single kit. Morphelines always had small litters, just like big cats. Aurora suddenly found herself wishing that she'd merged with some sort of rodent to increase her litter number. Oh well.

"Crescentclaw." Aurora meowed quietly, whacking the warrior over his head with her tail. He scrambled to his feet, clumsily.

"Ow! Why in the name of StarClan's purple lake did you do that?!" He demanded. Crescentclaw was well known for his... interesting curses and things.

"Because i'm expecting, and didn't even need a lifescan." Aurora replied. It seemed to take a while for him to register this. He eventually emmitted a small, questioning squeak. "Yes, you're a father. Don't go blabbing it everywhere or i'll psyblast you." Crescentclaw gulped, knowing the threat was genuine.

His mate's psyblasts never did much damage, but because she had mastered her energy so efficiently Aurora could concentrate a thin beam of energy about as thick as her crystal to hit something. If that thing happened to be of flesh and blood then it would leave an odd pearly burn that would take a long time to disappear, causing very mild but constant pain in the three weeks that it remained.

"Nai Kaza in thriruu." Aurora muttered, in the Old Tongue of the morphelines. It meant quite plainly: My energy shalt not wither, Kaza being the word for Energy. Idu was the word for normal energy, the sort of energy that while possessed prevented fatigue. Kaza was the psychic energy that only those or magic or great fortune could possess. "Nai idu tenula ma kohs, li nai Kaza in thriruu." This meant: My lifeforce may die, but my Energy shalt not wither.

Everyone knew how much pride Aurora took in her psychic powers, she often told him how for other Morphelines the saying went: 'My Energy may die, but my lifeforce shalt not wither'. Really, Crescentclaw hoped that neither Kaza nor idu would die in his mate, but sayings would be sayings.

"Anyway, you go tell Amberlight and your brother. Something's been bugging me, and I need to figure out what it is. Don't expect conversation from me for the rest of the day, i'm going out." Aurora meowed, then abruptly turned around and walked out of the den, swiftly flying over to the woodland area of the territory.

Aurora found a clearing, and there she trained her telepathic skills. She worked them as she would her muscles, if she had been a muscly cat. She did small activities at first and made them larger as she became strong enough to cope with them. She lifted objects with her mind, ranging from small pebbles to large branches in the span of the single day. She returned to the camp at dusk, feeling some strange significance in the silvering sky. As she passed the elder's den, something strange happened.

"That silver Morpheline looks a lot like the legendery Northlight." It was Morningflower's voice. Something strange indeed. At that name, Aurora's ears twitched and flicked over to the elder automatically, and she had a sudden impulse to turn around as if her name had been called. Something about this Northlight interested her greatly, though she could not explain what or why. She strode silently over to the elder, and bowed her head respectfully beofre sitting down.

"Hello Morningflower. If I may ask, who is Northlight?" Aurora asked politely, quietly.

"Northlight is the main character of a story I tell a lot. I had a dream about it and remembered, and decided it was a good story for the elder kits and apprentices. They love it." Morningflower replied, her eyes twinkled as she said the next part. "But no warrior is interested in kit stories anymore."

"They may call me what they want for it, but I am indeed interested in this tale." Aurora replied, again in that same quiet emotionless tone. It did not belong to her, she thought she had buried that tone ages ago. Something about the tone seemed familiar and scared her.

"That tone is like Northlight's too! Alright, get comfortable, it's a long story." Morningflower meowed, and Aurora obediently got into a more comfy position. She nodded at Morningflower to start.

And the story began.

----------

The story of Northlight had been told often by the elders in the clans in the fifty turns after everything had began, when silverpelt was nothing more than four lone stars. Northlight was quite small, and her fur was silver as the stars in silverpelt. She was very fast, and could outrun almost everything, even rabbits. It was commonly known that she had joined WindClan as a five moon old kit, lost and confused, not remembering anything about her past. the ThunderClan elders say she joined Thunderclan, the RiverClan elders RiverClan, and the ShadowClan elders said she joined them. Because of this, no cat knows which clan she joined. But her legacy was great.

It was also known that Northlight found a friend of great value to her, a cat named Goldenray. Goldenray was predictably a gold coloured cat, and she and Northlight shared a bond closer than any bond existing. Stronger than the bond that mates share, stronger than the bond of a queen to her kits. They were soul mates, and would die for each other or suffer the most horrible torture for each other.

Northlight had nightmares that she didn't understand, those nightmares tormented her, giving her knowledge in the form of a question that tortured her because she never learned its answer. It wasn't the only thing amiss though. Again, no cat knows which clan sired it, or even if they were female ot male, but there was an evil cat. A cat more evil than DarkClan itself, a cat that seemed to be the very source of evil, or at least controlled by it. This cat grew stronger than everyone, and became strong enough to take nine lives of a leader with a single blow of their paw.

This cat's name was Kula. No cat knew why they did not have a clan name, but then, no cat knew if they had actually been born in a clan or not.

---------

At the mention of the word Kula, Aurora went rigid with shock. Kula was Old Tongue for Moonshell, or the Root of Evil. This story was somehow spooking her... a lot. She forced herslef to relax, and continued to listen.

--------

Kula was not a clan leader, or even deputy, but it built an army from cats almost as evil as itself, cats that, like Kula, seemed to have no origin. With this army, Kula drove out a clan. No cat knows which clan it was, but something was wrong. Some of the stars had begun to fade away when that clan was driven out, and things started to go wrong. Back then, the clans were huge because they did not fight amongst themselves, the biggest fight that ever happened was a border fight.

But when the stars started fading, for some reason the clans fought and killed each other in battle, tainting the forest with blood and rage. And Kula laughed. The battles became increasingly violent, until Northlight realised what was happening. With one of the clans gone, things could not function properly, they balanced each other out, and that balance was fading, and that was why the battles had started.

---------

The Balance! StarClan had meant Morningflower to tell her this story... Aurora was sure of it.

---------

Northlight had been plotting to kill Kula, even though she knew she was not strong enough to defeat them. She planned to defeat Kula with Goldenray. Then something terrible happened, Goldenray was killed, and Northlight became quite out of her mind. Her soul had been ripped apart, she knew that Goldenray was dead because of her, and because of that, Northlight wanted to die. It took a long time for Northlight to become sensible again, but after that she was forever changed.

Northlight was never as friendly or pleasant again, and even her own mate could do nothing to ease her pain. In the end, Northlight confronted Kula. She confronted Kula, and looked into its eyes. A unexplainable fear came over her then, and she fled, no one ever saw her again. But the rest of the clans attacked Kula together, and after much effort and lost lives, Kula was killed. The clan was taken back to its territory, and the battles between the clans subsided.

They had stopped the balance between the four clans to disappear forever, but because it was already quite maimed, things were never the same again. There ahve been rivalries between the clans to this day. StarClan told the medicine cats that they had given Northlight a choice. She could choose not to defeat Kula, and it would eventually die somehow, but there was no telling how damaged the balance between the clans would be.

Apparently, if Northlight, StarClan's chosen cat, had defeated Kula, then the balance would be instantly mended, and peace would exist again. But Northlight fled, and so the balance was never restored completely, Northlight had betrayed them all.

------

"Th...That was a very good story, Morningflower. A bit dismal, but good. I can tell you for a fact that StarClan sent you that dream, they wanted you to tell that story. You should be honoured they chose you, this dream is more important than you realise. I'm tired again, i'm not used to that, being a Morpheline. I think it was my telekinetic exercise. Thank you." Aurora felt dizzy as she walked away.

Some part of her twinged in realisation and satisfaction as if she had worked something out, she knew she had. Waht she didn't know was what she had worked out. Sighing, Aurora ignored the calls of her friends and stumbled into the warrior den, and went to sleep instantly without dinner.

The plot thickens more! Can anyone guess something yet?Chapter 17: And here ends my poem

The story continues...

Two days later, Aurora woke up without Amberlight there. Strange, where had she gone?

-Hey, Nightflame, have any idea where Amberlight is?- Aurora asked him telepathically.

-Nope. She not there?- Nightflame replied.

-No- Aurora said simply.

-Hmm, wait a sec, i'll ask Crescentclaw.- Aurora waited patiently, bored. -No, he hasn't seen her either. Meet us at the Cloud Pine to look for her.-

And the telepathy ended. The Cloud Pine was a lone pine tree that grew on its own in the WindClan dales. Aurora gathered up the un Morpheline friends she and Amberlight had made and took them to the Cloud Pine. Those cats were Wildflower, a small brown she-cat with silver paws and stripes, and a michevious personality. There was Flarefire, a large ginger tom with a haughty air, there was Mellowleaf, a timid she-cat who had absolutely no reason to be timid when she was strong enough to pin Aurora down in snow leopard form. Mellowleaf was brown like her sister Wildflower, but was speckled with tawny spots. Flarefire's mother had been Whitetail, his father unknown.

They were all good friends, and loyal to their clan. mellowleaf was small, but strong as Bramblestar. Flarefire's brains were his muscles, and he had no common sense at all, thus he needed instructions more than once in every battle. Wildflower's strengths came with trickery, she fought her enemy with deceptive clumsiness and seemed completely unable to fight, and every move she made she disguised with top subtlety to make it look like an accident, and eventually her opponent would be forced to give up, thouroughly humiliated. Aurora approved of this deceptive style of fighting, though she could never do it herself (mainly because she demanded respect a lot) she found the style clever and quite amusing.

Wildflower had been levitated and carried that way by Aurora, since she was so small it was within her Kaza strength. Mellowleaf and Flarefire sat on her broad lion back, not saying anything as Aurora soared high above the hills. Wildflower and Mellowleaf loved, Flarefire didn't give a Moonshell. Thee four met with the other two Moprhelines, and on an unspoken agreement followed Aurora to one side of the territory, searching there first. Aurora was startled when a bundle of golden feathers tackled her, its superior strength bowling her over easily. Aurora instantly recognised the scent.

"AMBERLIGHT!" She bellowed.

"Where the shell have you been?" Crescentclaw demanded.

"Why didn't you tell us you were going out of the territory?" Nightflame added, smelling the foreign scents on his mate.

"And WHAT did you do to yourself?!" Aurora finished.

Amberlight had wings, and the traditional feather fan on her tailtip. But she was also covered in feathers from head to tail, feathers that grew on her. They were golden, like the colour of her fur which remained to fill the gaps between her feathers, and they were covered with uncountable markings of black and white. Like Aurora had white wing tips from the harpy.

"I visited the local zoo, and then its aviary. I merged myself with every bird I liked... heck I like the osprey." Amberlight told them.

"OSPREY?!" Aurora yowled. "When did they get one of those?! Lucky kinta." (Kinta means Moonchild, in mythology the first moonchild was the one who came closest to breaking the moonshell. To call someone a kinta in this way is a way of calling them 'lucky as hell')

"Hehe, yeah. Now i'm Avia Amberlight. I know who I am. Amberlight is my clan name, Avia is my Name." Avia said. A Name was basically the name that a Morpheline must know to be complete. It did not hold any imporance except that. Some were lucky enough to be given their Name at birth, but this was rare. Only Medothen was given her Name at birth, she lived up to it. Aurora couldn't help but wonder if she was a Moonchild. Aurora had been lucky enough to give herself her Name.

"Good for you, Avia. It suits you. C'mon, let's get us back to camp."

-----------------

(A week later)

"You okay, Aurora?" Avia asked. "You always seem worried about something."

The rising sun grew brighter and brighter, sending its glimmering rays through the gaps in the bracken, making Aurora blink. The nursery was well protected. At Avia's words, Aurora found herself drifting into her subconcious thinking that had plagued her recently.

I can feel it coming. Powerful psychics can sense when something is wrong, they are more tuned to nature than any others. And something is going terribly wrong. A black shadow descends upon the world... not just the clans, something threatens the existance of everything. But what is it? What is worse than the Morphelines?

Aurora shook her head violently, clearing her head of her oppression. "Something evil approaches, my sense tells me. But I can't be sure... I have an idea, I hope i'm wrong. I won't tell anyone until I know what i'm saying." Aurora shook her head again, failing to thwart the frustration building within her. She built up her Kaza and fired it from her crystal at a small twig in the form of a thin silver blast. The twig was alight for a second with silver fire, then that fire dimmed as the twig became ash.

After raising her Kaza to a new level, Aurora had been able to create an attack of her own invention, namely psyblasts. Psyblasts were a thin beam of silver light as thick as her crystal (one centimeter and a half) that had a number of effects. If hitting something small, the object would be burned by psychic flmaes until there was nothing left to burn, then it would extinguish. The psyblasts never missed, because they were psychic energy and directed via telepathy. If hitting something large like a cat, it would create an odd pearly burn that would provide mild pain for the victim throughout the three long weeks it took to disappear.

Aurora still didn't know all of the psyblast secrets, but for now she knew all she had to, and using them was for some reason a incredibly effective way to vent frustration.

"That bad huh?" Avia asked, then winced. "Ouch!" Aurora peered at her, and noticed a ripple pasing over her body. Aurora felt a small tingle of unexpected pain rippling over her too, and she too winced. The ripples did not stop, but instead seemed to focus the pain on her abdomen, and Aurora realised... they were contractions! Avia caught the drift of the thought, and began yelling.

"Hey! Whoever happens to hear! Go fetch Barkface and our mates, me and Aurora are kitting in here!" Avia yowled, and immediately Whitetail zoomed over to them, leaving Frostkit and Icekit behind. The requested cats didn't take long to arrive, as well as a crowd of warriors who waited outside the nursery.

"You both are kitting early, brace yourselves, this would be the most painful part." Barkface murmured, and the two birthing queens obeyed. Aurora felt a faint wave of pain wash over her. Granted, it was worse than what had made her wince earlier, but why did she have to brace herself? Avia seemed to be thinking the same thing, and was looking puzzled as her. Meanwhile, both Barkface and all the she-cats tat had given birth before looked even more puzzled than them.

"What?" Aurora demanded.

"Erm... it's nothing... aren't you supposed to be yowling in pain or something?" Featherpaw, the medicine cat apprentice asked.

"With this pain? Are you mousebrained? The twoleg-Morpheline transformation hurts a hundred times worse than this!" Aurora hissed impatiently.

"Okay..." Whispered one warrior to another. Aurora jerked her tial to point at him.

"Shut up or i'll psyblast you! Nai inu fa jhui, na nai Kaza tylfa uxyl." That last part was in the old tongue of the Morphelines, meaning my lifeforce may die, but my Energy will never fade. Energy, in morpheline times is the psychic energy that made them what they were, that was Kaza.

"Maybe it doesn't hurt to us because we've had pain such as growing wings and transforming." Avia comforted. Aurora nodded thoughtfully. That certainly seemed logical enough. All the she-cats that had given birth before were suddenly filled with a strange respect for the two. They had felt more pain than was fair for their age. Suddenly, Aurora experienced a very odd feeling in her abdomen. Realising it was a kit, she used her Kaza to help it out. The kit didn't take long to get out, but Aurora realised dimly that it was not alive.

"Stillborn." She murmured, and gave the kit the first and only lick it would ever have before turning to Avia. "I can help you birth if you like, that's what I did with me." Aurora offered.

"'Kay." said Avia glumly, disappointed that Aurora would not be a mother with her. Aurora used her psychic energy to help Avia's young get out. She was very surprised at their shape...

"Erm, Avi? Those offspring don't seem to be like kits." Aurora told her, using her nickname. Avia just looked at her, puzzled and watched sheepishly as she gave birth to two EGGS. One was a fiery shade of ginger and the other golden like its mother's fur and feathers.

"Hehe." Avia laughed nervously. "I guess that's what happens when you merge yourself with so many birds..."

-------------------

The eggs hatched the next day. The golden egg hatched into a perfect replica of her mother, with feathers and wings and the tail fan. The other was a fiery ginger tom with fur like a blaze of flame in the sunlight, with wings and tail fan but no body feathers. he had a long snout, suggesting he had inheirited the fox part of his mother.

The carbon copy of Avia was named Mira. The tom was named Firelight. Some cats protested because that was a warrior name. Aurora psyblasted them.

Chapter 18: But not by far this tale

And the story continues...

Avia was constantly fussing about her two kits, who were always either making dirt, eating, mewling, or sleeping. They hadn't upened their eyes yet, but both had unfolded their fluffy wings and flapped them at least once. Their feathers were like those of a baby bird, and their fur the normal soft kitten fur.

Aurora's stillborn kit had been like a carbon copy of her, too bad that it couldn't have lived.

"I'm bored." Avia announced.

"Me too." Aurora agreed.

"I'll ask a queen to babysit mine while we go on a patrol." Avia decided, and eventually managed to convince Whitetail to have them for a while.

The two Morphelines sneaked out of camp and flew off, tagging onto the dawn patrol. It consisted of Nightcloud, Wildflower, and Mellowleaf.

"Shouldn't you be with your kits?" Demanded Nightcloud.

"Shut up and get on with the patrol." Aurora snapped, sending a weak psyblast to hit the ground next to Nightcloud's paw. Silver smoke rose from the singed earth.

And so the patrol went on, and Avia and Aurora contentedly claimed a lot of prey, flying off to chase a pidgeon every now and then. Aurora saw a single magpie in a bush, where she couldn't get it. The patrol suddenly stopped as Aurora froze, her ears and nose twitching, her toungue darting out as if to taste something.

"There's a badger, running this way!" Aurora yowled, and managed to shove everyone aside to clumsily avoid the charging badger that crashed into a tree in its path.

"They really are short sighted." Wildflower remarked. Avia's feathers and fur were all sticking up, her large patterned wings raised threateningly.

"We have to kill it! We can't risk letting it live when my newborn kits are around." She hissed. Aurora nodded, then rammed her sharp hotns into its backside. It roared in pain, and swung a paw at her, which she easily dodged. Something about its face was wrong, that wild look in its eyes was not normal... She fired her most powerful psyblast at its neck, where all the fur was incinerated in that area to reveal a mother of pearl coloured burn.

Mellowleaf darted around the badger and jumped onto its back, claws latching onto its fur firmly and her fangs biting its back. It took a while, but the badger managed to buck her off across the dales. Mellowleaf was momentarily stunned by the impact, but she waved her tail as a signal she was okay.

"This badger isn't acting normallly! It's attacking blindly!" Wildflower yowled as the badger swiped a tree no where near the patrol. Aurora aimed six psyblasts at its neck, all of them together almost breaking its skin.

