Nothing would ever be the same again.
I had nearly killed myself running here from the other end of the territory... all to see this?
She lay slumped on the ground, her pelt already growing cold. There had never been such a work of art, a body so carefully torn apart, so beautifully destroyed, so wonderfully mutilated to cause the most pain possible. Black blood coated her once-beautiful dark pelt and pooled around her, making it impossible to see where exactly those claws had struck.
Her eyes were rolled back and dull, having lost their life.
Oh, it hurt even to see her in such a state. One out of two cats I had ever cared for. Her head stretched back, her formerly-beautiful pelt crisscrossed with clawmarks and scars, her paws limp in a pool of her own blood.
Never again would I hear her sweet voice as she talked with me, or see the lively spirit in her eyes.
She was too sweet, too kind, too innocent for her own good. The truest friend any cat could possibly have. And now she was gone. And now she's gone. And now she's gone. And now she's gone. I'll never see you again.
But it was the scent that struck me as most familiar. The scent - other than blood and death, that is - of a warm, familiar cat of my clan. A scent that I had basked in, once. And the tuft of fur, slowly darkening with blood as it lay on the ground beside her paws.
A breath.
A breath that is not my own.
I turned to find the only other cat I had cared about ever before padding toward me, his eyes alight. I thought he was the cat of my dreams, the one who would truly mean the most to me in the distant future, when I grasped it.
But that scent, it sparked something in me, that I just couldn't ignore.
I looked from him, to her, to him again.
I would lose two cats in one day, but it didn't matter. She's gone, you mouse-brained idiot. She's gone. She's not coming back. I turn my attention fully onto him, burning him with my shattered, mirthless stare. You killed her.
I didn't let anything hold me back as I unleashed my fury upon her killer.
It was over before it really started. He kicked and scratched and fought, but there wasn't much he could do. I'll kill you as you killed her. I slashed my claws down his soft underbelly, relishing his scream of agony as he attempted to bite my tail. I tauntingly smirked and sent my claws flying through one eye. Then his shoulder, his ear, until there was nothing more I could torture, nothing I could use to make him scream the way she must have screamed.
I slashed my claws into his neck and tore out his throat.
It was too silent when I let his body slump onto the stones. Not a sound in the too-still air.
My breath caught in my throat as I turned back to her body. I neared her motionless form and dropped, sinking to the ground beside her. Then slowly, tentatively, I lifted my paw and pushed her head to its normal position, and swept over her fur, smoothing the bloody spikes.
Drawing in a breath, I used my tail to shut her clouded eyes.
You were always too good for this world.
I buried my face into her bloody fur, not bothering to hold back the sobs anymore.
You promised you would be there for me. How can you just leave?
Liar.