After many months of writing and writer's block, I have finally completed the story of Lonespirit. Please read, review, and enjoy!

Disclaimer: For the last time, I do not own Warriors.

The Things I've Done

I have told what it is like to walk aimlessly through the Unknown. I have described the endless darkness, the mindless wandering, the way history repeated itself in the manner I would continuously make my way between worlds without giving notice.

Years later, history would repeat itself once more.

The last time that I had felt the same sensation, I had not noticed before it was too late. This instance, I was quickly snapped to alertness, the moment I felt that ancient and familiar pressure closing on me as I neared a realm of great power. The icy brush against the tips of my fur told me that I had passed between realms. The energy in this place was thick and pressed down on my shoulders.

No.

I felt the strong shift in the Unknown as my paw steps ceased.

Not again.

I looked around desperately hoping to not be spotted, as my mind searched for the memory of how to walk again. I needed to change direction. I needed to turn around, and run.

Quickly!

I whirled to stare directly into a pair of clear yellow eyes.

With a yowl, I leaped back, disbelief and fury enveloping me in its fog. A light brown tabby she-cat stood there, her glare sharp and strangely bird-like. A thick brow curved over the front of her face and made her eyes appear piercing and oddly shaped. Her pelt was thick and feathery, her soft stripes looking ruffled. Hooked talons extended from her forepaws. Surrounding her, and illuminating the shadowy vacancy was a bright, golden aura, its warm hue familiar. I'd met this cat long ago. Her name had been Owlpaw.

"You," I hissed.

She blinked and raised her head. "Yes," she rumbled, her voice having changed from the lively, youthful sound I remembered to a monotonal diction, flattened by the weight of wisdom and knowledge. "We meet once more."

There was silence between us. Surely the both of us stood in recollection of events the last time we had come face to face. It had also been the first time, and understandably, it had not gone well.

"May I ask why you have journeyed so near to the realm of the Messengers? I thought you had made it clear your spite towards us. However," she narrowed her yellow eyes to slits, "Things could have easily changed in such a span of time."

"You are insightful enough to know that that change would never come to pass. It would have to be a simultaneous and mutual evolution," I pointed out to her. "I have simply strayed to far in one direction, and will gladly leave if you allow me," I told her, the fur on my spine lifting in hostility, though I kept my voice level.

Her brow furrowed, and she approached me, striped tail lashing behind her. I tried to step back, but she flanked me before I could get away. "Would you mind an escort?"

I was slightly astounded by her offer. There was not a sign of animosity about her. Her fur was smooth and her eyes betrayed no emotion. "Where would you take me?"

"As far away as you'd like to go," she said, before beginning to walk. Without another word, I followed her.

When she started conversing with me, I feeling of suspicion crawled up my spine and felt me with a chilling feeling on the back of my neck.

"It is quite interesting to think about the nature of the Unknown. Nothing ever stays the same."

"...No."

"Though surely you must be aware of where you are going. Twice now, to my knowledge you have come quite close to our realm." She turned her head slightly towards me as she spoke. "Why is that?"

"It is not intentional, if that is what you are wondering," I replied.

"How are you so unaware of where you are going?"

"It all looks the same," I answered, "Until it doesn't."

"I see," The Spirit with Owl's Cry murmured.

"Is there a motive for this escort?" I questioned, taking her off guard. "I expected more than anything to be attacked and driven away with force, or at the very least ignored completely. Yet you show me mercy?"

"The last time we met, I was an apprentice," she responded, ear flicking. "And I was mostly untrained in the ways of the Messenger."

"Yes, so?"

"I am certain this is the interaction you would prefer," she meowed.

I scoffed, "Well in any case concerning me, perhaps violence is most appropriate."

She ignored my remark. "My time of guidance is long over. I have breached primitive, even. I now know how to act in accordance to our nature and our code." I felt the heat of her glare for a moment before she shifted her eyes forward. "Dozens of messengers have succeeded me, and many of them are too quite archaic. The Current Messenger is named Nightspirit."

"I'm not concerned," I growled at her.

"I didn't expect you to be," she growled. It was then I saw the anger light up in her eyes. "But all I can do for you now is attempt to make you understand that the Messengers thrive without you. I hope you realize, most Messengers have forgotten who you are long ago, and those who do remember wish they had taken the chance to rid your soul of this place and you still haunted it with your unreasonable malevolence."