"I'll take it from here!" Avia announced, and zoomed through the air by aid of her strong wings straight at its neck, gouging her claws and teeth into the burn that Aurora had given it. She managed to do just that before the badger swung round and bit her flank, a fleck of foam flying from its muzzle. No one saw any significance in that. Not even Aurora. Avia jumped into the air and glided onto a low branch of a nearby tree, then flew up high into the air, doing a loop the loop.

Aurora understood. While she had psyblasts, Avia had sky attacks. But sky attacks required something strong to hold the target down. It was a finishing move, and had never failed to kill the victim. However, Avia usually took a bit of damage from the attack too, the simple force of the impact affecting her as well, so great was its force. Aurora turned into a bengal tiger, and pinned the badger down, one paw on its head, exposing the burnt neck.

Avia fluttered for a moment, her sharp bird-of-prey eyes pinpointing where she had to be for this attack to work. Then, a mere speck in the sky, she folded her wings against her back, and her back legs against her body. Using her tail, Avia started spinning on the way down, becoming a blur of gold. In front, eight sharp objects twinkled in the sun. The spinning increased the force of the impact tenfold, and Avia struck the badger's neck with her claws that broke the flesh and made it easier for the neck to break... which it did. Avia skidded across the hill, collapsed with exhaustion.

"You did well, my friend." Aurora murmured to Avia, who managed a smile in response as she staggered to her feet. "C'mon, let's get back to camp."

--------

The next day...

"Avia. You okay?" Aurora asked her friend, blinking in the sunlight that sifted though the thorns of the nursery. Avia hadn't spoken for quite a while. Her kits were sleeping, contentedly supplied with milk from Aurora. Aurora had milk, so she and Avia took it in turns to feed the kits. Her friend did not reply. "Avia?"

Aurora heard a gurgling sort of noise from her, which sounded like a mix between a growl and a hiss. Oh, great. She's in a bad mood. Aurora thought to herself. She was quickly corrected as she dodged a unexpected blow of a clawed paw... from Avia.

"What in shell's name are you doing?" Aurora hissed, then almost fell over when she saw Avia's eyes. They had a wild, feral look in them that Aurora recognised from somewhere. Her lips pulled back in a snarl as Aurora dodged another blow. Flecks of foam and blood flew from Avia's muzzle, and Aurora jumped away to avoid touching it. That foam... the badger had produced it too...

Aurora was suddenly hit with mild understanding,a nd she levitated all the kits in the nursery and grabbed Whitetail by her scruff. Aurora raced out of the nursery with the kits floating behind her, and Avia wrecking the nursery. She put down the startled queen and the kits by the warriors den.

"Evacuate camp!" She yowled, eyes darting back to the nursery. All the cats emerged from their dens, looking puzzled. "Get the kits to safety! We need to get away!" They were all looking at her as is she was mad, but then some yowled in surprise as Avia came into view, her eyes reddened and wild and the nursery in ruin behind her. She swiped at the grassy bank, taking a chunk of light, sandy soil from it. She then proceeded to try and attack Crowfeather, who yelped and jumped out of the way just in time.

Aurora knew what was happening... that stupid rabid badger!

"Amberlight was bitten by that badger! It had a illness called rabies and gave it to her! She'lll kill you all if you don't get away!" Aurora yowled, and immediately many of the cats started fleeing, a few stopping to pick up the kits and run from camp with them. There was a yowl of pain and anger as Avia managed to hit some cat, and Aurora watche din horror as Webfoot fell to the ground hissing. His leg was broken, he couldn't walk. Avia reared up, and slammmed her paws down on him with claws out, squeezing the final scrap of life from the old warrior.

Onestar looked unsure of wether he should attack Amberlight or run. Nightflame was trying to convince Avia to stop, Crescentclaw seemed to be in the same state and Onestar.

"If she bites you or some of that foam gets in your cuts, you'll end up like her! Get out before I have to chase you out! Even you, Nightflame."

In the end, Aurora indeed had to chase Nightflame off with her psyblasts. After seeing that, Crescentclaw and Onestar obligingly ran after the clan, leaving Aurora crouching on top of a large boulder as she watched Avia destroy the apprentice den.

-Aurora!- Wailed a voice in her head. It couldn't be... Avia?

-Avia?!-

-Where am I? Everything's dark... i'm trying to move but I can't! What's happening?!- Avia was badly frightened.

-That badger yesterday... it had rabies and now you've got rabies too! I got the clan to evacuate but Webfoot's already dead...-

-I killed him?-

-...-

-Tell me!-

-Yes, you killed him.- It took Avia a while to reply after hearing this.

-So that's it, then. The creature that killed Webfoot isn't me, i'm the spirit talking to you now. The one you see is not me, it has to be killed.-

-W...what? You're asking me... to kill you?-

-I told you, that thing isn't me anymore... Aurora, please... It won't let me regain control, I know that. It's over, I can never come back.-

Aurora looked up, trembling, at the feathered beast that had once been her friend. She charged up a psyblast, but the energy withered in her crystal. She couldn't... she couldn't do this... but she had to. Aurora charged up the psyblast and sent it at the beast's neck. Psyblast after psyblast sent the smell of burnt feathers into the air and burnt through each layer of the beast's skin, getting into pink tissue.

The spiritless body yowled in rage, and took a bif chunk of earth from the side of the ditch. Aurora flew silently and swiftly over to it, and injected her full supply of venom into its neck. That would not finish it, though. The beast was mildly paralyzed now, and movement was painful for it. Aurora positioned herself above its neck, changing into her silver wolf form. She growled softly, and prepared to fall.

She was appalled at herself. About to kill her best friend without a second thought! She couldn't... couldn't... why did she have to do this? To Moonshell with that stupid moonchild badger!

Crescentclaw. He could die. Flarefire, Wildflower, Mellowleaf... they could all be killed. Yet, if I do this, I could destroy Nightflame's spirit... not to mention my own... Avia...

Aurora finally folded her wings and dropped onto the back of the beast with a force which would break the spine of any normal cat, but this one wasn't normal, and lived. Aurora opened her jaws, then closed her eyes and she closed them with a sickening snap on the beast's neck. Aurora whimpered, and hopped from the body, forcing herself not to see the broken body as her best friend.

Aurora heard a great sigh of relief in he head.

-Thank you... Aurora...-

-How, Avia? How could you ask me to kill you? Why...?- Aurora sobbed. Avia's voice was fading.

-I'm sorry... i'm sorry Aurora... Look after my kits, make sure they don't forget their mother. Your mind and mine are linked, maybe i'll be able to talk to you sometimes...-

-Sometimes isn't enough!-

-Just promise me... promise me you'll keep hope alive, promise me you'll take care of my kits... and Nightflame.-

-I promise... Avia, I promise... I don't think I can stay in the clans anymore, though. I need to leave.-

-As you wish, Aurora... Never give up hope...- Her voice was fading, barely audible. -Farewell, my friend...-

-No! Avia! Come back! Don't... don't leave me alone like this! COME BACK!- But it was no use. Avia was gone, gone forever.

Becoming her cats form, wings pressed against her back and her tail wrapped tightly around her, huddled up into a tight, tiny shape. She was small, she looked so small and defenceless.

"Come back." Aurora whimpered quietly, knowing that there would be no reply. No cheerful voice ringing thorugh her mind. Never to comfort her again.

Never again.

I feel so sad... having to write that... sob Chapter 19: Through darkness

Aurora did not move from Avia's cold body, whimpering continually. She didn't know how long she kept vigil there, but she fell asleep.

Skin was ripped from flesh by cruel and frenzied claws, sharp fangs parted lives from their bodies in a battle too even to win. Then there was a silver cat standing in a shaft of sunlight and death.

Best friends were ripped apart by a fate crueller than death. Souls tore in half as their owners lost those friends. Peace was no more as lives were sacrificed for a pointless cause. The battles did never cease to occur.

Brave warriors gave up when all they loved was killed. Evil played in the hearts of all who did not have loyalty. Rebellions continued and lives were swept away by a river of blood.

The Balance slowly crumbled as warriors chose their side. All that was good burned in the flames of chaos, and all steadily turned to ash.

History would be repeated as the Betrayer of All looked into the eyes of her enemy, and fled while the Balance shattered. Elements clashed in ways they had never done before, and lives were taken where once they had been spared in bitter peace.

One of a ripped soul and damaged spirit had the power to stop it. She had her choice. She could end it all before the Balance started to die, or leave until the Enemy was defeated at last and despair as the Balance did not mend. As peace died forever.

She had betrayed them all, betrayed even her fate. When soom has already begun to settle, it is inevitable that what had once passed would happen again. Again would rise a creature born from evil.

Evil would have its second chance, and so would light. But this time, she would not have the choice.

"Aurora!" Exclaimed a voice.

"Is she dead?" Asked someone.

"No! She isn't!" said an angry voice belonging to Crescentclaw.

"Amberlight is!" Someone said.

"Aurora, wake up." Crescentlcaw meowed softly in her ear.

"Go away." Aurora replied, her voice barely qualifying as a whisper.

"What? Aurora, are you okay?" Crescemclaw asked, startled.

"No, I d-don't want to get up. She's gone. I killed her. I don't deserve to live." Aurora whimpered.

"Wha- I'm sure you didn't kill her, Aurora." Said someone else.

"I did! I... No! I... want the choice... I don't want the responsibility... I understand now..."

"What are you talking about, Aurora?" Crescentlcaw asked. Nightflame's grieved yowls swept over them all.

"A Morpheline cannot die by sitting down. Fate will not allow my death. The world is cruel..." With this statement, Aurora stood up. "I've felt it coming for days. The danger is too great... we will all die... I hate it! It hate this! Everyone will die if I do so I have to carry on! The Moonshell is breaking, we will all die..."

"Aurora?" Crescentclaw asked, wondering if she had gone insane. Aurora's head swept round to look at him. He was shocked at the look in her eyes. They were wide, frantic, and scared. She looked desperate.

"I killed her! She was my best friend... a soul mate... and I killed her! yes, StarClan is clever. they know when to tell me everything, why I am not permitted to follow her to the sky. She's gone! She'll never come back! SHE'S GONE!" Aurora tipped her head back with a roar of grief, anguish, and pain, a silver jet of light known as a psyblast shooting up into the sky.

A second later, the sky flashed, and a huge aurora swept across the sky. It was composed entirely of blue, every shade of blue there was combined into the ribbon of light stretching across the sky. Everyone looked at it. Aurora collapsed next to Avia's body, and licked her.

"You were my best friend, Avia." She whispered. "I will never forget you. We will meet again, though that meeting is far from now. I will take care of your kin. I will keep that promise where I broke my other. Until I meet you again... I will tell all new kits of you... We won't forget." Aurora stood up, and without warning took Avia's kits in her jaws. With a final sad look at Avia's body, she flew northeast.

"Wait!" Crescentclaw called, but it fell on empty ears.

--------

Aurora flew slowly so she didn't diturb the kits too much. I am sorry to leave the others, but I can no longer find loyalty in the clans. I cannot force my friends to share my fate. perhaps I can find a home outside ThunderClan's territory, I think I know where to look.

------------

Crescentclaw and Nightflame swore that they would follow Aurora, but first, they stayed until Avia was buried. It was when Avia disappeared beneath the earth that the many shades of blue in the sky finally dissipated.

"Come on. We've got to find her." Crescentlcaw meowed quietly, and ran northeast. They took no heed of the borders, and ran past the patrol they met. They ran non stop, until they found Aurora, sitting silently by a twoleg thing, looking up to the stars as Avia's kits took her milk. Odd things were happening around her, like sudden winds howled around her then stopped, and a small, controlled aurora rippled around her.

"Why have you come."Aurora asked quietly, the statement not sounding like a question at all. That voice did not belong to Aurora, her voice was not so soft, so quiet, yet so convicting. Her voice was not so grave.

"Why did you leave?" Crescentclaw asked.

"I have no loyalty to WindClan. I must get stronger, otherwise I cannot fufill the tast I was born to do. I cannot get stronger in WindClan." Aurora replied, in that same voice that was not her own.

"If you are leaving, then I am staying with you." Crescentlcaw meowed determinedly.

"So am I." Nightflame agreed. Aurora turned her head to them. Her face was emotionless, and her crystal was once again clear of colour. Her eyes had a sort of... foggy look to them, as if she was unsure of what she was doing anymore.

"By coming with me, you risk a pain far worse than death. You risk losing everything. I have a training course for the kits, and it will be hard enough to make them stronger than you are by the time they are ten moons old. Because I promised to look after them, Avia's kits will be watched over in the training. Any other kits will not be as fortunate, not even my own. When you spar, you will fight with nothing less than your all, and likely sustain injuries every time you train. Are you sure you want to do this? I will not force you share my fate."

"We... we'll come." Crescentclaw confirmed.

"We will start a Clan with you." Nightflame meowed.

"So be it. We will be the NorthClan, may our light shine on. And may we have better luck than the one who was reborn within me." Aurora announced. "Our territory will be all of this forest not occupied by Thunderclan (about five miles of it) and the hilly dales beyond it (around three miles). I already know where we will have our camp."

"Do we really need that much space?" Crescentclaw asked doubtfully, thinking that would be an awful lot of territory to patrol.

"Yes. We will grow, Crescentclaw. And we will not have battles with the clans. Perhaps border fights, but we will not lose cats from battles. Our home is far from the Morphelines, they live far beyond ShadowClan territory. Because I have tuned myself to nature, like truly powerful spychichs must, I know how much time we have before the Morphelines attack the clans in the final battle. The clans will prepare, though the Morphelines don't know it. And when they attack all three clans in the last battle, our clan will be there to help them."

"How long do we have?" Nightflame asked.

"Around five turns. The Balance will be mutilated by then... that's what the Morphelines want. they eait for the Balance to crumble until it is almost nothing, then they attack. If they kill all three clans then, there is no doubt of what will happen. As a clan ceases to exist, the stars begin to fade away. It is the starlight which holds the moonshell together. If the clans are killed, then the stars will vanish and the Moonshell will break. I doubt that Medothen is a moonchild, but her scheme is worthy of a Shadow Moonchild."

The two others flinched, not wanting to think about the evil that would be loose if the Moonshell broke. they didn't fully understand this yet... but...

"After we have set our borders and arranged our camp, then we will visit the zoo, and you can merge yourselves with animals. But first..." Aurora's eyes drifted over to the twoleg thing. "This is our camp. It is called a well, twolegs made them so they could store water where they needed it. This one dried up as the river that supplied it got too low. There is a very large space inside, with a tunnel that leads to the stream. It is dark, but we are Morphelines, so darkness will be easy as daylight to see through." And Aurora walked over to the 'well', and jumped down. It was a long time before they heard the telltale sound of paws landing, and they knew it was very deep.

"Jump in!" Aurora's voice ordered. Uncertainly, they entered. It didn't really hurt as they landed about ten meters down. Aurora was placing the kits down on the earth. "This is bigger than I thought. This camp will serve us well, if we can dig some dens.

And the two toms watched in wonder as Aurora changed into a wold and began digging a hole in the side of the space, a tunnel forming with incredible speed.

And so, the NorthClan legacy began.

Chapter 20: And terror

It only took an hour for Aurora to create the warrior's den, which happened to be a wolf sized tunnel with an absolutely huge space at the end.

"You're not doing anything useful, so go and hunt for bedding and prey." Aurora told them once she emerged from the newly made den, and then a bucket dropped down. "I fixed it so it doesn't go down any farther than the floor. Get in it and pull yourself up." Aurora ordered. Crescentclaw quickly jumped into the bucket, then with Aurora's guidance learned how to pull himself up with the rope. Nightflame did the same but with crescentlcaw directing him. Then they ran off to hunt.

Aurora, meanwhile, started on a new den. She did it far away from the warrior den, because sometime they might need to expand the warrior's den. She had a large pile of earth at one side of the huge space in the well. Aurora at the moment was working on a queen's den. She did not make an apprentice den because with her training methods, no apprentice would be staying here.

It took Aurora less long to finish the queen's den (45 minutes) , and then she moved on to the elder den. She made this one quite large too, because elders would never stop coming until they died. So the elders den took fifty minutes to complete. She had just started on the leaders den when Nightflame and Crescentclaw arrived. Prey started falling down the well until there was a small pile. After it came large clumps of moss and soft grass. Then, Nightshade arrived in a bucket. After him, Crescentclaw.

Crescentclaw, knowing what would happen if he inturrupted Aurora, took Nightflame to pluck feathers from the birds, for bedding. They took some moss, grass, and feathers into the warriors den and created a few nests, five of them. So future warriors wouldn't have to make their nests. Then they explored the other dens, putting bedding in those too.

About fifteen minutes after their return, Aurora came from the leaders den. It was built to hold a maximum of four full grown cats, because Aurora would have kits. She dug another small hole in whic to put fresh kill, and was finished.

"I've completed the camp!" She yowled. Crescentclaw and Nightflame appeared from the warriors den.

"That's great! Now maybe you can show us which dens are which." Nightflame exclaimed. Aurora gave him a sceptical look, then showed them around.

"What about the apprentice den?" Crescentclaw asked curiously.

"We don't need one. Not with the training our apprentices will have to become warriors." Aurora told him. "Now, put the fresh hill in this small hole, that's where our fresh kill 'pile' will be located."

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Soon, every den was rather comfortable. Any normal cat in that camp would bump into the walls and into Morphelines because it was so dark. The Morphelines disappeared from sight in darkness, but a Morpheline could easily see another in the shadows, that was what their glowing eyes were for. They had set their border next to the ThunderClan border, and when the territory came up to it, by the WindClan border. Aurora led her tiny clan to mark around the four mile hilly (and cliffy) dale.

Then, for some reason, she had the group put a border through their territory on the dales, cutting off about three miles of it. The border at the end of the dales was still there, to warn others this was claimed territory, but she had cut it off from the rest of the territory. She didn't bother to explain to her warriors why.

Aurora wished she could see the looks on ThunderCaln's faces when they smelled her scent on the border. Normally, it would take a long time for their scent markers to stop smelling like WindClan, but with psychic powers Aurora was able to make the change of scent instant. Aurora replied on one of her two warriors to tell her when the kits needed feeding, because Aurora had been working on a new power ever since she had created the aurora.

That was what she was doing now. Aurora knew that it was something about her psyblast combined with the chill of above that created the aurora, and from what she had heard of Elementals, whatever made up their signature (e.g. Aurora's aurora, or for a water commander rain) they could control. So if the chill of altitude triggered the aurora, then that meant she could control ice.

