The smothering black clots of smoke grasped the tom's throat as he tried to run. He urged his legs to move faster, faster, and faster still, but the overpowering smog around him would not allow the warrior to see within an inch of his whiskers, and the heavy pressure of the blaze seemed to pull at his paws relentlessly. Through narrow eyes stung red by the fumes he could not make out his surroundings. The territory he had known for his entire life had been completely engulfed in flames that now illuminated the night.
The smoke began to take greater hold of his lungs, and the tom began to choke violently. With eyes watering from the sensation he had to slide to a halt as he retched. But the smoke only took this opportunity to hit him harder, making it harder and harder for the tom to breathe. The crackling of the rising flames was soon to remind him, however, that he couldn't stay still. The warrior raised his head to scan the area ahead of him. The camp was supposed to be somewhere nearby, but the land was lost in the inferno.
A caterwaul suddenly rose higher than the orange tongues surrounding him, followed by a crash that shook the earth underfoot. The tom's ears pricked in alarm as he whirled to the right, toward the source of the familiar screech. "Lightfoot!" he cried out, bounding through an opening in the fiery curtain. His copper eyes were peeled open wide, now, fighting the sting as they searched for his Clanmate. "Lightfoo-" the call caught in his throat this time, and another bout of coughing took the tom, causing him to slow his pace. The fit made his vision begin to retreat into the darkness of the smoke again as the burning landscape began to swim before his eyes. The tom tried to steady himself as he slowed to a stop, but his paws began to swerve.
Desperate to retain consciousness, the tom squeezed his eyes shut and swung his head back and forth. Focus, come on, focus, he barraged himself, blinking his eyes open. Slowly his vision began to settle, and the tom prepared to begin running again. But suddenly, a low mrrow came from somewhere nearby. The tom's head swiveled to the left, again recognizing the voice. "Lightfoot!" he coughed, and bounded through a dark cloud towards the sound. Through the shadow, he began to make out his surroundings. This was the grove of trees that surrounded the camp. The tom had been right; he was close, after all.
But one of mighty trees was ablaze, and one of its thick lower branches had been singed off and had fallen to the earth below. And there, pinned beneath that branch, was white-pawed deputy, Lightfoot.
The tom felt the earth move out from under his paws, and he had to unsheathe his claws into the ground to keep his footing. "No," he croaked, unable to turn his eyes away from the deputy's still frame. But suddenly he saw an ear twitch, and the deputy's head slowly raised to look up at the tom.
"Sorrelfur?" The tabby she-cat's eyes were barely opened, and her voice very weak.
The tom clenched his jaw hard and grimaced through his teeth as he slowly stepped closer to the deputy. "Yes, Lightfoot, it's me," he managed; speaking from a throat that this time wasn't choked because of the fire's fumes. As he drew closer, his eyes made out the scene with more clarity. The she-cat's hind legs were trapped- probably crushed- beneath the large tree limb's weight, making her unable to flee. The warrior sank his fangs into his tongue to hold back the overcoming emotion. "It's me, I'm here."
The deputy slowly raised her head toward the tom's eyes, searching for him through the smoke. Her copper eyes were going in an out of focus. "Sorreltail. I was… I tried to get them out. But the camp was surrounded, we couldn't-" A fit of horrible coughing racked the she-cat's body, cutting her off.
Sorreltail quickly ran his tongue over his lips as he stood there on trembling legs. "What happened? The apprentices, Ashbrook, did they make it out?"
Raspy breaths were all the she-cat could manage for a moment before she looked back towards the tom. "Splashstar, Ravenfur, and I, we tried to get everyone. We were each going to take an apprentice. Ashbrook had made it out before the elder's den caught flame. He was with us… But, Sorreltail, the fire made it to the apprentice den before we could get Pebblepaw out. Ravenfur went in to get him. But a… a branch broke off from one of the trees and blocked off the exit. They couldn't get out."
The brown tom's heart stopped that instant. He could see the black she-cat jumping into the den in his mind, then disappearing in the orange heat of the fire, her panicked green eyes starting out desperately without any hope of escape. "StarClan, no," he moaned.
Lightfoot bowed her head. "I told Splashstar and Ashbrook to each take an apprentice and go, that I would stay and try to help them. But I couldn't, and the fire only got worse. I tried, Sorrelfur, I didn't want to leave them!" The she-cat looked up at him with tearful eyes. And as the tom looked back at her, he felt the water begin to build up in his own. A sorrowful cry welled up in his throat as he bent down to nuzzle the crippled she-cat.
"It isn't your fault, Lightfoot," he gasped, coughing out smoke once he had spoken.
The tabby shook her head, then looked back at the tom. "You have go, now. Find the others. Get out of here. I can't make it, but you can." The look in her eyes was enough to silence the protest the tom immediately felt in his throat. The sorrowful determination that was there said it all. "Go!"
The tom's body shook as he looked down at her, fighting between her command and the desperate desire to stay with her. He bared his fangs as his jaws clenched shut again, choking down feelings, as he lashed his tail and turned about and ran, leaving his sister behind in the swirling rage of the fire.