I stopped, for the second time in minutes. While the darkness shook around me, Owlspirit paused and faced me with a clenched jaw.

"Liar," I mumbled darkly.

She tilted her head, "What?"

"You liar!" I snapped. "Never once did he have the intention to kill me!"

She knew immediately who I was referring to. "Is that what he had led you to believe?" she asked me. "The last time you spoke, he had grieved for your traitorous actions, but much time has passed, things have changed in the Unknown - you only exist in the form of code, one no Messenger would ever dare to break! After the anguish you have caused, nothing but regret has been felt for sparing you!"

Owlspirit evaded my claws, slipping effortlessly to the side. The second blow I attempted was caught in her talons. With my belly exposed, she raked her other forepaw down my flesh. The wound was shallow. She wasn't attempting to kill me. When she unlatched her talons from my claws and tossed me down to the ground, I scrambled up.

"So what? After all that you won't even bother to kill me?" I spat.

"I stand by my belief that you are not worth it to kill," she growled. "I saw it from the day I met you - you're-"

"Sickening and pathetic?" I said, cutting her off. "Yeah, I remember."

Owlspirit glared. "Just go."

I steadied myself, and leveled our gazes.

"And whatever you choose to do," she hissed, "Do not return." Owlspirit turned around, holding her tail high in the air as she walked. Slowly, as she moved further into the darkness, she began to disappear. I pinned my ears back, my claws sliding out. This wasn't going to be how we left it. I wouldn't allow this to be the end.

"Don't walk away from me!"

Owlspirit froze. Her gliding paw steps seemed to rest against the same invisible ground as mine. My hollow voice never would have been enough to still her. What she had heard was a high-pitched chorus of several Messengers, their voices synchronized with my own. A myriad emotions echoed into the depths of the Unknown. Owlspirit's head turned to reveal a widened yellow eye, bird-like intensity softened by shock.

I had never done that before.

My lips lifted to reveal my clenched teeth as I started to walk towards her. "No, don't you dare. I will not be left behind again to continue this endless journey. You will not dismiss me. You will not treat me like I am nothing."

The brown tabby she-cat rotated her whole body to face me. "The Messengers of the Unknown have little knowledge of you, Spirit That Walks Alone," she hissed. The harshness of her words was flattened by the remaining surprise that rippled through her golden aura. "You are nothing in our eyes. If anything, you exist as a mistake, a minor transgression centuries old and as significant as no action ever committed on Earth."

"And yet, you've given me a name," I growled.

Owlspirit scowled.

"My past attempts to destroy the name of the Messengers may have been in vain," I said, stepping even closer, "But you can't claim the right to be ignorant of my existence. I am just as significant as you. I have existed even longer. You possess no power that is above mine, and you certainly have not seen the places I have."

"Do you flatter yourself for being ancient? Have you given thought to the Messengers who existed long before you?"

"I don't care how much time has passed," I growled. "Time is what we make of it. Action is more telling, and I let me make it clear to you now, Owlspirit, Messenger in succession to the Spirit That Runs With Storms that all you have been taught by your spineless mentor is worth little in comparison to what I have seen." I didn't give her the chance to argue, I kept talking. "I have kept to myself for all these years, uncertain for the longest time of my own place in the universe. I spared myself the agony of knowing by spending my days wandering through the darkness where nothing persists and nothing exists so that I would not be prompted to give thought to my shortcomings. I didn't have anyone to blame but myself, because I could not even stand to thrive on the hatred of the likes of you. That passion is so strong, that it could burn through the barrier of here and the mortal world. That passion has destroyed lives before you ever had the chance to.

