Author's Note: I'm sorry, but it had to happen. So I wrote a tribute chapter for our fallen character. Deep and descriptive. Just the way I like it. Short, but powerful. As always, I hope you like it.
DISCLAIMER: I own nothing!
WotS could do nothing as all of this happened. It was as if she were made of stone. She could not move a muscle as she watched him fall. It was only at Jeff's insane laughter that she snapped out of her daze. She dashed forward and leapt onto Jeff,surprising him enough so that she could knock him over.
While Jeff was still stunned, she lifted a paw and brought it down mercilessly on his cheek, leaving a long, jagged gash. A flaming need for revenge was crackling and snapping in her belly. Jeff flinched back slightly, and he seemed to come back to his senses. He shoved his knife up toward her throat. She shied sideways, but the blade snagged her ear and tore a deep, V-shaped nick in it. "Still haven't learned your lesson, have you?" he growled as he stood up. He was at least three times her height, and she cowered and sank back toward the wall of rock behind her. Jeff stalked forward, cornering her.
Just then, a high-pitched whine echoed through the air. Jeff jerked his head up and turned toward a distant spot in the forest below. Then he turned back to the four of them. "You got lucky. Not next time." He ran to the path down the mountain and slipped onto the treacherous trail, slithering along the fastest he could.
WotS sat down where she was. She was shaking as if wracked by illness. She paid no attention to the steady drip of blood from her ear. A small, furry something pressed against her side. Thunder's eyes were wide and fearful, and slightly confused. The thing that outweighed both of those, though, was an incredible sadness.
WotS turned to look back at the others. Both were panting heavily and leaning against the mountainside. It looked as if Smash had tried to run towards Jeff like WotS had, but Pewdiepie had held him back. Now, he stumbled forward and fell to his knees at the top of the cliff. A haze of disbelief and despair covered his eyes, making them dull and lifeless. He gazed unseeingly down at the ground far below them. As WotS padded up to him, with Thunder clinging to her side, he murmured, "You can still see him..."
She looked down. You could indeed see a vague shape laying splayed and broken at the bottom of the cliff. Worse, a pool of red seeped from the body, soaking the ground around him.
WotS whimpered and slid back from the edge. She knew he was gone, knew he had passed from this existence, but something seemed missing. The spirit waited, the body remained... Something needed to be done. What, though...
She walked slowly back up to Smash and sat beside him. It came to her in a feeling. A bulging feeling starting deep in her belly, growing until she could no longer hold it in. She opened her mouth into a howl. This was not, however, this discordant wailing of her torture that had echoed down into the dungeon. A melodious song rang out into the night, mournful and intense.
Thunder blinked and looked up at WotS. A wolf's natural instinct is to howl if it hears others howling. So he did. He slipped in next to her, sat down, tipped his head back, and joined in. As he was still quite young, his howling was clumsy and slightly off. He sounded just fine, though.
The song had no words, for none could quite capture her sorrow. To put words to it would be wrong. Like a perversion of a moral that lives in each and every living creature to walk this earth. The lament was simple enough for even the humans here to understand. It spoke of sadness and peace, hope and faith. It said that Strike would never be forgotten, that he would never be lost to memory by time or age. It said that he would be missed. But, as I have said before, sometimes words cannot describe such a song well. I shame myself for trying to describe it.
As the two wolves finished their mournful duet, the body below dissipated into a little cloud of light blue pixels and floated up toward the heavens. They watched as the pixels rose up, up, until they were out of sight. All that was left was the dark blotch of blood and the echoing memory of WotS and Thunder's cries.