Aurora started to meditate, the process in which she leared her mind of all thoughts, only then could she focus her psychic powers for a large task. Aurora's fur started glowing white, and it started ruffling in a non existant wind. After a lot of meditation, Aurora finally found what she was looking for. her eyes snapped open and a jet of ice blue light went from her crystal and into the sky. Hail began to fall, and with more concentration, snow. Of course, it melted as soon as it touched the ground, a lot of it turning to rain before even touching the earth. Good, if there were any droughts she could help create rain.

Then, the snow stopped and the skies cleared. Aurora growled quietly as she focused on another ability, and she launched a jet of white energy from her crystal, concentrating it so it turned to a beam of ice, Aurora hit a tree with the beam, and the ice stayed there for a while, before quickly melting into water.

Aurora had already discovered she could control wind to a certain extent. Like she could create snowstorms, but not blizzards, she could create gales, but not hurricanes. Now she practiced with wind again, making great gusts appear wherever she wanted them to.

Aurora had no doubt of it. After all, why would fate choose an ordinary Morpheline to be the Foretold? She was an Elemental, as they were called among Morphelines. They were Morphelines that could control certain elements. It was said that the moonchildren could control all elements. (I'm leaving you in the dark about moonchildren until later on in the story)

Aurora cold control ice, wind, and auroras. So that was why Aurora was her Name...

She sighed, and continued to meditate.

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"Come on, Lionfur. You're lagging behind." Nagged Dustpelt impatiently, leading the patrol of him, Lionfur, and Stormfur to mark the border which had no clan next to it. They were about to spray their markings when-

"What's that smell?" Lionfur asked, breathing the scents. The others followed his example.

"It smells like some other Clan had taken up residence around here. They seem to have sense, and have not tried to steal our territory. It smells... familiar though." Dustpelt evaluated.

"Aurora!" Hissed Stormfur.

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After four days, Aurora could do extraordinary things with the elements. Today, she had allowed Nightflame and Crescentclaw to watch her practice, now that she had mastered the skills.

The two toms watched as she started glowing a dim white, and as a beam of ice flew around like a ribbon in wind. Next, Aurora did something truly amazing. She was hiding what she was doing, so the toms couldn't see it. But then, two figures started running around.

There was a beautiful cat made out of auroras, with no eyes, and a cat amde out of gleaming ice. They were running around, commanded by Aurora. The aurora cat ran at Crescentclaw, and because it was only light it passed right through him. But as it did, Crescentclaw shivered as an icy wave swept over him. A second later, Nightflame experienced the same thing. The ice cat unsheathed its icy claws, and scratched at the ground, leaving great gouges filled by ice. Everywhere it walked it left pawprints of frost.

Then the aurora cat disappeared, and the ice cat melted.

Chapter 21: Winds Aurora's path

As promised, Aurora took the two toms to the Zoo, then watched as they ran off to merge. Meanwhile, Aurora sneaked off to find that osprey Avia had mentioned...

Aurora waited at the zoo entrance after merging with the osprey, waiting for her warriors to return. They both did, on time, looking very proud of themselves.

"State animals merged with." Aurora commanded.

"Osprey, golden eagle, harpy, fish eagle, and peregrine falcon." Crescentclaw meowed. She nodded at him.

"For your choice in forms, your new name is Falcon. Bear it well. Nightflame, your forms." Aurora announced.

"Bat, komodo dragon, and gazelle." Nightflame replied. He looked scarily like a dragon, with a longer draconic snout and thin tail tip, not to mention the huge black bat wings and his horns. His tail looke dpowerful, and like the tail of a komodo, it was like a whiplash. He was furred with the same markings, black fur covering all but the membranes on his wings. "Avia told me about dragons." he added sadly.

"For your choice in forms, your new name is Dragon. Bear it well." Aurora declared. "Youa re now official warriors of NorthClan, every apprentice in this clan must merge with at least one animal before they become a warrior. Come, take pride that you are the first two to ever become warriors in the new clan."

So now they had their Names. A Name was something that told you what you were, and it is their hearts that chose their forms, and so Aurora knew who they were.

------------------

A week later, the three Morphelines had settled in. Aurora had turned her earthpile into a structure compacted so tigthly it would never crumble. This was where Aurora stood to address her clan.

"Falcon, Dragon, get here!" She yowled. Aurora had not gone to get nine lives, afraid that StarClan would rename her Aurorastar, it was too long. besides, what use did she have for nine lives anyway? It only made it harder to join her best friend. The two Morphelines gathered beneath the Earthpile. "I have had a dream from StarClan. The Morphelines will be having a suicide mission tommorow, attacking another tribe in the mountains. I know where. We will steal as many apprentices as we can without being discovered, you'll know which ones because they won't be transforming. They will be former humans, the naturally born Morphelines are always taught how to use their power before battling."

"Are we going to leave the kits alone?" Dragon asked anxiously.

"I will be asking WindClan to take care of them while we are gone." Aurora replied. Dragon nodded. "Now, we do not need to hunt, but we must have a large stock ready for the Morphelines that we will be bringing here tommorow. Go, prepare. And remember, we're trying to get about three apprentices, so that's what you're hunting for. I recently remembered that we need a medicine cat den, but until I train an apprentice it will be as good as useless for anything exept storing herbs. So you're looking for all the herbs you can find. Juniper, water mint, catmint, goldenrod, yarrow, horsetail, ecetera. Especially cobwebs, I believe those we rescue tommorow will need them."

And so, preparations began.

---------

The next day, the two kits were dropped off at a surprised WindClan, who accepted the babysitting job.

Then the three NorthClan cats flew to the mountains, where the 'Tribe of changing seasons' were about to be attacked. When they got there, the tree landed on a hidden platform, and watched as the battle raged in the snowy trees. They had got there in the middle of the battle, the perfect time to take hostages. The three flew into treetops and waited for an apprentice to ambush.

Aurora watched as Dragon spotted a half dead apprentice who stayed a cat, and was looking round for someone to fight. Making sure no one was watching, Dragon jumped down and konked the apprentice on his head, then pulled the unconcious Morpheline up into the branches. Aurora watched as Falcon crushed the skull of a tribe cat and pulled the apprentice upwards, whacking her against a branch to make her unconcious too.

Aurora formed a cat out of ice, and sent it down to assist a she-cat Morpheline apprentice, fighting a losing battle. The ice cat slashed the tribe cat, making clumps of ice from where its claws hit. The cat fell unconcious, then the ice cat knocked out the apprentice and melted. Aurora hung down from a branch and catnapped the apprentice. She sent an aurora into the sky as the signal to leave. They flew away, unnoticed, and landed about a mile away from where the battle was taking place. They dropped the three cats there.

Since they were all only stunned, it didn't take long for them to wake up.

"Who are you?" Squeaked the one that Falcon had taken. Falcon and dragon were both surprised to see the warmth in her eyes as she looked at the apprentices.

"Be calm, small ones. We came to rescue you from the Morphelines. What are your names?" Aurora asked gently.

"I'm Snow." Said the white she-cat that Aurora had taken.

"Autumn." Meowed the little tawny she-cat that Falcon had taken.

"Dusk." Replied the dark silver tom of Dragon's. "You said you came to rescue us from the Morphelines... we would appreciate a more detailed answer."

"Is it safe to assume that you three were once humans?" Aurora asked.

"Yes." Said all three in unison.

"Is it safe to assume you absolutely despise the Morphelines and their goals?" Falcon asked.

"Yes." they said again.

"And it it safe to assume that you were all sent on a suicide mission, with no Kaza training at all?" Dragon asked. Again, yes.

"Then you are worthy of a more detailed answer. I was also once a human, and I was also abducted by the Morphelines. When me and my best friend were sent on a suicide mission, we escaped. Our group only consists of three Morphelines, but we are plotting a rebellion against the Night Demons. We are NorthClan, and we offer you a place among our ranks." Aurora told them.

"You escaped from the Morphelines?" Asked Dusk incredulously.

"Yes, my name is Aurora. The other that escape with me was Amberlight. She perished a while ago, we all grieve for her." Aurora's crystal started swirling with blue and her eyes filled with sorrow.

"I heard about you! My mentor Blade was always going on about how fast you learned telekinesis, and how it was a shame you died in battle!" Autumn exclaimed.

"Blade. I remember him, good to hear he's a warrior now. This is Falcon, my mate, and Dragon, the former mate of Amberlight. They were born in the clans from the only other Morpheline that escaped. Anyway, will you join our Clan?" Aurora asked.

"You bet! I want nothing more than to gut those demons for taking me from my family!" Dusk replied fiercely.

"Me too! It's not fair, what they're doing, and it has to stop." Snow agreed.

"I agree, and wherever Snow goes, I go. We made a promise, to protect each other." Autumn announced.

"You know what? Amberlight, now known as Avia, was my best friend. We made that same promise. We were best friends from the first year of school... and it hurt so much when she died. Make sure you look out for each other, never let any rabid animals near you. Anyway, before you decide to join the Clan, know that our training isn't easy. We will drop you in the wilderness where you will have to learn to hunt for yourselves, and how to master your mind without guidance. You will be on your own. When I decide you are ready, you will be taught to fight in the same wilderness. At the end of your training, you will be taken to the zoo to become like us, merged with other animals. It will hurt, growing wings is almost as painful as transforming into a Morpheline. Are you still sure you want to join?" Aurora told them, and Dragon and Falcon finally learned what this secret training course was, they thought it rather harsh.

"Yes." said Dusk instantly. He seemed a bit over confident... that would need to be fixed.

"Us too!" Exclaimed Snow and Autumn at the same time. Aurora nodded gravely.

"Come on then. We can all fly, so get on our backs." She meowed, and turned into a lion. The other too both turned into odd looking lions too. The apprentices hastily got on a lion, Aurora felt Autumn tap her scales in wonder. "Hole on! Three, two, one, take off!" And they did just that, soaring over the mountains to their home. All was serene, until -

"Aurora, there's something up ahead!" Falcon hissed. Aurora tensed. They were around the Morpheline section of the woods. Aurora looked where Falcon was pointing. There was a yowl of frustration and anger, and a fireball shot into the sky. Aurora used her psychic power to enter the mind of what was down there. It felt familiar.

-Who are you?- Demanded a familiar voice.

-What are you?- Aurora countered.

-Morpheline Kaluna.- Kaluna! Aurora remembered her! She was a general, and an Elemental, a fire one. She seemed pretty weak, and alone.

-Morpehline rebel Aurora. What happened?-

-Aurora? Didn't you die?-

-It seems my plan worked, then. Answer my question or be snowed on.-

-I tried to escape, with my two kits. They found me, killed one of my kits and left me here to die. Where are you? Please help me!-

-You have not lied, my Kaza tells me so. Me and my companions will pick you and your kit up. Resume cat form.- Aurora told her.

"We have a runaway Morpheline Elemental and her kit! We will go down and collect them. Kaluna has not lied to me." Aurora yowled, and the other two fliers followed her down. They landed next to the ginger queen and her kit.

"Where did they all come from?" Kaluna asked, her eyes widening. She looked pretty roughed up. She practically didn't have a left back leg, it was torn apart so badly. She was bleeding from numerous wounds that would kill her if she didn't get help. There was a small tomkit next to her, he took after Kaluna's mate, who was a red abyssinian. This kit was also a red abyssinian.

"The fliers are Keega's kits. The rest we just stole from the suicide mission." Aurora replied.

"Keega? You're her kits?" Kaluna asked Dragon and Falcon.

"Yes." Falcon answered stiffly.

"Anyway, it's clear you highly despise the Night Demons, else you would not have risked your life to escape. I offer you a place in my Clan, but be aware that in four moons, your kit would be left in an isolated part of the territory to fend for himself, learn how to hunt and change by himself. This methos will make our kits stronger more quickly than they could ever be if we used the usual warrior-mentors-apprentice method. Would you like to join us?" Aurora decided that if she refused, she'd have Dragon and Falcon help blank her memory.

Kaluna laughed softly. "I will join you, for where else can I go? Though i'm afraid, I cannot help you in battle. This leg marks me a cripple now."

"So be it. There are two position open to you if you cannot fight, but we'll discuss that later." Aurora helped Kaluna onto Dragon's back, and Falcon picked up the kit. "Move out!" Aurora commande,d and flew her new warriors home.

As soon as they arrived at camp, Aurora shoved the new recruits into the medicine cat den, renamed the healer den. Medicine cat was too much of a mouthfull, and besides, they technically weren't cats. Aurora kept herself busy by dressing their wounds with marigold and cobwebs, chance of infection minimal. Kaluna's leg was very bad, she was correct when she said she would be a cripple, but she would survive. Kaluna continued to feed her kit, who stayed with her in the healer den.

"Now, sleep. I know you aren't used to sleeping, with the Morphelines, but here you sleep. You'll recover miraculously quickly, you three apprentices should be ready for training in two days." Aurora ordered the patients after they had eaten. She didn't leave until they were all asleep.

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The two days after, Snow, Autumn, and Dusk were dumped in the cut off three miles of dale. They were not allowed to go beyond the borders. They learned how to hunt through trial and error, realising what it was they were doing wrong and correcting it. The three camped in a abandoned badger sett, mainly because setts were the only shelter in the land they were restricted to. Each day, after hunting, the trio attempted to master their minds, but kept on failing. They were not ready for that.

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"Aurora, I have made my decision. I do not wish to join the elders while I am still young. Train me, as a healer. I will help your clan, in whatever way I can." Kaluna spoke softly, and those soft words were what earned Kaluna her place in the clan. Her role.

NorthClan was growing.

Chapter 22: But she must

And so the story continues...

Two days later, the wounds of Snow, Dusk, and Autumn were practically gone and had little to no chance of infection. So, Aurora took them to the bit of territory she had cut of, the three miles of it. Then she dumped them in the middle of it. As she flew away from the nervous apprentics, Aurora tuned her mind to theirs so she would know if they were in danger. But they wouldn't be able to feel her watching over them.

There was good prey there, but not as much as in some other places. There was plenty of shelter for a few cats, they just had to find it. Aurora arrived back home to teach Kaluna in the ways of a medicine cat, now renamed healer.

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"I think this training is a bit harsh." Muttered Dusk as his heavy paws scared the mouse away.

"It is harsh, but learning what we're doing wrong makes us smarter than we'd usually get." Agreed Autumn, walking over.

"What exactly happened to scare the mouse off?" Snow asked, deciding it would be better to solve the problem now.

"Well, I ran at it, I thought I could move fast enough to catch it. " Dusk replied.

"Then it's your pawsteps. We need to find out how to make them light." Autumn mused, then dropped into an unsteady crouch, trying to kee her weight in her haunches. It was so unbalanced that she staggered wildly and fell in the grass. "I think that's it, we need to keep our weight in our haunches, but a different sort of crouch because that one I tried knocks you over."

"Let me try!" Snow declared, then dropped into the same crouch, and focused on keeping the weight of herself in her haunches. Predictably, she started swaying as her legs were too low to do the crouch properly. She straightened her legs a bit, then attempted to put her weight in her haunches. This time it was much easier to stay balanced. "I've got the mouse crouch! Everyone copy!"

"Hate to disturb you, but there's a mouse over there that you can test it on." Dusk meowed, nodding his head over to a small brown shape eating some seeds. Snow instantly dropped back into her crouch, finding herself pleased with how her limbs cooperated with what she wanted them to do, and she began inching lightly forward. She felt a thrill of excitement as the mouse appeared to not notice her.

Snow was unsure when was the right moment to jump, but she decided 'when' at the point where she was a meter away from her prey. Carefully, lightly, she leapt and landed on the mouse.

"Maybe hunting isn't so hard after all." Snow mewed, bringing the mouse over.

--------------

(a month later)

Aurora watched Asuru, Kaluna's kit. His name meant 'kindle' for his fiery pelt. He was a tiny bit younger than Avia's kits, who were already trying to fly, but miserably succeeding because of the uneveness of the flaps of their wings. Asuru kept on nagging his mother to show him how to make fire, and when Kaluna gave in and a small ring of live flame emmitted from her crystal and dissipated, Asuru failed to produce anything more than a few sparks and a bit of smoke.

Aurora prepeared to take off and check on the three apprentices.

"She's about to take off! Watch her!" Hissed Mira, the Avia lookalike.

"Let's see how to do it." Agreed Firelight watching Aurora intently. Then, with two even flaps of her wings she was off.

"So you have to flap both your wings at the same time!" Squeaked Mira. "No wonder we weren't getting anywhere!"

Aurora used her psychic sense to home in on the position of the three apprentice. When she found them, she hid in a small tree and observed them. Autumn was apparently inside the abandoned badger sett they used as a den, Snow was half out of the sett, and Dusk was sitting calmly with his eyes closed and a thin silver glow enveloping him. With her sharp ears, Aurora could hear him growling softly, a growl without emotion or tone.

"Dusk! C'mon, we've got breakfast! Get some before Autumn eats it all!" Snow called. Then for some reason she shivered.

"Shut up! I'm meditating." Dusk snapped at her, one eye half opened. It closed again, and he began his low growl again. Aurora watched with interest as small particles of frost seemed to shimmer in the air around him. Meditating? Frost? Interesting... The she-cats had patience, but Dusk had concentration. Aurora had no doubt he would be a powerful psychic some day.

"We know you're a better psychic than us and found your true form and everything, but that doesn't mean you have to act all superior on us. You can meditate later to hunt mice." And the thin light disappeared and Dusk's eyes opened. He walked unhurriedly into the Sett, but not before he saw a cat made of ice flick its tail at him and melt to nothing.

-------

The apprentices learned very quickly, in another month all of them had found their true forms. Dusk was a clouded leopard, Autumn a siberian tiger, and Snow was a caracal. Aurora knew they were very strong, stronger than she had been at that age. And that was all she needed, the next part of the training could now begin. Aurora flew to their sett one day at dawn.

"Dusk, Snow, Autumn, get here!" Aurora yelled down the hole. The three cats quickly shot up the burrow and sat down, looking expectantly at her. "The first stage of your training is complete, i'm pleased to know that you have been sparring with each other, otherwise the second and last stage of the training would likely almost kill you. Now, when you are not hunting, eating, or sleeping, you will be sparring with me, all out. No holding back, because I won't."

They looked rather nervous at this. "Dusk, you first." Aurora's eyes glowed, and two gleaming ice cats appeared next to her, one walking to confront Snow and Autumn. "You two will be fighting my ice cats. They are not nearly as powerful as me myself, but they are better than nothing. These ice cats can transform, and they will, as will I. We will all use every scrap of what we have in these matches, because the morphelines will not refrain from using their most powerful form on you."

Dusk stepped forward, and the she-cats took their positions by the ice cats. "begin!" Aurora yowled, then leapt froward at Dusk. her ice cats did the same, and the match began.