Sorrelfur's paws pounded the ground as he ran blindly through the flames. He couldn't tell where he was going, and at the moment it didn't matter. His Clanmates had to be out there, somewhere. And if they had escaped the camp like Lightfoot had said, they must've escaped towards the stream. It Clan namesake surrounded the territory- perhaps it had managed to halt the spread of the fire. Knowing that if he just kept running straight he would eventually reach it, the tom bolted on, concerning himself only with avoiding the tongues of flame that lapped at the once green grass.
The fire seemed to melt into a bright, glowing blur of orange as he run, fighting the stinging in his eyes and the irritating scratching in his throat. His vision tunneled. As he rushed through the blaze, at one point the tom thought he spotted the black and white form of Splashstar just ahead and to his right, but in the very next instant another branch fell to the earth and sent up another wall of flame, cutting him off from the tom's view. Another time he thought he saw an outline of a cat, but the smoke turned out to be playing him a fool, for when he swerved in that direction he found traces of any cat. So he continued to run, all the way until the crackling of the fire began to give way to the babbling of the little brook. And then, just as the smoke cleared, the tom's forepaws met water and he fell forward into the stream.
The sudden change in sensation sent him into a moment of panic as he tossed within the water until finding the shallow bottom of the stream. His head next broke the surface and the tom gasped aloud for air, but instead met with a quick intake of smoke that brought on another, and the tom began to choke. As he did, he began to swallow water, taking it straight into his lungs. As he struggled, the tom's strength began to at last give out, and his head began to sink below the surface. The edges of his vision began to fade. I'm dying, he realized, but the thought wasn't enough to regain power over his failing body. The water went over his ears, and the tom's eyes closed as he at last lost feeling of his limbs, sinking down to the bottom of the stream.
What happened next felt so unreal that Sorrelfur first thought he was dreaming. Something tugged at the scruff of his neck, but it felt a hundred fox-lengths away. Still it continued until the tom felt he was no longer floating, but now resting in a cold moss nest. Everything was still, then, until a violent pressure on his belly suddenly thrust him back into consciousness, following a spewing of water out from his mouth. The tom hacked and hacked as the water exited his body, gasping and gasping for air. And to his surprise, doing so was much easier than it had been before. As his vision slowly returned, Sorrelfur's eyes revealed that he was lying on his side, the stream a little ways before him. Across from there, the fire continued to burn, swallowing up the tall, skinny trees of the territory.
Still feeling quite dazed, it took him a while to realize that someone was calling his name. "Sorrelfur, Sorrelfur, wake up!" The voice was familiar to him, but the tom couldn't match it with a face. With some degree of difficulty, he lifted his head off the ground and looked behind him, away from the fire. There stood a silver tabby tom, whose front was dripping wet with water, panting and heaving as he looked over the warrior.
"Ashbrook?" the tom muttered in wonderment, blinking the water away from his eyes.
The elder, whose pants were subsiding, nodded slowly. "Yes, its me. You know, you were a good deal lighter when you were my apprentice.
Sorreltail blinked a few more times as he came to, then rolled onto his other side with a groan so that he was facing the older tom. "Ashbrook, where is everyone? Did they all make it out okay?" At the two questions, the silver tom's eyes became very dark, and he didn't respond. Sorrelfur's chest tightened, and his claws sunk back into the earth. "Ashbrook, tell me!"
The elder was silent for a moment longer, and then bowed his head. "There is no one else. We're the only ones who made it out."
Sickness rose up in the tom's throat as he looked up at his old mentor. He kept his eyes fixated on the other tom's as he struggled to his paws. "No, they couldn't have all… There might be someone left back in there!"
But the elder just shook his head, starting down at the earth. "No, there isn't. I saw them all. I found Turtleshell struggling through the smoke before she collapsed. She had stopped breathing. I saw Barkpelt trapped in a circle of fire. There was no way out for him. And Splashstar… Oh, great StarClan, Splashstar. I saw him running… His pelt was alive with flame."
Sorrelfur felt his whole body shaking violently as the elder listed of their Clanmates. He could see each cat in his mind, their suffering as clear as day. He bit down on his tongue so hard that he began to taste blood. "The apprentices. Lightfoot said you were helping the apprentices."
Ashbrook did not respond to this statement. Instead, he looked sorrowfully off to an area of land close by, where there was a freshly dug up patch of earth. "I only managed to carry one out of the fire. But when we reached the other side of the stream, I realized that her heart had already stopped. She'd breathed in too much smoke."
The brown tom stared at the patch of earth for a moment longer before having to turn away from the sight. He stared at the ground beneath his paws for a while, and then forced his eyes back to the fire. The flames had reached the tips of the trees, and seemed to touch the sky, painting the dawn horizon there along with the sun, whose streaks of light were just beginning to appear.
"How could this have happened?" The elder's whisper startled the warrior, as he realized the silver tom now stood beside him, overlooking their home with grief-stricken eyes.
Sorrelfur swallowed loudly. "It was two-legs. I couldn't sleep last night, so I decided to wander the territory for a litle while. I came across a large group of two-legs making a lot of noise. They were running around, and there was a large fire where it looked like they had been settled. The wind was strong tonight, and the territory has been so dry this green-leaf…" Fighting back a break in his voice, Sorrelfur lashed his tail and let out a hiss as he sharply turned away from the sight. He heard a curse from Ashbrook, but for a while all was quiet. The two toms just stood on the bank in silence, each privately mourning the death of StreamClan as the red morning sun rose steadily higher into the sky.