"For the longest time, I was foolish enough to think myself sane, a misjudgment I had observed even before I had been brought to the Unknown. I assumed my truth was the only, my thoughts were correct, and everyone else was dangerously misguided. I stand by the belief that your influence over the dead is wrong and uncalled for. The living cat all over are faced with limitations rooted in the very foundations of their upbringings, and in death, they still are not free of them! I have crossed into the minds of so many, seen their fears, their dreams, their desires, all to be disregarded by your aimless, undeserved entitlement. I have met parts of them that they have hidden away in fear of it being taken. These cats, these cats that we were once like, that we were once equal to, are being hunted by the malice of destiny, and you only enforce what they wish not be true." As their faces flashed through my mind, I felt something in me snap. The emptiness around me grew hot and stifling, the energy of my fury beamed off of my fur like fire. Owlspirit stood her ground, but her eyes betrayed the disbelief she was feeling. "Do you really think that you have an understanding of who they are? Of the pain they've faced every day? I have! I lived countless lives, and have felt every shred pain they have! I had caused them even more, and despite the agony, you didn't even offer them a choice?!" The voices were back, and they were screaming over the roar of fire. "I was the only one who could help herself, and it still wasn't enough!

"So don't tell me ever that I am nothing in the wake of your existence. I have seen more and felt more and known more than you can possibly say!"

I finalized my words with a growl, the light in my eyes dying and the flames of my aura slowly ebbing back. Owlspirit stood with a forepaw lifted defensively. Her yellow eyes glowed with both fury and fear. For a moment, I thought that I had rendered the sharp-tongued spirit speechless, but quickly she straightened herself, and her voice gave her a larger-than-life presence.

"You are wrong, Lonespirit, so very wrong," Owlspirit growled, "You never understood what it means to be a Messenger. It has nothing to do with desire, with hopes, and dreams, and fears. It has nothing to do with the lives you say you lived and the pain you say you've experienced." She advanced towards me, her feather-like fur ruffling in a non-existent wind. "You do get to choose your own destiny. You fail to realize that it is done by your own actions through out your life. It is not a direct decision. You do not simply state what you wish to be. It comes to you as result of the choices you make. We have never once made an unjust decision. We have never once decided against the path they have laid out for themselves. All we are, all we have ever been, are the ones that lead them down that path."

I felt the fire die out completely.

"You may have seen many things, Lonespirit. It is perhaps true that you have discovered more than us," Owlspirit snarled, spreading her magnificent, bird-like wings. "But we are the ones that see it all the way it truly is."

I looked at her, as still as stone, my eyes fixed sadly on her. I observed every feather in her wings, every hair on her pelt, every line on her body.

"Are you happy with yourself?" I asked suddenly, and Owlspirit seemed astonished that she hadn't said enough to put an end to our meeting. "Are you proud that Stormspirit chose you of all cats to follow me in the passage of becoming a Messenger, knowing full well that his disposition had been damaged by my betrayal and his will to teach nearly mutilated? Do you hold sentiment for being my opposite? The ideal Messenger? His salvation following my treachery?" I extended my head towards Owlspirit, teeth bared, and claws unsheathed. "Does it please you to know of my suffering? I have been walking without companionship for years in total silence other than the sound of my paw steps. I've had no choice but to be remorseful, because remorse is all I could feel if I tried to feel anything at all. You tell me I'm sickening, you expect me to carry on with this existence, you try to walk away, but you still come back when I call loud enough, only this time to call me delusional. But how can you? Don't you see? I got exactly what I wanted! The chance to go where I pleased without having to listen to you, and without having to adhere to your idea of peace! I could visit any Spirit Realm, any place on Earth, and no one had the means to stop me, even when they had the ability! And you want to know what? None of that mattered in the end, because I lived my ideal without anyone there beside me! After 400 years, no one likes being alone."

Admittedly, there was no direction to my words. There no point, there was no argument. All I could stand by was a cry for help, and I did not even know what that meant.

Owlspirit's yellow eyes flashed. She folded her wings and the golden light of her aura darkened. She spoke without moving her mouth, her voice joined with another just as familiar. It boomed under her lighter tone like thunder. "Like you have acknowledged, there is no one else to blame but yourself. And that, Spirit That Walks Alone, is the one belief we will share for the remainder of time. Let this meeting of ours be lost in the endlessness of the Unknown, never to resurface once more. I will now turn my back and return to the place I belong to stand among my equivalents both ancient and new as the Current Messenger carries out the duties of all those prior. I will not speak of this moment. We will never meet again. Let these words be my last to you. Goodbye."

She disappeared.