Aurora raked her claws across Dusk's shoulder, who yowled at the unfamiliar pain, and he jumped back. Eyes flashing, Aurora flew the short distance to Dusk and dropping onto his back with her claws out, hanging on to scratch him. Realising that Aurora would scratch him within an inch of his life if he didn't fight back, Dusk turned into a tiger and bucked her off across the dales. Aurora crouched as she morphed into a fennec, and using their oddly high speed zoomed in zigzags over to Dusk.

When Dusk tried to rear and stamp on her Aurora shot round to behind him, then took the form of a wolf and sent him flying with a well aimed blow to his head. Growling, Dusk got up and ran at her, still in his huge bengal tiger form. Aurora ran at him too, her large wolf teeth bared. She was about to snap at him when Dusk turned back into a cat and slid underneath her, then took his clouded leopard form and butted her hard in the stomach. While she was winded, Dusk launched a rapid volley of scratches.

And the training continued...

----------

After a month, all three of the apprentices could last a long time against her, to the point where they were almost as powerful as her. They were ready.

Aurora left Kaluna with the kits and took Falcon and Dragon to transport the apprentices to the zoo.

"Merge yourselves with whatever animals you want, but don't get carried away and realise that big changes can be as painful as the human-morpheline transformation. Wings, for instance hurt a lot to grow, but once you have them you have a huge asset in battle." The apprentices grimaced as they remembered how many times she had dive bombed them from an altitude and caused impressive damage. "Merge yourselves with animals that will compliment your build, for instance if you are fast like me and try to compensate for a lack of strength by merging with something powerful it will not work."

And so the apprentices ran off to merge.

A while later, Snow returned, the only visible difference being black tipped snow white wings as white as the rest of her fur, the feather fan on her tail matching them. Her muzzle was also quite longer, and her green eyes sparkled with exhaustion. Dusk returned with a considerably longer body and thin membranes of bat wing joining his front legs to his body, like bats themselves. Unlike Dragon, who had grown two extra limbs, Dusk had taken on a more accurate persona of the bat wings, his arms on the wings instead of apart from them. Dusk now had a tail thinned at the end and a long sinuous body.

Autumn had huge ears now, so she had probably merged with a fennec. Aurora couldn't figure out why, but Autumn had grown all the feathers required for flight on her front legs. Maybe it was just chance, like it had been with Dusk, because birds didn't have arms. Aurora qucikly roused her psychic powers, and listened to the whispers of time that flrew in particles around the apprentices. She pieced them together and found the Names of them all.

"State animals merged with." Aurora meowed.

"Artic fox, artic wolf, snowy owl, artic hare." Snow appeared to have taken Aurora's advice and merged with animals that complimented her strengths. Snow was quite small, but possessed strength not equivalent to her size, like the animals she had chosen.

"Coral snake, king cobra, bat, boa constrictor, anaconda." Dusk replied. Apart from the coral snake and bat, those animals were very powerful with a certain amount of stealth, like Dusk himself. He would have a fair amount of venom, not as mcuh as Aurora had but more deadly because of the snakes he got it from.

"Osprey, peregrine falcon, fennec, otter." Autumn announced. Aurora nodded at each of them.

"Yes, you chose well. You have chosen who you are, and through your actions I have found your Names. Snow, you will from here on be known as Tundra for the forms you have chosen. Dusk, you shall be Serpent for the froms you have chosen. And Autumn, you will be Kaira, or fleet-of-foot for the forms you have chosen. Each of you have your weaknesses, and those weaknesses you will make up for with your strengths. Always give life your best, and it will not let you down. Here, you are given a gift. The gift of life, to do with which what you choose. Be proud of yourselves... and consult us winged warriors to learn how to fly!"

Ah, the naming ceremony. Three new warriors. Next chapter: Mira, Firelight, and Asuru are dumped in the training 23: Stay strong

The next day, Asuru, Firelight and Mira were dropped off in the exact spot that the previous apprentices had been. (Personally, I really like the name Kaira)

"I think we'll do better than Serpent, Kaira nd Tundra did 'cause us two can fly!" Whispered Mira very quietly to her brother when she was sure Aurora wouldn't hear.

"I heard that!" Aurora called back, making them jump. They were much younger than the prvious three had been, so Aurora had no doubt they would takle longer to reach the second stage.

-----------

"Let all cats with the knowledge of their Name gather here beneath the EarthPile for a clan meeting!"

Of course, that was everyone because the only three without their Names were struggling in the wilderness.

"Yesterday, three apprentices earned their Names and their place among us. We are not a full clan, in the truest sense because I ahve not collected my nine lives and have no intention of doing so. We go to Gatherings only if we wish to, and respect every rule of the warrior code except one. Any among us can have kits. That is th eonly rule of the warrior code I find fault with. Aside from that, in the clans to love one from another clan is forbidden. This rule rose when Kula, the first Moonchild, damaged the Balance that keeps the Moonshell intact. Thus, if any of us find love in another clan make sure it is hidden from that clan but not from us, because we should be encouraging friendliness between the clans. taht was how it was meant to be in the dawn of time."

"Tonight is the full moon, which signifies a gatherign of the four clans. Tonight, it will be five clans sitting below the stars. We will have our first gathering, there will be no need to leave someone to guard the camp, as no normal cat can enter it without breaking their neck." Aurora finished.

---------

Kaluna had merged herself long ago with a buzzard that had lande in camp, so she had freer movement than before. That meant that all of the Morpehlines present had wings, so if any trouble arose they could make a quick getaway.

So, that night NorthClan flew in a V lead by Aurora, Kaluna and Falcon behind her. Falcon was her deputy, she had decided that after she had pitted he and Dragon against each other to see who won. (odd way of finding things out)

It seemed the cats were about to start their gathering. A few cats noticed the shadows passing over the ground, but convinced they were birds did not look upwards. However, most cats did look up when they saw the light rippling over the ground, and saw large animals flying below a magnificent aurora. They gaped as six of those animals landed among them,a nd one stepped up to sit ont he tree roots with the other deputies,a nd the final one rested on a branch.

"NorthClan finds place at the gathering." Aurora meowed clearly, her voice running loud over the ears of all. "We have been setting the clan in order and training our apprentices, but now we come for our first Gathering."

"WindClan welcomes you." Onestar meowed clearly.

"RiverClan welcomes you also," Mistystar meowed, her calm voice as clear as Aurora's herself.

"And ThunderClan?" Falcon called.

"We welcome NorthClan also, unless they move to steal our prey." Bramblestar growled.

"We shan't, since we have about as much territory as yours and WindClan's put together. Anyway, NorthClan is not an official clan in the truest sense, more of a tribe. The leaders of tribes do not have nine lives, and that is the norm for our clan. I have also excluded the rule preventing deputies, medicine cats and leaders from having kits. I have received signs from StarClan telling me what I must do, but none of them have corrected these changes so it is safe to assume that they approve."

"I am a powerful elemental psychic, meaning I can do more than the average psychic can." For an example, Aurora's eyes glowed and two cats appeared, one made of auroras and the other ice, the latter leaving pawprints of frost. "The light that shiens int he sky is my namesake, an aurora. If you see one hear, you will know I have come. Now, I will tell you to prepare as well as you can for whent he Morphelines attack. This attack will be in five turns, which should be plenty of time to build a force. In the meantime, try not to kill each other, that's the Morpeline's job."

"Now I move onto the news of my Clan. We have set up camp ina palce inaccessable for normal cats, we can survive the drop you must make to enter it but you cannot, so don't even think of trying to attack us. We have a vast amount of territory to hunnt in, and a large portion cut off for training grounds. Our methods of trainign apprentices are different from yours, our method can make a three moon old kit stronger than your most senior warrior in three of four moons."

"Perhaps you could share this method with us, so that our kits will grow stronger." Mistystar suggested.

"Don't be mousebrained. No normal kit can survive with absolutely no assistance at the age of three moons. Morpheline kits can, it makes them smarter and stronger than they would be if trained in your methods. Our three apprentices became warriors yesterday, Tundra, Kaira, and Serpent. Each one of them can rival me in strength."

"And now you have no apprentices? What a shame." Bramblestar jeered. he was obviously enjoying the seven apprentices currently training in his clan: Rainpaw, Sunpaw, Icepaw, Foxpaw, Rustpaw, Silverpaw, and Nightpaw.

"There you are wrong. Earlier today, we placed the two kits of Avia and the single kit of our medicine cat, Kaluna in the training grounds. I keep watch over all the apprentices with my psychic sense, that way I can be sure they are not fighting a fox and losing. Currently, Mira, Firelight and Asuru are trying to discover the proper way to stalk a mouse."

"Amberlight's kits, training already?" Onestar asked with disbelief.

"You would be surprised of what Morpheline kits are capable of." Aurora answered, then she stopped speaking and listened patiently to the news of the other clans.

-----------

"I told you! They want us to learn how to stalk a mouse, not chase one!" Asuru protested as Mira scared yet another mouse off.

"But we dunno where to begin." Firelight protested.

"Tundra, Serpent and Kaira did it so we can too! We have to be doing something wrong or we could catch the mouse 'stead of scaring it away." Asuru argued.

"What are we doing that scares the mouses away?" Firelight asked, puzzled.

"Well, they are small, so maybe we sound real loud to them." Suggested Asuru.

And the kits developed an admirably effective way of walking quietly, but it still didn't work on the mice.

"We're still doing it wrong!" Firelight wailed.

"If it's not sound scaring them off, and they can't see us... maybe 'cause they're small and we're big we're shaking the ground a bit and they can feel our steps." Mira suggested, every bit as smart as her mother. After that, they went through the samesort of experience as with the previous apprentices on this matter, and predictably, when they tried the particular crouch on a mouse... they caught it.

They discovered that the quiet crouch was good for hunting 'rabbitses', as the young kits called them. And from there, just like the previous apprentices, they progressed.

Chapter 24: For her

It was a long time ago that she had been happy. When laughter lived in her heart and the days passed with content. Aurora could not remember how it felt to be content anymore. Falcon did not understand, no one did. Come to think of it... that nobody included her. She didn't understand how she could have been so close to Avia, all she knew was that the bond between mother and kit was like hatred compared to the bond that she and Avia had shared.

And it had hurt worse than she could have imagined when it happened. As they had carried Avia away for burial, each pawstep the fallen warrior distanced from her the more anguish had built up her heart. It had felt like her soul was being ripped apart, and she wanted nothing more than to call the buriers back so that she could sit beside the corpse of her friend until she stirred again... but she knew it was fruitless, that Avia was gone forever, and now she did not doubt that her soul had indeed been ripped in half.

Aurora found some release in watching kits and apprentices. They were so innocent, they had no idea just how horrible some things liked to observe their contentedness and be thankful that her fate had not fallen upon them, but it also saddened her to see what she had let slip away, to see what she could have kept as hers.

All Aurora knew was that she could act as much as she wanted, be as convincing as possible, but truthfully she would never be the same again.

The previous Aurora had died with Avia.

----------

Two moons later, Aurora observed the apprentices.

"Hey, I caught loads of prey!" called Asuru, who appeared to have returned froma hunting mission. Mira and Firelight were sparring. Firelight sat up and washed his paws, but Mira ran over to observe Asuru's catch.

"I told you, Asuru! You need to stop using your prey as target practice, you may like the taste of ash but we don't!" Mira scolded him, exasperated.

"But what else am I going to practice my firebreath on? You never let me spar with you, only Firelight does." Asuru protested.

"And i'm glad I don't, what will all the burns Firelight ends up with. I don't know why he continues to spar with you when he knows he's gonna be set on fire again." Mira sighed, and tried scraping the ash from the prey, her nose wrinkling at the smell of burnt fur.

Aurora's ears pricked again. How many Elementals did they have? I mean, sure, Serpent could only control how cold the air went, but Asuru appeared to have inheirited his mother's fire.

She beleived they were ready for stage too, and decided to pay them a little visit...

-------------------

Aurora had to fight these apprentices carefully, not because they were exceptionally skilled but because she had three lives to worry about. Aurora was pregnant with three kits.

Aurora had to admit, but she was very impressed with Asuru's skills. He was as good a fighter as using strength and speed to his advantage, but laced his attacks with fire expertly controlled. He had skill beyond his age. As a kit, he had been ginger with russet speckles. Now, like most fire Elementals, his pelt had paled quite considerably to being a fiery gold flecked with ginger.

This lot were very fast learners, they only needed a moon of the second course to be warrior rank. So, as usual, Aurora took her apprentices to the zoo, and this time her warriors came along to watch.

Mira returned with no visible differences apart from a new pattern to her wings, a longer muzzle, and longer feathers. Firelight, who was lithe and speedy now had sleek and shiny fur and an even more nimble form. Asuru returned looking rather dignified. Like Kaira, his feathers had grown on his front legs. Unlike Kaira, his feathers had no amrkings on them. They were a simple sunset gold colour with their edges tinted with fire, his taloned paws at their ends. He had a longer neck, and a larger than normal feather fan on his tail. There appeared to be a little crest on his head between the soft feathers that grew there, like the crests of a peacock but coloured golden. There were a few short crestlike feathers coming from his tail fan too, but barely longer than the tail feathers themselves.

His eyes were still that clear blue though, the same shade of blue as hers but somehow different. Hers were harsh, icy, forbidding. His were gentle, calm, and warm, like a warm and peaceful stream.

"State animals merged with." Aurora commanded, her tone as hard as ever with that familiar overtone of frost.

"Harpy, golden eagle, wolf." Mira replied.

"Weasel, pine marten, ermine." Firelight declared.

"Peacock, peregrine falcon, golden eagle." Asuru stated calmly, his eyes and crystal betraying the excitement he tried to keep from his voice.

"Each of you have told who you are from your actions over your training, and today. The whispers of destiny have revealed to me your Names, and now who you are told as will be changed. Mira, from your actions and forms your Name is Senka. Firelight, from the form that matches you to everything your Name is Marten. And Asuru, from your chosen forms, actions, and Elemental abilities you will be known as Phoenix. Each of you have your weaknesses, and those weaknesses you will make up for with your strengths. Always give life your best, and it will not let you down. Here, you are given a gift. The gift of life, to do with which what you choose. Now you know who you are, so you can make your decisions as they come to you without doubting your opinion. Bear your Names with pride."

(Senka meaning Friend-Of-Power in the old tongue)

----------

Thankfully, this time Aurora did not kit early. She was in fact a few days late, but merely sat looking bored as she gave birth. Kaluna had been transformed, but because of being an Elemental Medothen had given her the chance to be a general. But Kaluna had always hated it all.

The birthing did not take long. As soon as Kaluna confirmed it was over Aurora spun round to lick the kits clean before even looking at them. Once they were clean she sat back and admired her handiwork. There were two she-kits and one tom.

The tom was silver, but not the pale shade that Aurora's fur was. Aurora named him Vortex. One of the she-kits was the same colour as her brother, but she had fiery ginger paws, muzzle, and tail tip suggesting she had inheirited Nightflame's side of the family from his mother. She had been named Cova. The last kit was like a replica of her father, pitch black but with a golden crescent moon like shape running from her nose to her ears, the gap upwards.

Vortex had tiny silver wings and a silver feather fan identical to the shade of his fur, and he had horns like his mother, as well as the huge fennec ears and doglike nose. Cova had silver wings rippled with fiery ginger, and the feather fan had not escaped her either. She had horns and adder fangs, as well as a pelt speckled with darker grey and with talons suggestign she had inheirited the peregrine of her mother.

The last kit, however, had inheirited absolutely nothing of Aurora or Falcon's forms. Aurora considered this strangely suspicious. Another thing she considered highly suspicious was that she seemed unable to give a name to this kit that was not her Name, and her Name was unclear to Aurora.

That kit was suspicious indeed, but Aurora didn't know one day she would rely on the paws of that kit to shape the future of everything.

Chapter 25: Never Fading Memories

Aurora was awake that night, when all the others were asleep. It was the night of a full moon, one which she decided would not draw her to a Gathering. She sat beneath a shaft of moonlight, the moonlight that poured from the silver moon almost directly above the well.

"I miss you, Avia." She whispered, trying to pretend that her friend was there, and listening to her soft words. It comforted her a bit. "I've changed since you died. Looking at Senka is hard, she looks so much like you and acts so much like you. Everyone, even Dragon, seems to be using her as some sort of substitute for you... and they expect me to do the same. It's all I can do not to hate her, Avia. I want you back! It's like if I died and everyone expected you to pretend Laura was me." Laura had been one of their 'group of four' as humans, Laura was a good friend but nothing compared to Avia.

"I almost killed myself a while ago. I had this dagger of ice ready and pointed at my chest and everything... but I knew you'd never speak to me again if I did that. I knew I was being weak." Aurora spoke all of her words softly, her voice barely qualifying as a whisper. Only her sharp ears could hear it. "I guess I was more right than I thought. Feelings do make you weak. I always had a wall around my heart... and I let you in, Avia. Further than anyone else. And i'm not about to let anyone else get so far in again, I won't let them. Now my wall is solid and will not crumble, the only force that makes it wither is the poison within. I will not be weak again."

Out of the corner of her eye, Aurora saw movement. She didn't move, the moonlight good as held her captive, she didn't want to move. Aurora watched without interest as the unnamed kit stumbled blindly into the moonlight, mewling shrilly. Just as she neared the center of the moonlight shaft, it got brighter as the moon came to be directly above the well. Aurora watched, fascination without explanation creeping within her. She didn't know why.

Aurora looked up at the moon, and watched as it seemed to shimmer like silver dew as always, and it almost looked like some bit of moon-dew or something was about to drip off! Aurora blinked, peering closer. There was something about to drip from the moon. She watched, her fascination turning into unfounded horror as the silver drop fell, it was as big as the kit herself. Aurora got to her feet, tried to rush forward, but destiny would not be altered.

The silver drop melted into the kit, and there was a white flash. A thousand voices of pain and betrayal rang in her ears, as well as the silent image of dawn... Cats rushed into the clearing, evidently they had heard it too. A few were in time to watch the kits fur shimmer, then light with an unexplainable glow. Her speckles shone like golden stars, the crescent shape on her head like a drop of pure gold. And they were almost luminous. The kit got to her paws, apparently finding it not hard at all, and her eyes opened. They were white. Bright, glowing white. They suddenly sparkled and shimmered and there was a white flash as they turned into a clear, icy blue not unlike Aurora's.

Then they glosed, the glow faded, and the kit collapsed, apparently asleep.

"What in Shell's name just happened?" Falcon explaimed, walking up and smelling the kit. "Why does she smell like...like... well, she smells like night air and the Moonpool."

"I tried to prevent it. But destiny will not be altered. This kit will one day be powerful enough to destroy us all with no difficult. Some day soon. But it depends on the alleigance now burned in her blood, she will grow to aid us, kill us, or do nothing unless shr feels like it. Yes... she is a Moonchild. She is Kinta, but is she Shadow, Light, or Neutral?" Aurora murmured. "Which, indeed."

"What? She is a Moonchild?" Kaluna demanded.

"Afraid so, and she will be named as such. The first Moonchild was Kula, he was Shadow through and through. All others have pssed out of memory, but this one will be Kinta, Moonchild in our tongue." Aurora replied.

"Sorry, I bet you and Kaluna are fully informed in this subject, but we don't really know what a Moonchild is." Senka meowed loudly.

"Moonchildren... they are hard to explain. Aurora, will you take this one please?" Kaluna murmured. Aurora nodded briefly in her direction.

"They are easier to understand if you understand the element of Fate. Fate is the same as Destiny, something a greater force wrote for you to do the second you first breathed. For instance, It was the fate of Kula to make the Balance crumble and come closer than anyone to breaking the Moonshell, but to fail as time claimed him. The Moonchilderen are entwined very tightly with Fate, there are three kinds of them. First there is Shadow, this was Kula's group. Shadow Moonchildren do not care about the element of Fate, they are born with ever growing evil in their hearts and a desire to pledge doom upon all."

"Light Moonchildren also do not care about Fate. They will fight with all of their power for what they believe to be right, always the side of evil. Their hearts are the only completely pure ones. The Neutral... they are the most hard to understand. Moonchildren have eyes for everything, any one could easily tell if any of us would kill Medothen. They would be able to see kits not yet created in us, and the written story of those kits. The Shadow and Light Moonchildren will not care that what they are doing is not what was Fated to happen, they will go against it if they want to."

"But the Neutral, they have a fierce belief that Fate should stay as it is. For instance, if Phoenix was destined to do something great, like kill Medothen, then the Neutral would not kill either of them for fear of damaging Fate. However, depending on whose side they are on, the Neutral would kill without hesitation or remorse if the victim was not important to the main story of the world. The Moonchildren are like supernatural Morphelines, they can morph and more. They can take the shape of any animal that ever existed, still exists, will exist, and even those that exist in the imagination of others. They can also change their colours, apart form a distinctive mark that will always remain the same."

"We could not kill Kinta here, because merely trying to do so would result in the accidental but immediate death of those attempting the murder. We must wait, and watch with caution, and hope against hope that my daughter is not Shadow."

----------------

There was a battle cry, in a voice she would not ahve recognised if she could not make it herself. There was a forest, there. Aurora saw a signpost, it was a deer park, and would make brilliant territory for the night Demons. Problem was, it seemed two clans, or tribes, already inhabited it, and they were putting up one hell of a fight. There were stars in a half existant mist, Aurora recognised them as the starsigns meaning future. This had not yet happened. And aurora knew why this dream had come to her, as three apprentices awaited their deaths that had to be prevented.

---------------

There were three apprentices that needed rescuing. This time, she brought only Phoenix.

Falcon had agreed to be a stand-in deputy until she found another more suited for the job, he knew he was not the cat to lead NorthClan, and aurora knew it too. She had been waiting, waiting for the cats that would succeed her. Aurora was looking for one who accepted their weaknesses and made up for them, someone who knew how to handle power, and most importantly, a good psychic. How else could her successor find the Names of apprentices? How else could her descendants learn who they were?

Now, Aurora thought she had found her deputy. But she had to make sure he had good jugement of how to do things, this job would test that nicely.

They both landed in a tree by the signpost in Aurora's dream, waiting. They didn't ahve to wait long.

"What are you doing on DarkTribe's territory?" Demanded a cat, Aurora glanced over swiftly to see a patrol of five confronting the general Palm, who was a wind Elemental, and quite malicious and cocky in the way he seemed so casual about his missions. Aurora watched, half annoyed and half exasperated that the patrol didn't notice the... thirtyfour other animals half in, half out of the shadows.

"DarkTribe? You think you're dark?" Palm sneered, his stone grey fur rippling in the small breeze he was creating.

"They say the north wind blows over us and chills our hearts. Unlike LightTribe, we do not show mercy to imposters. Now leave, before you become tangled in our claws of injustice."

"You know, that ShadowClan bunch said the same about themselves. And it didn't take them long to die. You think you are coldhearted? I would like to see your pathetic face when we destroy everything you hold dear." On the last word, a powerful wind whipped up, surrounding Palm and and the patrol. The second after, there was a flash of silver and one of the cats was bleeding from a large slash on his shoulder and neck. "Unit!" Palm called. The cats ran in.

"You brought your whole tribe?" The cat asked incredulously,a nd one cat ran off to get reinforcements.

"of course not. And the tribe belongs to my leader, not her warrior. There are thirty more of us, and most of them are the powerful warriors, and the generals. Anyway, someone kill them, they annoy me." Palm replied, and a group ran forward, There were gurgled yells before it was over. Suddenly, cats raced in, loads of them. They would certainly reduce the numbers of the Morphelines.

Then there was mayhem.

All sense was lost in the battlesound, there was surprise as the Morpehlines transformed and killed them with no real difficulty at all. However, clearly there were some flaws in their battlestyle because the Morpehlines were also dying rather quickly.

All the time, constant vigil for those who did not transform. Aurora spotted one, a desperate looking brown tabby tom, blood pouring from his many wounds. He looked young and terrified, but innocent, as she had been back then... untainted by the real horrors of the world. When no one was looking, Aurora fell down from the tree with her tail still attatched to a branch, so she was ready to zoom up again. She promptly slashed the neck of the unguarded cat, whacked the apprentice on the head, and hauled him up. Yes, he was stunned, Quite minorly though, he would wake up soon.

Aurora realised Phoenix had captured a silver tabby she-cat. No one was looking surprised so she assumed he'd done it rather expertly. Next second, Phoenix shot down, slashed the throat of a cat with flaming claws, then whacked the apprentice and hauled him up. Aurora was surprised, this one was old, not young. maybe the Morphelines were ranging from their apparent preference in capturing children. The two younger ones seemed familiar, but Aurora knew she'd never seen those Morphelines.

Aurora's eyes flashed with what might have been appreciation as she shot her 'let's go' sign into the air as a silver aurora. Unseen, they flew away carrying three. Aurora took the adult, and Phoenix the two young apprentices. What miffed her was that the older one was definately an adult.

"You did well, Phoenix." Aurora told him as the battlesound withered. Phoenix was surprised, compliments from her were so rare that this one was like: 'All hail you for your brilliance in succeeding!' Aurora's crystal flashed. "The apprentices stir, land on the hilltop."

And so they landed as the three stirred, and woke slowly. The silver tabby she-cat as the first to get out, rubbing her head with her tail.

"Ow, my head." She complained, her voice sounding oddly familiar.

"What happened?" Demanded the adult pointlessly to no one, his plain very dark fur ruffled. The last, the one Aurora had taken, noticed her before getting up.

"And who the hell are you?" He demanded.

"You're supposed to say Shell." Aurora corrected. The brown and tawny tabby appeared to be concentrating on something, as did the silver tabby.

"They're evidently Morphelines, but i've never seen them before. Maybe... Medothen?" The adult said, then crouched in fear.

"Medothen doesn't have horns, Shellbrain!" Aurora snapped. "And she's a shadow elemental, not a multiple."

"Your voice sounds familiar. Why did you take us from the battle?" Asked the young brown tabby, politely, but Aurora could see the hatred glittering in his eyes and crystal. They evidently still thought they were Tribe Morphelines.

"First, name yourselves." Aurora ordered.

"River." said the silver one.

"Pine." Replied the tawny and brown tabby tom.

"Earth." Stated the mud brown adult.

"Pleased to meet you. Evidently, from your gemcolours, you think we are Tribe Morphelines. No - we are rebels against them. We try to rescue apprentices from their suicide missions." Phoenix meowed, coming up from behind Aurora, holding one of his wing/legs to clean it.

"Rebels? So we've been rescued?" River asked excitedly.

"Depends on your point of view." Aurora answered. No one seemed to notice this comment.

"How did you form your... rebels?" Earth demanded.

"I escaped from a suicide mission with another. We found the offspring of Keega and trained them in their magic, Avia took one of them as her mate and I the other. When Avia was killed, I left and they followed. We formed the rebel group, and the three of us took three apprentices named Dusk, Snow, and Autumn. Hopefully no one saw us steal them. They agreed to join us, and so we trained them, and I trianed Kaluna as my healer, for she and her kit had tried to escape and we rescued her too. Once Autumn, Snow, and Dusk became Kaira, Tundra, and Serpent, Avia's kits and Kaluna's one were ready for their training. Phoenix stands by me now, Avia's kits are at camp. I ahve ahd my recent litter, so they will be trained in a few months also. But here we are now, to ask you if you will join us."

"That explains a lot." Earth confirmed thoughtfully.

"What's your name?" Demanded River.

"I am known as Aurora, and my friend Avia was once known as Amberlight." Aurora replied.

"Yes, we've heard about you. How you mastered your Kaza faster than it has been recorded." Earth mrowed gravely.

"Your name sounds a lot like Aura." Pine added sadly. aurora snapped her head to him, eyes narrow, the glimmering forms of two icecats shimmered and disappeared.

"How do you know that name? Speak!" Aurora added, when all Pine replied with was a bemused expression. growling, she sent a psyblast to desintegrate a small leaf, making Pine yelp.

"She was one of my friends as a human, kay?!" He yelled.

"And what was your name then, and yours?" Aurora asked, firing her icy gaze at River.

"I was Matt, and my sister was Lucy." Pine replied, making Aurora go rigid with shock.

"Wow, congrats you guys, take a good look because Aura hasn't been surprised like this since... ever!" Phoenix joked, and the two young ones immediately commited it to memory.

"Matt and Lucy?" Aurora repeated,a s if she couldn' quite believe it. "What the heck did you do to get yourself bitten?" In her surprise, she had abandoned the Morpheline curses temporarily.

"Huh?" Was all the confused pair could manage.

"Oh you idiots, you can't make the connection? Seriously... did your brains die in the transformation? I'm Aura you bone heads!"

"No way. You can't be." Replied Pine firmly in disbelief.

"But it... is her. You can tell." River argued. Pine nodded.

"What happened, Aura, I mean, Aurora? You used to be so... warm. Moody and irritable occasionally, yes, but never cold..." Pine asked, and aurora's eyes immediately turned steely.

"Aurora? Warm? What are you meowing on about? Do you have any idea how much she spends in her nest away from anyone, just meditating? How she doens't even show emotion to her mate?" Phoenix asked with disbelief. Aurora didn't mund, she knew it was true.

"You have a boyfriend?" Asked River incredulously.

"A mate, River. Not a boyfriend. You know, as in have babies sort of thing. I have three kits at home now." Aurora explained patiently.

"YOU HAVE KIDS?" Pine exclaimed. "AT YOUR AGE?"

"At least I actually got to knew my mate before I ahd kits with him. Avia found herself pregnant before you could say Morpheline." Aurora answered.

"Avia?" Repeated Earth.

"You know, Amberlight. Molly. My best friend." Aurora's voice was low, cold, unfriendly, and harsh. It had been working its way there for a while now.

"WHAT?! How-" Pine spluttered. Aurora grinned slightly. He had been dating Avia when she was bitten. "I'm gonna have to have a word with her. She cheated on me! Evil c-" He was cut off as Aurora, three icecats, two auroracats, and two firecats slashed him viciously. The elemental cats disappeared, and Aurora and Phoenix were left looking furious. Phoenix looked angry, Aurora looked ready to kill.

"Just for that, i'll ask Aurora to claw you within an inch of your life in training." Phoenix hissed.

"Don't worry, i've got it covered. You never insult the dead! Especially when they're your friend, and they had a best friend prone to rip you apart if you insult them!" Aurora snarled.

"Molly's dead?!" River and Pine exclaimed at the same time.

"You wouldn't dare attack him!" Earth growled.

"Why? Because how thouroughly he's been trained? Get real, idiot. Nearly killing the apprentices is the training. Phoenix did surprisingly well, less scars than the others. Less Kaza Burns and icewounds." Aurora snorted. "Now, will you join us, or not?"

"We're coming with you." River and Pine said instantly.

"I forbid you to! You heard her, she'll attack you in training!" Earth growled.

"How else will you learn to fight?" Phoenix pointed out. "The Morphelines certainly won't hold back when we battle them."

"He's right, dad." River meowed. Ah, so that's who he was! Pine and River were siblings.

"forget it! i'm not joining, and you won't either!" Earth ordered his children. Then he jumped at Aurora, claws out. Aurora, looking bored, side stepped to avoid his mad attack.

"Aurora, amy I deal with him?" Phoenix asked. Aurora knew why, he wanted to impress her.

"Don't worry, you're already in line for deputy. He insulted my honour, so I shall fight him." Phoenix stepped back, looking placated.

Earth's eyes narrowed and he lunged again, more expertly this time. if he actually had some coordination that could have done some serious damage.

"Stop! Don't hurt her!" Pine yelled. Earth ignored him. Aurora boredly flapped upwards to avoid his charge, then sent a beam of ice at him. he hadn't expected that, and that was ll Aurora needed to close in and give him huge gashes with her talons.

"Aurora! please don't kill him!" River begged, seeing the match was by no means even.

"Do not worry, small one. He will not die." Aurora responed, morphing into a wolf and whacking him over the head with enough force to knock him out for several hours. Then, her eyes started glowing as she used her Kaza for an important task. "Phoenix! Kaza link. We have memory modifying to do." Aurora barke,d and instantly felt the suprisingly strong Kaza aiding her own. When she finally stopped, she was sweating.

"Your father is now convinced he is a loner named Quake, and his life's ambition is to be a WindClan warrior. taht will give him somewhere to go." Aurora meowed approvingly. "Are you still coming, or do you need a new purpose too?"

"We're... we're still coming." The apprentices confirme,d and with a small npd she took them home.

Chapter 26: Of a friendSo, River and Pine were dumped in the training grounds. That was predictable. What was not predictable was that Kinta had already opened her eyes.

Aurora walked into her den, sitting down so Vortex and Cova could feed. Kinta, however, was already on meat. That was how Moonchildren were... they needed absolutely no looking after. Kinta walked up to her quite steadily, and frowned up at her with her piercingly cold ice blue eyes. Aurora shivered. Kits as big as beanie babies were not supposed to have that look.

"Confoosed." Kinta announced, making Aurora nearly teleport to Austrailia. Kinta suddenly frowned more. "Confused." She corrected. Then, Aurora seemed to arrive in a world where everyone's voice was an echo, and everything seemed dimmer as if obscured by mist.

It only took her to see River, Pine, Phoenix, Dragon, Falcon, and the kits to know this had already happened. Great Moonshell, doing such a monumental tast as projection would leave her half dead, and this newborn kit was doing it with minimal effort!

"So you're the new apprentices." Falcon commented.

"Yeah... how exactly are we trained?" Pine asked.

"You train yourself." Phoenix replied.

"WHAT?!" River yowled.

"Shut up! I'm meditating!" Yowled Aurora, stunning River into shutting up. Aurora had never said shut up before, she had only given you a look of doom to subdue noise...

"It's not hard. You're dumped in the Training Grounds and you ahve to learn the right ways to hunt certain animals and how to fight and how to get the general idea of what the weather will be. Advice though, spar with each other and raise your fighting skills, else when you get to the second stage of the training you will probably be killed by it. Aurora... Aurora won't hold back at all, she'll fight you like an enemy. She says anyone too weak to not be able to match her in combat is too weak to be a warrior, and that the Morpheliens could probably kill them with an untrained apprentice." Phoenix meowed casually. "Oh, and don't get disappointed if she doesn't encourage you - Aurora never compliments anyone."

"That's not the Aurora we knew... what happened to her? She's so... cold. She doesn't care about us, even though we were her friends." River meowed sadly. Dragon sighed.

"The Aurora you knew died with my mate." Dragon said solemnly. Pine suddenly fixed him with a hard look.

"So you're him. Avia's mate. I was her boyfriend, know what that means? It means I was courting her and she was courting me." Pine growled.

"Brilliant. Well, in case you haven't noticed, you weren't the one that bonded with her and you are not the father of Senka and Marten." Dragon replied smugly.

"Why you..." Pine growled, swinging an unexpected blow at Dragon. The blow was intercepted by a cat amde of ice.

"You idiot, Pine! Stop mauling my warriors! Leave the shellshard history in the past, moonbrain! Even trying to maul my most senior warrior earns you punishment!" The ice cat said, using Aurora's voice.

"It's telepathy." Phoenix expalined, looking mildly interested. That expression and those of the others turned to one of shock as the ice cat began slashing viciously at Pine's left shoulder.

"That is a large but shallow wound, on a place that will not affect your trianing and should be completely healed in three days. Now you'll know not to attack my warriors, the second warning results in a broken leg. The third, near death beating, and the fourth... i'll leave that to your imagination. Shut up and sleep."

"how... how could she do that?" Pine asked, horrified, River in the same state. The other three seemed sympathetic.

"Like Dragon said, the old Aurora died with Avia. You have no idea how much I miss her... Hearing people talk about Avia makes her unstable, so its best not to mention her apart from in our thoughts and in patrols far away from Aurora, she had amazing hearing. She can obviously hear the coversations of every cat here." Falcon sighed. "It's a shame the others couldn't have met her before she went partly insane."

"Insane?" River asked. "That bad?"

"You have no idea how badly she's taking it. She can never look at Senka comfortably, she looks so much like Avia... want to know what she looked like, just look at Senka. I... I caught her a while ago, before Kinta became a moonchild, about to kill herself. But then she seemed to regretfully stop then she broke down, and cried. I've never seen her cry before, especially not like that. Everyone was wondering why the main cavern was wet with salty water." Falcon meowed gravely.

"So... it's when Avia is mentioned that the punishments arise, huh?" Pine asked softly, as if deeply anguished but trying to hide it.

"Yes."

-------

"So you don't know what punishment is." Aurora meowed mildly, not really caring that she had seen herself make her friend be attacked.

"Yes." Kinta replied.

"It's when someone does something wrong and you want to do something to them that they don't like so they don't do it again." Aurora explained.

"Oh." Said Kinta thoughtfully. "Kinta undersand now." She paused. "Understand." she corrected, then walked away.