So many time, I had been left feeling nothing. I had turned around and continued to walk just as I had been doing before. I walked when I told Ettore to run; I walked when I left Scorchpaw paralyzed next to the dead body of his mentor; I walked when a lost spirit gave up on me as her guide to StarClan; I walked when I took the spiritual afterlives of dozens of cats; and I walked when Owlspirit and I first met, back when all she knew of me was my name. I wasn't going to walk this time. I wouldn't be tortured by cold and the darkness. I could no longer stand to drift off into absent-mindedness while I failed to breathe in earthly air but lived on anyway.

But there was nothing else to be done.

I'd realized the danger of my influence on the living, and the uselessness of my malice for the dead. My disdain towards the Messengers was a hatred older than my very knowledge of them. From my youth, I was forced down a certain path. My place in the world had been chosen for me before I had the chance to make a destiny-defining choice. Since I was kit, they looked and thought to themselves, Huntress. And I couldn't argue, because to them, law and customs meant more than my understanding of my own strengths. If I had only been given a choice, they would have seen that a mere interpretation was worth nothing in the face of my true capabilities, and my resolve.

My purpose had been decided upon before I knew the value of life, both on Earth and in the Unknown.

So if I could not embrace it, then there was nothing left for me.

The cat I one knew of an ash-colored pelt and a gaze of soft light amber, whose name I could remember, and whose life had become a tragedy, in spite of all of his loss, was not alone.

Most who think they are have no idea what it truly means.

If they did, the very word would not exist to them.

Only to me.

And we'd share the the feeling of knowing that she was right.

We'd share the feeling of knowing we are nothing.

This was my final fan fiction. I will no longer be posting stories on this site. I have dedicated a good four years to writing Warriors fan fiction, with many months spent in crippling writer's block, but I am proud of all I've done. Most of the stories, I wish I could burn, I won't lie, but I'm glad that it exists as a literary journey of my evolution as a writer.

I started out with Radiantmask, a boring, one-dimensional, typical main character with less personality than a bar of soap, and her story was one that has been written many times over. Her daughter, Sunmask was a step in the right direction, but still not a character to praise. My RADIANCE trilogy was a generic, poorly constructed trio of cliched fan fictions that stood as the mere beginning of my understanding of storytelling. Later on, as many are aware, I created Frozenleaf, or Ice as she was usually called. I'm sure a lot of you have read stories wherein the main protagonist faced abuse for no other reason than to create forced conflict. Often times, this abused character would head down the path of evil, becoming a completely despicable, irredeemable nutcase who was not just a shell of their former self, but a total monster with no indication of their past personality or innocence. These characters exist for one reason: they're fun to write. That story, among many others like it, received a lot of attention and praise, at one point in its prime being the 11th most reviewed Warriors fan fiction. That number has dropped significantly in the past years, but the former placing speaks to the power of popularity. Trapped in Ice, though beloved by many, was sloppy and unbelievable. However, I did improve greatly as a writer during the four months I spent writing it.

As I made my way into its sequel, Caught in Flames, and its prequel, Hailblaze's Story, I started to lose my interest in Warriors, and found it difficult to write with the same passion I had in the past. My interests expanded beyond the stories of feral cats living in the forest. School got harder, I got lazier, and instead of using my free time to be productive, I fell into a rut. I took many breaks over the course of 2013 and 2014, but offscreen, my writing continued to evolve. I took interest in TV and animation, art became a central focus of mine, I found new ways to express myself, including the simple act of speaking out loud to myself in character.

Then the time came when a good friend of mine, The Spirit That Comes At Night challenged those on her forum to come up with their own Messengers, a league of spiritual guardians that existed in the Warriors world, but whose power extended beyond StarClan. This is how Lonespirit was born. This was how I took an interest in writing fan fiction again. This is how I managed to combine originality with already existing media. This is To Be Alone, and its my favorite story of them all. I want this to represent my end point. I want this to be how you know me until one day, my books are on the shelves. I'll let you know when.

To the few who stuck it through until this moment, if at all, I want to thank you.

To those who knew me when my name was Echowind12, thank you.

To those who took the extra time to write a review, no matter how short, thank you.

To the one person who told me they hated me, and to the many more who said they loved me, thank you.

Thank you all.

Here's to new beginnings.

~Destiny