----------

"You are ready for stage two." Aurora told the two apprentices two moons later, and an ice cat arrived to combat River. "Pine, you will fight me. transform, use claws and teeth, whatever you can to win. If you don't give it your all I will kill you without hesitation, like the enemy would. Like the enemy, I will not hold back either. The ice cat is almost as strong as me, the same fighting level as Phoenix. Begin!"

Later, after the training session, both Pine and River sat in their sett, warm blood pouring from their wounds and salty tears from their eyes.

"How could she do this to us?" River asked miserably.

"They... they warned us. We didn't spar enough. We have to accept what they said... Aura is gone forever." Pine replied sadly.

"No. She isn't all uncaring, I can sense it. Like I can sense the prescise weather approaching and everything." River meowed solemnly.

"If you say so. Yup, you're a good weatherman, but you suck at meditating!" Pine laughed.

-----------

A good while later, two new warriors entered the camp. They were Fenryre (fen ri ree, silver storm in the Old Tongue) who was merged with an otter, bat, and polar bear, with her wings as seperate apprendages and her true form being a lioness. And there was Vorlir, (He Of No Spiritual Defeat, as in he amy be killed but he wouldn't have been beaten in his spirit) who was merged with a weasel and golden eagle, with his wings as seperate appendages, and his true form being a lynx. They were the former River and Pine, and had grown from trembling idiots to well muscled warriors.

"Say hello to the new warriors, Kinta." Encourage Kaluna, trying to make the kit more friendly. Unfortunately for her, Kinta scowled.

"Go eat the moon." she spat, then glared at both Kaluna and the new warriors before continuing what looked like meditation. of course, everyone blatantly dismissed the thought that she was successfully meditating, and believed she was pretending to. Aurora knew otherwise.

A moonchild's abilities were not to be overlooked.

Chapter 27: Who will

Kinta, Vortex, and Cova were by their badger sett.

They had been dropped off there, and the scent trails of the previous apprentices led them to the sett that so many others had used. Cova and Vortex were inside discussing hunting techniques, Kinta was outside meditating, listening to their words through telepathy with disgust.

How stupid were they, that they didn't even know how to catch a rabbit. How pathetic was it that they couldn't even transform yet. Her lips tore into a feral grin as she remembered that she was a moonchild, and they were morphelines. She would always be stronger than them, like the mouse could never kill the cat. She concentrated, and elements started to stir.

A cat made of flame and with glowing golden pupilless eyes appeared. A cat identical to one of her mother's appeared. A cat made of water appeared. An aurora cat appeared. A rock cat appeared. A earth cat appeared. A blue-purple-white-yellow cat appeared, crackling with elecricity. Kinta let out her breath, and they all vanished.

Vortex did not like Kinta. That was his current thought as he walked to the surface. She always sat growling quietly, eyes closed. She had seen mother meditate, and was trying to copy. Vortex hated how she continued to feign meditation, the filthy showoff! She acted like she was a shelling Moonchild, for Kula's sake! (remember that Kula means moonshell)

He assumed that she was playing along with the name she had been given. Stupid.

"Kinta! Get down here and help figure out stuffs with us!" Vortex yowled. No reply. "Get up you deafhead!" he didn't know why, but he suddenly felt terrible pain flash within him for a millisecond, then vanish completely. Kinta went isnide, and the rain stopped.

-----------

(a moon later)

"Whoosh!" Vortex cried, making wind whirl around him, pretending he was a powerful light Moonchild with his powerful elements... his celebrations were cut short by the lying show-off, Kinta.

"Shut up!" She snapped. "Unlike you, I actually know how to focus my power."

"I can too focus my power! All you have to do is think really hard about stuff you hate and get angry..." he was cut off again.

"No, that would be automatic, uncontrolled, pathetically weak mess." Kinta replied.

"You don't have to be so mean!" Vortex complained. Cova appeared to be watchign with amusement. Satisfied that kinta had shut up, he continued gettign himself angry. "I'm a Moonchild!" he boasted. He suddenly squealed as something weird, tingly, and painful hit himand singed his fur quite a bit.

"Those who cannot cantrol their elements are unworthy of possessing them." Kinta said with clear irritation.

"Maybe. But I, unlike you, have a sense of humour, so i can pretend to be a Moonchild if I want to." Vortex snapped.

"And I, unlike you, am a real Moonchild, so I reccommend you lose that sense of humour around me unless you would like to die before mother even starts the second stage." Kinta replied angrily.

"Yeah, sure you are." Vortex scoffed, then his fur bristled. "You know what? I'm sick of your cocky attitude. Pretending to be all high and mighty, even being as stupid as pretending to meditate! Then you say you're a Moonchild. Pfft! I think the Moonshell will break before YOU become a Moonchild!"

"The Moonshell is breaking, fool. What did you think, that it would shatter instantly? Anyway, i'd like to see mother do what I can with elements. I am a Moonchild, how else can I know how to hunt anything and do this?" Then, she had grown a pair of feathered black wings. Black horns. Back legs turned into wings. Front legs vanished. Tail tip thinned and grew hair. Ears shrank to deerlike shapes. Her muzzle grew outwards, then she enlargened.

She was long, graceful, sinuous. A mane of hair similar to the texture of a zebras mane ran down her back. the same sort of hair lived on her tail tip. She had the same amrkings as before, but now she was an ampithere dragon. She blew a breath of frost form her open mouth, and froze a tree. Lightning shot from her throat and singed the grass. A small ember from her nostrils grew huge and raged around them, then suddenly expired as a monsoon only large enough to drench the fire appeared.

"I am a Moonchild. Since this creature does not exist in real life, only a Moonchild could transform into it. Tell mother I am leaving, that Moonchildren do not need training and if I chose I could kill her simply with lightning, so duelling is unnescessary. I already have my name, because Kinta is what I am. I have some buisness I must do, I must serve Fate. Oh, and tell mother i'm Neutral."

And she flew off, the sun eclipsing and her amrkings shining like a real moon and stars in the unprecedented darkeness.

Chapter 28: Watch over

(Two and a half moons later)

A figure sat perched upon a statue top, her ice blue eyes glittering with an unearthly light, and an eerie white glow softly enveloping her. She had learnt all she needed about what her actions must be. Especially since those actions would bring amusing conflict, and amusement was something she revelled in. Now it was time to put them into life. Now, when the sky grew dark.

----------

NorthClan alliances

Leader: Aurora - very pale grey she-cat with almost invisible speckles, baby blue/ice blue eyes. Has horns, wings, feather fan on her tail, talon like claws, and small supply of not so deadly venom. Merged with: Otter, osprey, fennec, jackal, timber wolf, harpy, red panda, five limbed monkey, polar bear, Komodo dragon, artic fox, and gazelle. True form: Snow leopard.

Deputy: Phoenix- Golden tom tinted with pale orange and ginger speckles has wing feathers on front legs, clear blue eyes. A few feathers on top of head, and a feather fan on tail. Golden peacock crests on head in between feathers, very short peacock tail feather on feather fan. Merged with: Peacock, golden eagle, peregrine falcon. True form, cat.

Healer: Kaluna- she-cat with an almost identical pelt to Phoenix, only much darker. Emerald green eyes. Has two extra limbs as her wings and the feather fan. Merged with: buzzard. True form: ocicat.

Warriors:

Falcon- Black tom with silver stripes and an odd crescent moon marking on his head, this silver as well. Green eyes. Has wings separate from legs and feather fan. Merged with: Osprey, golden eagle, harpy, fish eagle, and peregrine falcon. True form: mountain lion.

Dragon- Black tom with fiery ginger stripes and green eyes. Has bat wings separate from body and a tail thinned at the end. Tiny scales under fur and has horns. Very draconic. Merged with: Komodo dragon, bat, gazelle. True form: Bengal tiger.

Serpent- Silvery blue grey tom with amber eyes and a very long, sinuous body and venomous fangs. Bat wings on front legs, tail thinned at end. Merged with Coral snake, king cobra, bat, boa constrictor, and anaconda. True form: clouded leopard.

Kaira- Golden brown she-cat with bright sea blue eyes. Wing feathers on front legs and feather fan on tail tip. Large ears and webs between toes. Merged with: osprey, peregrine falcon, fennec, and otter. True form: cheetah.

Tundra- White she-cat with bright green eyes. Wings as two separate limbs and tipped with black. Merged with: Artic fox, artic wolf, snowy owl, and artic hare. True form: artic wolf.

Senka- Golden feathered she-cat with bits of fur occupying the gaps between her feathers. Sapphire blue eyes. Two wings separate to legs. Merged with: harpy, timber wolf, golden eagle. True form: lion.

Marten- Lithe fiery ginger tom with sapphire blue eyes. He can jump so far (from treetops) that he can almost fly. Merged with: ermine, pine marten, weasel. True form: pine marten.

Freerah- brown tabby tom with green eyes. Has wings identical to the colour of pelt, separate from legs and feather fan on tail. Merged with: Harpy, golden eagle, red tailed hawk, buzzard. True form: lynx. (Pine previously, new name means Strength Soarer)

Cyza- silver tabby she-cat, amber eyes. Has bat wings attached to front legs and webs between toes. Merged with: otter, bat, and weasel. True form, cat. (River previously, new name means Quick-Of-Wit)

Apprentices: (The apprentices are not given a description until after discovering their Names)

Vortex

Cova

Queen:

Kaira- Golden brown she-cat with bright sea blue eyes. Wing feathers on front legs and feather fan on tail tip. Large ears and webs between toes. Merged with: osprey, peregrine falcon, fennec, and otter. True form: cheetah. Mate: Marten.

Other animals:

Earth- Freerah and Cyza's father, memory blanked. Huge mud brown tom with green eyes and an ambition to join WindClan. Is searching for them.

Kinta- A black neutral moonchild she-cat with a golden crescent moon on her face, the gap upwards. Golden speckles on her body and piercing turquoise/ice blue eyes that will change colour if she wants them to. Favourite forms: ampithere dragon, extravagant cat form (cat with feathered wings and various other features she likes), sea dragon.

-------------

It was quarter to four in the afternoon. In the town nearby, a certain school had just ended for the day. Shadows played around the forms of two schoolgirls exiting the school for two reasons. One was that they always took a while to pack up and leave, and thus were always the last out. The second reason was that it was nearing the autumn/winter stage where the sky darkened quickly. One of the girls, Laura, had arranged that day with the other girl, named Jessica, that she would visit the latter's house.

Like many thirteen year olds, they had not bothered to ask for the consent of their parents, Laura would text her mother when she reached Jess's house. As for Jess, she would casually inform her own parents of the visiting friend when they entered the door. The girls had quarter of a mile to walk to their destination, as Laura's mother saw fir that walking this distance every day would keep her reasonably healthy. They kept quiet; knowing that they would need to keep alert, for walking home in the dark could be dangerous for two girls.

They were right. Their alertness warned them off the rapid approach, and a rapid approach from a dark alley was not usually a beneficial thing. They had never been attacked before, but now, obviously, they were being attacked and so all their common sense made them scream loudly then run in an unchosen direction, panic erasing all traces of a more logical route as they ran down an alley.

They had never been down these alleys before, and finding their way around in them was ten times more difficult in the dark, and they predictably crashed into a dustbin on a dead end. In the dim light shining down from an automatic light there, the girls saw a tall full grown man advancing, and they screamed again. Evidently, they were either about to be killed, ransomed, or something more unpleasant that would leave long lasting mental scars.

As the man flipped out a Swiss army knife it seemed the first was in order. The girls screamed again and again as the man suddenly began running instead of his previous slow dramatic approach. If he took too long, the girls would alert someone. When he was about a meter away from then he held his knife differently, in a way that made a quick and shallow slash easier.

Half way in the middle of lunging at Laura, another dark shape dropped from the roof of a building and somehow managed to land in between the man and the girls without being fazed by the twenty meter drop. Then it grabbed the knife and snapped it. Next, the mysterious shape brought its arm out at a speed that made it impossible to tell what had been done, but when the man fell to the ground he had a large slash laced with a horrible looking burn across his neck.

The hairs on the back of the girl's necks stood up, wondering who this was and why they were here. The shape turned around so its face was in the light, revealing an eleven year old looking girl with black hair that came down to her thighs, and had odd golden speckles on it. Something seemed to glow from underneath her black fringe. Her eyes were such an icy blue it was hard to look at, they reminded the girls so strongly of Aura's eyes.

"Th-thank you." stuttered Jessica. The glowing thing beneath the girl's fringe seemed to flash along with her eyes, the latter glowing light turquoise for a moment before returning to their previous colour. The girl's lips twisted in a feral grin, a most unnatural looking expression for an eleven year old's face.

"No problem. It wouldn't do to have my mother's acquaintances be left with mental scars, would it?" The girl said in a cool, icy voice laced with mild mockery and a sinister undercurrent. Her teeth flashed milky white. In the moonlight, they looked oddly like fangs. "For that was his plan. He was not important to the larger story of destiny, and so now he is dead. The world could use less of his type."

"Erm... who are you?" Laura asked nervously.

"My name is Kinta, and I passed into this town in search of you two, Laura and Jessica. How I knew your names will be explained din due time, but for now I request permission to come with you to Laura's house and explain myself." Kinta replied in that same voice, but this time without the smooth edge of mockery.

"Er... sure, you can come." Laura replied nervously, and Kinta nodded slightly before leading them out of the alley and waiting patiently to follow the two home in silence.

--------

"Mum, I'm home! Jess has come over, as well as Kinta, who is..." Laura trailed off.

"A foreign friend." Kinta finished.

"Oh, hello. I don't believe I've met you. I'm Laura's mother, Joanna." Joanna said pleasantly to Kinta, who promptly lost two shades of colour at Kinta's oddly spooky look of sceptism. "Will you two be having dinner?"

"Jessica, maybe, but I do not require dinner, thank you." Kinta replied in her cold, emotionless, and hard voice. Joanna nodded before zooming into her kitchen.

"Erm, we're going to my room Mum." Laura announced, then she darted upstairs with Jessica following and Kinta looking suspiciously like she was floating up the stairs. Laura and Jessica entered the first's room, dumping themselves on Laura's bed. Kinta walked in.

"I do not require a chair, if that is what you were going to say." Kinta told them, and then in front of the bed she suddenly started emitting a faint silver glow and levitated half a meter from the ground, and sat there with her legs crossed and a black cloak that had not been there before reaching to the floor.

"How do you do that?" Jessica exclaimed.

"Psychic. Those are rare enough, let alone those of my level." Kinta replied calmly. The girls briefly noticed that her hair appeared to be ruffling in a non existent wind. The glowing thing was revealed as a multicolour crystal luminous with some strange light from within.

"You said you came here to find us. Why?" Laura asked tentatively.

"I want to give you a choice that will change your life. You know I am a psychic, you know I am Kinta, but what you are unsure of is whether this crystal is attached to me or not. The answer is, it is indeed attached to me, and I was born with it. Mt crystal holds my psychic power, as well as the abilities of my species. Humans are not born with crystals, thus I am not human." Kinta said in exactly the same tone of voice.

"You what?!" Exclaimed Jess. At that moment, a black and white she-cat entered the room, a red collar around her neck. She sniffed the air, then arched her back and hissed when she smelled Kinta.

"Excuse me. I need to have a word with your cat." Then Kinta walked over to the cat then crouched at eye level. "At ease, small one. I mean you and your humans no harm. You have no reason to fear me. Stay strong; these are dark times we walk through." Kinta meowed softly to the cat, and she calmed down.

"You smelt like those who have been stealing children, so I was scared. They would have killed me already, I believe you." The cat meowed in reply, and then she exited the room. Meanwhile, the girls were watching, bemused as Kinta appeared to meow. Kinta walked back over and resumed her levitation.

"Allow me to introduce myself properly. I am a psychic, come-and-go member of NorthClan, and a legend among my species. Most of all, I am Kinta, the daughter of Aurora." Kinta declared.

"Daughter of who?" Jess questioned.

" Aurora. Let's see... you would know her better as Aura." Kinta added thoughtfully.

"Yeah right. If she were actually alive, Aura would be thirteen now, and she couldn't exactly have a kid when she was one you know." Jess snorted.

"I am a Morpheline, human. That means I am a shapeshifter. I am masquerading as a human, this form has proved useful. Though, since I am what is known as a Moonchild, I have no true form, just favourite ones. I can tell you where your friends have been disappearing to. How many are missing?" Kinta asked.

"Eight." Laura replied. "Matt, Lucy, Steven, Stephan, Mandy (Yes, I've decided Avia was Mandy), Aura, Suzie, and Mark."

"Mandy, Avia. Aura, Aurora. Lucy, Cyza. Matt, Freerah. Those are the ones I knew. Most of the rest will be dead. Each of your friends would have got themselves a new name now, otherwise they would be tortured. Yes, but I know a few of them. One died before I was born." Kinta added softly.

"What...?" Jess asked. They both were not keeping up very well.

"Basically, there are catlike creatures called Morphelines who have been running around and changing children into their species, then capturing them for their army. Understand?" Kinta asked impatiently.

"Our friends were turned into animals?!" Laura exclaimed.

"Yes, you got it. I'll give you the brief story, the detailed one my mother can tell you. Mandy was transformed first, and then it was Aura. Mandy became Amberlight and Aura became Aurora. They were forced to stay with the Night Demon tribe as part of their army, an army which they will use to purge the world in terror. They were trained to fight and use their shape shifting and telepathic powers that came with their new forms, then, when they were sent on a mission that would likely kill them, the two escaped and joined a clan of wildcats."

"After being shunned in that Clan, they joined another, where they were welcomed more warmly. There, they found the offspring of the only other Morpheline to escape from the Tribe alive. Aurora and Amberlight told them of their origins, and trained them in our ways. Their names are now Dragon and Falcon. Amberlight quickly started a relationship with Dragon, and Aurora surprisingly eventually got together with Falcon. Amberlight became Avia when she made herself mostly bird."

"Avia gave birth to two young, Senka and Marten. They are alive and healthy. Aurora had a stillborn. Sadly, shortly after birthing, Avia was given rabies by an infected badger, and she was attacking all her allies. Aurora was forced to kill her, that damaged her more than anyone except me and herself will ever know. She has changed, when I saw her memories I can hardly believe she once made jokes and was once happy. In this day, she is cool and is in continuous grief. Aurora left with Dragon and falcon to start her own clan of rebels against the Morphelines, and they took three once-human apprentices from them and trained them as their own."

"They are the warriors Kaira, Tundra, and Serpent. After that, the kits of Avia were trained and they themselves became warriors, along with the new deputy Phoenix. Shortly following this Aurora have birth to three. They are Cova, Vortex, and myself. The names of the first two will change soon. Aurora also claimed two more from the Morpheline Tribe, and they are your friends Matt and Lucy. They are now Freerah and Cyza. Their father had no wish to join our clan."

Kinta watched with faint amusement as the two gaped. "And that is the not detailed story."

Hehe, I love confrontations. Nice long chapter. Chapter 29: Her

Okay. Let's get this straight. I am annoyed. All my reviewers have walked off somewhere, and I am NOT updating a story that only one person is reading! So, if you want this story to continue, review! Which other way do I have of knowing if anyone is reading the story? Even damn two-syllable reviews if longer ones are too hard to write, JUST GET TYPING OR PREPARE FOR A DISAPPEARING AUTHOR. That means TCH won't be updated unless this story gets updated, and this story won't be updated unless you REVIEW. I want at least two un anonymous reviews, then i'll know (sort of) that it isn't just one person under a lot of made up anonymous names (growls)

Oceanwind.

Chapter 30: Forever

LISTEN UP. THIS STORY WILL OFFICIALLY HAVE A SEQUEL. Though, unfortunately it will not have much of a plot... unless someone suggests something. It will involve a kit born to a creature that should not give birth.

"So... you're saying that Mandy is DEAD?" Laura asked slowly.

"Yes." Kinta replied, bored.

"And that Aura had KIDS?" Jessica questioned.

"Once again, yes. Otherwise I would not be talking to you. But let's cut to the chase, I want to know whether you will join NorthClan in the fight for the universe. If we do not win, all will be lost. Humans can do nothing against Morphelines, their bullets will be halted by psychic power and they themselves will be forced to fight for the Morphelines themselves. Quite basically, I'm offering you the option of becoming a Morpheline. A few words of warning, though. Firstly, if you choose to join, you can never become human again. Secondly, the transformation will hold a pain far worse than death."

For once, they seemed to take this in. "But can't you turn into a human?" Laura asked.

"I am a Moonchild. That means I am the most creature currently residing in the universe and can do basically anything I want. Because I am a neutral Moonchild, I will not disrupt the world's story. I am a legend among Morphelines; even their leader would probably worship me. Unfortunately for Light and shadow, I refuse to do any mass killing unless I feel like it or the ones in question are not important. As in, they are destined for nothing special in particular. I can control elements with no boundaries, and morph into any creature ever thought of. Basically, if you made up an animal I could read your mind and morph into it. Which is quite useful, since people tend to create rather invincible creatures. My favourite form is the four winged ampithere dragon, and the sea dragon..." Kinta declared.

Laura and Jessica appeared to be thinking hard, and then they sent a broken look at each other, a look with both determination and deep sorrow on it.

"We think... not sure..." Laura mumbled.

"I will take you two to my mother's camp. There I will help her recount her memories and you can make your decision." Kinta said, and then her eyes glowed.

Downstairs, a letter appeared. It said: Laura and Jessica have gone with me. Do not be worried if they are not back by midnight - in that case there will be another note in this same place explaining their absence.

Kinta.

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Aurora was in her den. She was usually there, just thinking things over.

"Let's make a promise, Aurora. Let's promise that we'll protect each other with our lives, and if we fail we'll do all we can to get revenge for the other's death."

Aurora clamped her eyes shut. She had been the one who had killed Avia. So that should mean that she would have to kill herself... but...

"I knew you were depressed and all, but I never thought you'd go suicidal! Promise me, Aurora. Promise me you'll never commit suicide!"

So she could not. There was a revenge that could not be made. Aurora had betrayed her best friend to her death... and now she didn't know what to do. Her thoughts were interrupted as a mirage began to form in her den. It was cat sized, and Aurora did not feel surprise when she was looking at an almost carbon copy of herself, without the horns and crystal. They both held the same look of loss and pain, an identical look.

"Hello Northlight. I was wondering when I'd next speak to you." Aurora murmured.

"I thought you would have figured it out by now." Northlight replied softly, stirring mild shock within Aurora to find out how identical those voices were. Icy cold, hard, uncaring, yet so soft and quiet. When Aurora had heard her voice before, she had not been able to tell the difference, although she knew there was one. Now she understood- Northlight had suffered the same pain. She had lost Goldenray. Aurora suddenly felt a deep longing to hold heartfelt conversation with this apparition; Northlight would be the only one in any world who understood how she felt... especially since Northlight was her.

"Only a heart twice broken, once dead." Aurora recited from the dream she had had. She had figured most of it out ages ago.

"Yes... disaster must occur for all to be saved... I felt your pain, Aurora. It was like a recollection..."

"It was. We have been given another chance, I am not allowed to flee as you did... my daughter will not help me, a neutral knows better than that. This time, at least, the moonchild is on our side. Though I have noticed something strange about Kinta... even for a Moonchild, she seems different. Tell me, Northlight, I am your reincarnation... if I am you, then how are you here?" Aurora asked.

"My torn soul was reborn in you, partly mended but destined to be torn further. I am merely a wandering spirit who must dwell always around you, because we share a soul, and without a soul, neither of us are anything. Come, I'd like you to meet a friend of mine. She is also a wandering spirit, although she has not been reincarnated." Northlight explained, and another figure appeared next to her. This one was jet black with a white chest and underbelly, two black symbols of an oval and star upon her white chest. Her eyes were a deep, sad amber, and she had white tipped wings and a matching feather fan. "This is Gemstar, the first Hybrid." (A/N: I bet you weren't expecting that! HAHA for unexpected plot twists!)

"Hybrid? I've never heard of a hybrid before... Of course, the Morphelines can sustain hybrid form for a while, but there's no point because hybrid form is weaker than normal form and takes up Kaza to use... so me and my tribe unknowingly evolved and rid ourselves of it, the Kaza normally reserved for going hybrid has been added to our psychic power, and so we often get Elementals." Aurora meowed.

"You evolved because you were around a moonchild. Gemstar is not the sort of hybrid of which you speak. She was also once human, but her transformation did not have the pain that yours did. Her tribe moved away a long time ago. She is a cat/human hybrid with the ability to take cat, human, or hybrid form by touching her symbols. In hybrid form, her strength greatly escalates. Her tribe, the Tree-Dwellers, lived on some islands in the middle of the lake before the tribe got too large to live there, and they moved to the forest by the River Amazon in Brazil. The Town-Dwellers and Sea-Dwellers did not move, and there is a tribe of hybrid wanderers founded by Windflower and Alabaster somewhere." Northlight explained.

"I think I remember seeing a news programme about it about three or four years ago... what happened to the islands?" Aurora questioned.

"StarClan took them away when the Tree-Dwellers left. The Clans didn't hear from them since. The Town-Dwellers and Sea-dwellers have not moved though. There are enough underwater places for the Sea-dwellers to fill for centuries, but the Town-Dwellers will eventually have to move some of their number. There's talk of them Halfling and half living in London, using Kew gardens as their camp. Alabaster's tribe once camped there, but they are wanderers, they live where the wind takes them." Gemstar meowed.

"Where do the Sea-dwellers and Town-dwellers live?" Aurora asked now deeply interested.

"The Sea-dwellers are also known as Watercats to humans, they had a large conflict with the humans before coming to an agreement and continuing to live in peace at the nearest seaside. Humans that go there give them fruit." Gemstar announced.

"No way! They're hybrids? I gave them fruit once... no wonder they can talk English!" Aurora exclaimed, a bit of her old self present in her voice. She had a feeling that these two could easily become good friends of hers. Upon that thought, she sank once more into her grief.

"Yes, they managed to worm around that truth and so are safe. The Town-Dwellers, hence the name, live in the nearby town. Their numbers are around forty, while the Sea-dwellers and Tree-dwellers have numbers in the fifties. We two tell you about them because they are very powerful, and if you can convince them so, they might be able to help you in the final battle. The problem is, last time they went against creatures as strong as themselves, it was disastrous. So many died... myself included. Some of them may not want to risk such a slaughter again." Gemstar meowed. (I bet everyone's itching to know what happens in The Cat Hybrid! HAHA, suspense!)

"I will try... I will try... they may be our only hope..." Aurora murmured.

"Hate to interrupt, but you have guests." Northlight meowed, glancing at the entrance to the cave from which many surprised meows and a few hisses were emanating.

"Shut up! Didn't anyone ever tell you to show respect for a moonchild?!" Demanded one irritable voice.

"Why did you bring humans here?" Hissed a voice that Aurora recognised as Cyza.

"If you'd look closely, Cyza, you'd notice these two were once your close friends! Anyway, I didn't come here to argue with you, these two need to see Aurora, stat!" Kinta snapped. Aurora sighed, and then walked out of her cave, suddenly going rigid with shock as she saw Laura and Jessica there. Noticing that her Clan was now rigid with shock because she was rigid with shock, she stopped being rigid with shock.

"Hey! I may be your leader but that doesn't mean I don't get to be shocked when I see two of my long lost friends! As for you, Kinta, you didn't sleep last night, did you? I told you enough times already, if you don't sleep you'll become as grumpy as the tribe." Aurora announced, walking forward. "Added to that, you know as well as I that these two can't see a thing down here. Phoenix! Crystal flame!" Aurora ordered. The next second, Phoenix's crystal set on fire, lighting the cavern brightly enough for the two humans to see. "Thirdly, why did you bring them to see me, Kinta?"

"What's with all the cats?" Exclaimed Laura.

"I can see that they would make a considerable difference to our side's story if they joined us. I decided that they should see your memories before making any decisions. And who are those two spirits there that you're so fond of?" Kinta replied.

"Them? Oh, this is Gemstar and the other is Northlight. She's my previous self who was reincarnated from me. Furthermore, these two are basically the only two aside form you who understand me." Aurora told Kinta. Her daughter studied them.

"The first hybrid? The betrayer of all? Interesting... I am right to assume you would both like to be alive again? It is only possible for wandering spirits." Kinta asked them.

"You can do that?" Asked Gemstar, astonished. "Definitely! Maybe by the time I die again StarClan will let me in..."

"And you?" Kinta asked Northlight.

"Shell yes." She answered.

"The thing is, since you are just spirits, and don't have a body, we'll have to conjure one for you... and that means an elemental body. Because of that, you'd be Morphelines, not cats or hybrids." Kinta explained.

"Who cares?" Said both spirits together.

"Okay then. Which Element?" Kinta asked.

" Aurora." Answered Northlight immediately.

"Erm... wind, I guess..." Gemstar replied nervously. Kinta nodded her eyes glowed briefly, and two cats appeared next to her. One was composed of auroras, and the other was mass of wind so strong that it was visible. Aurora watched with interest as the two spirits appeared to be sucked into their chosen forms, and those elemental forms morphed. The aurora/Northlight one solidified and grew pale silver fur and matching wings. Her eyes turned a blue identical to Aurora's eyes and soon there was an almost perfect copy of Aurora standing there, blinking in amazement.

Next, the wind/Gemstar cat also solidified and sprouted black and white fur, all her markings appearing, including those on her new wings and feather fan. Her eyes turned from glowing white to amber, and she was also complete, staring at her chest as if fascinated with the fact that it was breathing.

"Northlight... I think it's best if you don't merge yourself with the same animals as me... or no one will be able to tell us apart. Good to have you in the Clan! As for you, Gemstar, you can no longer find place with your hybrids, your marks are not there anymore. You currently carry the name star, but since you no longer have nine lives and this clan does not have leaders with nine lives... you are permitted to keep your name. But are you happy with being a warrior again?" Aurora asked.

"I'm fine with it." Gemstar replied happily. Aurora gave a small nod then turned to the humans.

"We'll sort out our Clan complications later. For now, I must greet my friends."

HAHA. I bet no one expected that this story would have hybrids in it! REVIEW OR ILL LEAVE YOU ON A MAJOR 31: One

"Kinta, help me take these two to the large oak in the training grounds. That way I can show them the rest of my offspring." Aurora ordered. Kinta, glaring at being commanded, spat a bit before Jessica was suddenly riding a small sheet of rock and laura was riding a similar one. Withpout bothering to warn the two girls, they shot off at a speed that amde the two scream. Aurora landed neatly on a small branch of a large oak, and the mud platforms literally disappeared and the girls fell on very thick branches.

"Okay, now time to do my bit. You can't amplify your memories without my kaza unless we want a dead Betrayer on our paws. Now, stop sheilding your memories." Kinta ordered,a dn Aurora relaxed, feeling a bit odd to be so unguarded. She felt as Kinta and her overwhelmingly strong Kaza replicated those memories and sent them in the direction of the girls.

"You are about to see what happened to me, from the night I disappeared to now. Consider yourselves lucky, no one lese had this priviledge of seeing my emotions. Maybe we'll have to change that..." Aurora meowed, siddenly deep in thought as the two girls were slammed in the face by memories. Instead of the tree, they saw images pass through their eyes and minds. When they stopped to focus on them, they discovered that they could see the human form of Aura walking down a path, quite late at night.

They saw how she got confused and went the wrong way, how the creature jumped out of no where and bit her. Then they saw every scrap of the unbearable pain she went through int he transformation, able to feel it but not as if they were in that pain themselves. They watched as Aura canged her anme and found Mandy, who had also changed her name. They watched as Aurora and Amberlight escaped from the suicide mission.

They saw how Aurora grew wings. How they met Nightflame and Crescentclaw. How they made friends in WindClan and mentored the half Morphelines. They saw as Aurora was captured for experiments and escaped exceedingly easily, then went on a merging spree in the zoo. They watched as both she and 'Avia' were confirmed to be pregnant, but were thankful that the act that made it that way had been concealed. (wouldn't that be gross?) They watched as the two gave birth, and sniggered at Avia's eggs. Then, with deep sadness, they watched as Aurora was forced to kill her best friend.

They were so anguished at the grief that always pierced Aurora's heart that they felt their hearts would break. They couldn't believe how close Aurora and Avia had been. It was so sad...

Then it ended.

"Aurora..." jessica murmured, not really knwoing what to say.

"Spare your sympathy and save it for Avia. She's the one that died. Now, made your descision?" Aurora snapped.

"I'm... i'm joining. I have to make sure what happened to you never happens again..." Laura said shakily.

"Me too... I know how much this'll hurt... but it's for the best, really." Jessica added. Aurora nodded gravely.

"Then we'd better get to the ground for this." She meowed, and in a minute, they were all on the floor. Then without warning, Aurora jumped forward with a snarl and bit jessica's arm, then swivelled round and did the same to Laura. Both Kinta nd Aurora watched grimly as the two girls screamed in pain, growing fur, tails, and cat ears, plus shrinking. Laura sprouted russet fur, and her eyes lost their pupils and glowed green. Jessica grew white fur and her eyes turned equally pupilless, green, and luminous.

Then it was over. "You okay?" Aurora asked disinterestedly.

"Y-yeah..." Laura said shakily.

"Good. Now you must change your names." Auror announced.

"Do we have to?" Complained jessica. Aurora's eyes flashed dangerously and a cat amde out of ice gave her a frozen slash on her shoulder.

"Do as I say! You are one of us now, so you must let go of all ties to humanity. I strongly reccommend finding a mate, if you don't want to wait the months there is always my kin available, if they want it so of course. They won't be apprentices for much longer, only about half a month. Ask them to spar with you, I doubt you'd start fighting on your own. And remember, when i come to train you, I don't give a damn that you were once my friends and I will kill you if you don't stand up for yourselves. Weakness means death." Aurora snapped angrily.

"O-kay then... I'll be...Dawn." Dawn announced.

"Sky." Sky decided.

"Good. Now you can go off and try to find the apprentices. Good luck." And Aurora and Kinta flew off.

--------------

"Let all cats with the knowledge of their Name gather here beneath the EarthPile for a clan meeting." Aurora yowled, feeling a small twinge of satisfaction that she actually had a decent sized clan to call now. She watched until everyone was present. "Many of you will have noticed the two newcomers among us. They were until recently wandering spirits, before Kinta used a little Moonchild ability to give them life. One is the previous leader of the tree-dwellers, Gemstar. The other is Northlight, who two of you may recognise from an elders tale. She is not my twin, but close enough. I was reincarnated from Northlight, and that is why I look like her. However, Gemstar and Northlight know nothing of how to control a Morpheline's powers, so despite their age they will be trained. Of course, they will not have to find out how to hunt and fight on their own, because they already know those skills. It will be the fighting with me that will be more interesting."

"The system of Medothen's tribe is ghastly, but some of it is usefully efficient. Therefore, I will be constructing the Elite, who are my best warriors from which a new deputy would be picked if the previous were to perish, or I myself. Into the Elite will first go Falcon, Dragon, Serpent, Kinta, Senka, and Tundra. Unlike in the tribe, you will not be expected to protect these cats with your lives, but they will be candidates for a new deputy as well as leaders of missions such as recovering apprentices from suicide missions. The Elite is for either my eldest warriors or those who are young but extraordinarily powerful. On the subject of apprentice recovery, in two days there will be a suicide mission far to the west. There will be many apprentices there, so Phoenix will lead Falcon, Senka, Kaira, Marten, and Dragon there. I will give him the coordinates. The meeting has now ended." And Aurora flew into her den, leaving the clan to mull this over.

------------

(A moon later)

Suprisingly, Gemstar and Northlight had mastered their abilities and reached warrior level very quickly. Aurora had no doubt that they would both be of the Elite, once they became warriors with her other kits.

Aurora waited patiently for her apprentices to return, while the eyes of her warriros glowed behind her in the moonlight.

Northlight and Gemstar returned together. Strangely enough, for reasons Aurora could not understand, Northlight now had four silver wings. Two large ones around her shoulders, and two about half that size growing from her back above her flanks. The wingspan on the large wings was 4 metres, the wingspan of the smaller wings was 2 metres. She had not got herself horns, but her long and powerful looking tail suggested that she had probably discovered the five-limbed monkey. (it does exist... I just can't remember waht it's called!)

Gemstar seemed to have absolutely no differences, though her feathery fur suggested that she had merged with quite a few birds.

Next to return was Vortex, with no actual visible changes. Aurora guessed he had merged with some things, but because he already had most of the main changes that you could get there didn't seem to be any difference. The same seemed to apply for Cova. Aurora closed her eyes to listen briefly to the whispers of spirits around their bodies, finding with surprise that Gemstar was actually Gemstar's Name.

"Which species did you claim today?" Aurora asked them.

"Osprey, peregrine falcon, red tailed hawk, five-limbed monkey, and sparrowhawk." Northlight answered.

"Osprey, red tailed hawk, golden eagle, harpy, fish eagle, and swan." Gemstar declared.

"Polar bear, grizzly bear, golden eagle, red-tailed hawk, and otter." Cova meowed.

"Coral snake, osprey, red-tailed hawk, king cobra, otter, and artic wolf." Vortex replied.

"From your actions that have been witnessed in the world, nature has found you your Names. Northlight, your name is Mykara (My kara, it means rainbow in the old tongue), Gemstar, your current name is what you are. Cova, your Name is Feryn ( Fair in, it means voice of of the wind), and Vortex, your Name is Stelor. (Stehl or, means a mysterious wind)" Aurora swept her gaze over them all. "Each of you have your weaknesses, and those weaknesses you will make up for with your strengths. Always give life your best, and it will not let you down. Here, you are given a gift. The gift of life, to do with which what you choose. Be proud, for you are now full warriors of NorthClan."

"Mykara and Gemstar, you two are on the Elite. Congratulations." Aurora added, earning grateful looks from the two. "Now, let us return to our camp."

A rather dull chapter in my opinion... oh well, the next one involves Aurora going after the hybrids.

Chapter 32: Who lives

It's getting increasingly more difficult to create a new chapter... crud it. There will be very slow updates from here on until I get off my Writers block. In the meantime i've been writing the sequel to this story. Just a note: anyone who doesn't know what Naruto is will be completely lost in the sequel. It will be basically a naruto fanfic with Morphelines in it.

Now, her patrol would be flying to the west after some apprentices. Aurora was currently flying in the direction that gemstar decided was the right one. They were off to meet the Tree-Dwellers. Aurora noted with awe the giant river Amazon and the endless rainforest stretching as far as the eye could see... even her extraordinary eyes! Gemstar's eyes twinkled and she swooped low to an area with positively huge trees. Gemstar landed where the mile or three of gigantic trees were, and Aurora alnded after her.

"The camp is that way?" Aurora questioned, flicking her tail in the direction from which a large amount of scents came. Gemstar nodded briefly, and Aurora promptly began walking in that direction in long, loping strides, Gemstar quickly running ahead of her to camp. Aurora saw with fascination that there were large growths on the huge trees, dotted wherever a large clump of branches could support them. There were three or four on some trees, and hanging bridges made of vines connected those nests. It was like... like a city in the trees. A black shape flew down from a nest, and Aurora instinctively stepped into a shadow.

Gemstar, however, appeared overjoyed. The black she-cat was padding towards Gemstar with apparent confusion.

"Ravenwing? Where have you been? And what did you do with your hybrid marks- you didn't fall in bird dung again did you?" Apparently there was a cat named Ravenwing who looked a lot like Gemstar. "What's up? You look... bigger... or something...mmmf!" The cat exclaimed as gemstar barreled into her, covering her with licks as if she were a newborn kit.

"I can't-" lick "-believe-" lick "I'm here-" lick "Jetstar!" Gemstar finished, sitting back with pride evident in her eyes. jetstar appeared greatly confused, and didn't seem to know what was going on at all. "I never thought i'd call my daughter a mousebrain... but seriously... has everyone completely forgotten what I look like?" Gemstar demanded. Jetstar's eyes widened suddenly, then she snapped them close and shook her head violently.

"You're lying! My mother died five years ago." Jetstar hissed.

"I've always been watching you... Jetstar. I was a wandering spirit, belonging to no clan of the afterlife because Starclan would not accept one with the rage I carried into their ranks... they said I could only join them when my anger died. Then the daughter of my friend, who is the most powerful creature in the universe, performed some sort of bring-back-to-life thing that her kind can do with wandering spirits. I'm alive now, but the price for life is my hybrid marks. I am what is know as a Morpheline now." Gesmtar meowed.

"Mother." Jetstar muttered absent mindedly, not really knwoign wether to believe or not. Gemstar hissed impatiently and threw a small memory of her ressurection at Jetstar. After it was over, Jetstar's eyes widened again, and in a hoarse voice she asked: "You're back?"

"Finally, the genius of a leader figures it out." Gemstar purred. "How are the issues with the Marlor Tribe?" Aurora pricked her ears. The marlor? She'd wondered where they came from. The marlor were a kind of big cat, so stealthy and clever that they had remained out of human detection. They were a very dark tawny colour, mottled all over with even darker flecks. They were about as large as a tiger, and had an equal supply of both strength and speed. they were a formiddable cat to morph into. Jetstar sighed.

"One of Marshtail's kits fluttered into their territory. Youc an guess what happened to him. Those marlor keep us from over populating too much... StarClan seems convinced there is good in that, but they should try telling that to Marshtail. Anyway, what are we going to do now that youa re back? We can't have three leaders... and you wouldn't have a second."

"Oh, you needn't worry about that. I don't paln on re-joining the tribe, i'm no longer a hybrid and the charm on this place will not change me back. I am a warrior in NorthClan now. They are a clan of my new species." gemstar flciked her tail at the shadow concealing Aurora while Jetstar looked like she was about to say something. At that moment, Aurora appeared, making the Tree-Dweller leader bristle.

"Tree-dwellers! Very high level intruder in camp! Surround and knock out!" Jetstar yowled.

-They have evolved to be capable of sensing how strong any creature is. The level can range from any minus number to any plus number, though none have reached the ten thousands yet... except for you. You'll ahve to calm them down on your own... I can't fight them...- Aurora nodded then mentally picked Gemstar up and threw her into a shadow.

"Jetstar! The level 34000 is a psychic!" Yowled one of the many warriors that had appeared. Looking closely, Aurora saw taht they were flying from the tree-growlths in great numbers. Obviously, they had never faced one as powerful as her and so had to be careful. A swarm of about twenty-seven were flying down, while re-inforcements sat ready on the branches. Aurora glared at the number. She knew she could not take them all on, so simply sat still while tons of ice, wind, and aurora cats materialised around her, creating her own small army, but using no small amount of Kaza.

"Calm down, all of you. You have no need to take me prisoner, and couldn't if you tried. You have no idea how fast I can fly. Gemstar, i'd like a little help here." Aurora called the alst part, and gemstar materialised as she stepped from the shadows and sat beside Aurora.

"Hybrids of the Tree-Dwellers. I am Gemstar, who was five years ago your leader, and the first hybrid to walk this planet. Aurora here is not your enemy, it is her daughter who used her exceptional powers to give me life. Thi was only possible because I was a wandering spirit, a soul not linked to any clan after life. Thus, that soul could be tied to a body, if it was made. I took residence in a windcat, similar to the ones that Aurora just conjured. Aurora is the leader of her Clan, and I am one of its warriors, an Elite. Until I die again that shall be the clan that I give my loyalty to."

"I chose to be a warrior because I know that Aurora, despite her youth, is far more experienced with the ways of her clan and the world itself than I am. I do not have certain abilities that one in her Clan must have to become leader. Aurora is another creature like you hybrids, she is a Morpheline, being forced into a world she didn't know from her previous life as a human. She, her clan, and myself all know of the doom that approaches, a doom created by her own kind. Normally, Aurora would be aiding that doom, but she is not, simply because she is a rebel, working in secret agaisnt the death that plagues the universe."

"ShadowClan of the forest has been mostly destroyed and the few remaining cats driven away by Medothen's Morphelines, otherwise known as the Night Demon Tribe by some. They do not know that Aurora escaped instead of dying, so they do not know that the other three clans know of their plot to destroy them all in four turns. If they succeed, not only StarClan will disappear, as it is doing already, but the entire universe will be plunged into evil. Nothing will be able to save you from the Night Demons then, they will be invincible if the clans are destroyed."

"So Aurora has been raiding the Night Demons when they send untrained apprentices to destroy other tribes and clans of animals. Those apprentices, she trains as warriors of NorthClan, every one of their minds scanned for treachery. So now Aurora has a growing Clan, but she fears it will not be enough to defeat the Night Demons in the final battle. So, she has come here to ask you for your assistance."

------------------

The Tree-dwellers had said they would think about it. Meanwhile, gemstar had got permission to stay with them for a few days to familiarise herself with her old Tribe. Meanwhile, Aurora flew to the beach on which she had once given a watercat fruit. Upon landing, there were gasps of suprise and amazement making Aurora mentally whack herself for being so stupid, then she ran hastily into the shadows and took care to always be in them as she raced down the beach to the nature reserve area. She could smell cat, hybrid, and the oily smell of a fish around. She was close.

She followed her sharp nose to a large mass of rocks that stretched far out to sea, probably going down to below the sand. She smelled the scents going over to the rock, then vanishing. Confused, she followed a different trail. This took her on top of the rocks for quite a way until she saw a thin line of smoke rising from one point in the rock. It was white, so she assumed a flame had just been doused.

She walked curiously over to it with slight caution, wondering where the smoke had come from. She stopped in front of where the smoke line was thinning, then peered into the hole in the rock from which it came. There were dozens of watercats, or Sea-Dwellers. The smell of cooked fish wafted upwards at her and she saw boxes of fruit and bottles of coconut milk. The Sea-dwellers appeared to be helping themselves. Aurora noted with surprise that there was a sky blue cat there, as well as a smaller apprentice-looking ice blue one next to him. Odd.

They had not noticed Aurora, they had no reason to look up. Aurora quickly decided that with her wings and everything she was too large to drop down the hole. She followed another scnet trail. This one in the water. Aurora morphed into an otter and swam, looking for some sort of opening. She found none, then turned into a polar bear to avoid having something try to eat her, like a giant moral eel. Unfortunately, the appearance of a large predator quickly drew over two watercats, who were hissing viciously, somehow able to scent and communicate underwater.

"What's a bear doing here? They live in the artic, those ones!" Hissed one of the cats.

"It has wings and horns. I don't think that's an ordinary bear." The other said pointedly.

"We'd better drive it away..." Agreed the other one, and as if on some silent signal, they drew daggers from their waists. Aurora was surprised. Well, if we're using weapons... Her eyes glowed and a sword appeared, made entirely out of practically indestructable ice. Being an ice elemental, it didn't freeze her paw to grip it. She held it ready to use, ready and waiting.

The hybrids attacked with caution, knowing that no normal bear could wield a sword. They flashed round her with incredible speed, the water limited her movement but enhanced theirs. So, Aurora melted the sword and formulated two ice cats, both of them with the form of a watercat. The eyes of the flesh-and-blood watercats widened, and the seperated to deal a few dagger slashes to the ice cats. One of those slashes actually sliced off a bit of one ice cat's shoulder, but it was ice, it did not feel pain. Aurora briefly decided that she was fast running out of air, and so directed the ice cats to capture the two watercats then dashed from the water.

She didn't melt the ice cats until she was sure they had no weapons left. Satisfied for a moment, she realised that she was still a bear. In this brief moment of thought, the watercats dashed off, and Aurora, startled, ran after them.

"Let's get back to the cave for reinforcements! that thing's too big- it can't get inside our cave!" Gasped one and the other nodded. They were following the scent trail with a dead end, and then, suddenly, they disappeared into the rock. Aurora skidded to a halt, sniffing the area with bewilderment. She quickly discovered there was a practicallly invisible cave there, and she heard a splash from within as the watercats vanished.

Aurora shrugged and turned into a fennec, paddign into the cave. She saw six small ice blue glwos at the other end of the room, and ran up to them, puzzled. She noticed that they were small stones on an almost transparent seaweed. Aurora focused her mind and listened to the whispers of time and fate formulated around the stones. They were called Icestone amulets, and made one unaffected by water pressure, able to breathe underwater, and capable of smelling and talkinh while completely submerged. Aurora quickly slipped one on. Then she walked out of the cave, and turned into a snow leopard, leaning against the rock. Shell, if I were a human, leaning like this would be so comfortable... maybe, just for the second... Aurora dug up the power that evolution had buried. She took her snow leopard/human form. She leaned back against the rock. Ahhh, that's better. Way better. And I don't feel any weaker... but nor do I feel stronger.

"Where's this bear of yours, Seastone? I figured a bear would be trying to get into the cave..." Said a voice.

"It was there! Maybe its gone away..." insisted Seastone.

"Then we'll check for tracks and scents. What did you say it smelled like, Zen?" Asked the first voice.

"It smelled like bear... as well as cat... and bird... and I don't know what." Replied Zen.

"Whatever. Zen, Seastone, c'mon." Said the first voice, and Aurora's sensitive ears twitched with annoyance at the sound he was making!

Chapter 33: Again

And the story continues...

Aurora waited for the patrol to come. When they did, the one who apparently was not Zen or Seastone blinked, then turned to the mentioned two.

"Do we know any Tree-Dwellers with horns? And aren't all female hybrids wearing tank tops?" he asked.

"I don't know any Tree-Dweller with horns... and yes, females are supposed to be wearing some form of tank top." Replied Seastone.

"Use your nose, Sharktail! Can't you smell that this is no hybrid? Look at that power level! We definitely need reinforcements..." Zen hissed, his tail beginning to lash.

"Seastone, you go." Sharktail meowed urgently, nodding. Seastone hurriedly darted off.

"You act like I have an IQ of five." Aurora meowed quietly. "Though you are correct, I am no hybrid, but that does not prevent me from shapeshifting into one." The two remaining cats started, as if they had not expected that she could talk. "So, what are you going to do?"

"Get off our territory or we'll attack." Growled Sharktail.

"I don't think i'll do that, thanks." Aurora replied mockingly. She wanted a bit of a scuffle at least, enough to attract the leader.

"Then we'll make you!" Seastone snarled, and then both of them jumped forwards. Aurora noticed that they had very good skill, likely a couple of the best warriors in the tribe. They would have no trouble in a one-on-one fight with Medothen's morphelines. Nevertheless, it would take twenty of them to have a chance of beating her...

Barriers of wind surrounded and closed in on the two cats. Gale like winds. They buffeted the two cats for a while before swirling and taking the form of silver wind that picked up dust and leaves that swirled endlessly and blew into the shape of a cat. Fierce winds blew around it, and it nodded as a cat made of ice walked next to it.

Predictably, the two cats were thrown back. Unpredictably, Aurora felt a mind probe sent by a psychic. She instantly walled her mental defenses with an invisible material stronger than steel, otherwise known as Kaza. As long as there was no flaw in the wall, it was impossible for it to be conquered. Then she quickly forged a silver sword from the Kaza energy that gave her power, and ripped away at the gaps in the defence of the other psychic.

-This pain... I've never felt this pain! This is... could it be... the one who is sapping our power?- Aurora heard from the other mind.

-You should be careful where your thoughts wander. Let them from your boundaries, and anyone can hear.- Aurora told the other mentally. -In fact, I would be surprised if every member of my Clan caught that thought. Even our eldest apprentices... the kits and new apprentices can be excused because they have not yet learned to control their power. However, anyone with a worm's telepathic ability could have heard that! You call yourself a psychic? You do realize that you have potentially put the universe in danger of dying, don't you? Come out! Stop cowering in the shadows like a frightened kit, resorting only to tricks that do not risk your physical state. Maybe you have never realized it, but as your life can fade, so can your soul!-

And Aurora sent pain washing over the other in mental torrents, focusing on the flame of kaza that seemed withdrawn and unable to be used to its full power. This flame was the soul, a silver flame. Those who are potential psychics have silver Kaza flames, the others are all blue.

-Pain! Can't... who...-

Aurora closed off the torrent of pain.

-Consider yourself lucky that it is my enemies that are ruthless, not myself. Though I must say, Gemstar said nothing about psychics among the Sea-Dwellers.- Aurora told the other, quickly discovering the basic identity of whom she was contacting. Her name was Winterstorm, and she was Gemstar's granddaughter, and possessed psychic abilities unique to her in this tribe. A white she-cat emerged from the cave, closely followed by what looked like a silver striped replica of her. The white cat stared at Aurora.

"What did you say about Gemstar?!" She exclaimed.

"Gemstar didn't go to StarClan, nor the Dark forest. She had too much rage that couldn't be satisfied when she died, rage that it was impossible to get revenge for her mate's death. StarClan requires its warriors to be pure, and such anger among them would be the only thing that could harm them. But because she is not evil, she didn't go to the Dark forest either. She became a wandering spirit, and watched over you all. Then, my daughter, who is practically a Goddess, found that spirit and gave it form. Gemstar has been resurrected." Aurora answered.

They all blinked for a bit. "Gemstar's alive?" Asked the Winterstorm lookalike uncertainly.

"Yep. She joined my Clan, since she's no longer a hybrid like you, she a Morpheline like me. That's what happens when a Moonchild resurrects you." Aurora replied.

"Can we see her?" Demanded Winterstorm.

"I suppose, but it'll be a long journey. Gemstar got my permission to stay with the Tree-Dwellers in the Amazon rainforest for a bit. I can fly a few of you over there if you want." Aurora shrugged. The Tribemates looked at each other.

"First swear by StarClan that you mean us no harm." Instructed the Winterstorm lookalike.

"I swear by StarClan that neither I or my Clan will do you any harm." Aurora meowed lazily.

"Okay, I'll be going with Silverfleck, Winterstorm, Solarleaf... wait, is that too many?" The silver striped cat asked, and Aurora quickly learnt that she was Blizzardstar.

"No, we can take way more... that is, if you don't mind flying and waiting a while." Aurora assured, then turned on her telepathy.

-Hey, Phoenix, bring five fast warriors over to my location. There's a few hybrids who want to visit a place very far away.- Aurora instructed telepathically. She heard an agreement from Phoenix and left a psychic trail that he could track her by.

"What did you just use telepathy for?" Winterstorm asked.

"To contact my Clan, we're sending over a few warriors to help with the transport." Aurora replied. "It should take them about fifteen minutes to get here if they go at full speed. Meanwhile, do whatever the heck you want to, apart from preparing an ambush or trying to assassinate me. Just to let you know, I visited you because i'm asking you for your help in a battle against a species as strong or maybe stronger than you hybrids. The Tree-dwellers might be helping, and WindClan, ThunderClan, and RiverClan are doing their best to not tear each other up and prepare for the battle that will inevitably come in a few years." Aurora informed.

She Had said this so fast that she needed to repeat it several times, and that's when the higher up Sea-dwellers started frowning and entered a state of such deep thought that they didn't notice the morphelines landing nearly directly on top of them.

This story is a resubmission of Darktayle's story. Any replicas found elsewhere have been stolen. This has been posted with full approval from Darktayle, who wished to clear her profile while still allowing readers access to her previous works. This story will not be updated--again, if it is found elsewhere and has been updated, then it is a stolen idea and a stolen story.

Thank you.