After the clan meeting everyone had turned in for the night- well, most everyone. At least two warriors had to stand guard, and that night those two just happened to be Ambergaze and Moonfur. Aside from them, the DarkClan cats had all settled down and rested through the night until the sun would rise the next morning.

Except for two.

Greysight laid in her nest for hours, eyes closed, body still, but her mind would not allow her rest. Throughout the night she changed her position several times, but found that it did nothing to help her fall asleep. She tried not to move too much if she could help it. Lostheart was close by and Greysight didn't want to wake her, and she also didn't want to draw too much attention to herself.

She knew that Raggedear was awake too, she could sense it; like herself, he too would shift every so often.

She wondered if the same feelings she had were keeping him awake too.

As time continued to crawl on at what seemed to be a snail's pace, Greysight thought up what had seemed to be an ingenious idea.

All she had to do was focus on StarClan. Each time she had done that, and went to sleep with the intention of visiting StarClan, she had been able to fall asleep with success. There was also the added bonus of dreaming of StarClan rather than dreaming of nightmares.

In her sleep deprived state she had smirked smugly at this revelation, twitching her whiskers as she shifted her head on her paw. All she cared about was being able to allow her body rest.

Would it be worth it to try and find Mosspelt, she wondered, or would it be better to just focus on StarClan as a whole? It didn't matter really, but there was no harm in trying to contact Mosspelt.

Over the course of many moons, since she was an apprentice, Greysight had developed a friendship with her past clanmate. She didn't know if Mosspelt felt the same, but who knew?

Mosspelt was someone she had always been able to confide in, to talk to freely. Mosspelt watched over her, had looked out for her. With Mosspelt, she obviously never had to keep her dreams a secret. They were able to speak openly to one another, and Mosspelt had helped her- had tried to help her- so many times with her words of wisdom and warning, even if Greysight had a hard time understanding what she meant or why she did what she did.

Greysight exhaled tiredly as she thought of the medicine cat. She wished Mosspelt would visit her again, show herself and talk to her, instead of avoiding her...

In the end, Greysight's loophole would work, but not in the way she had hoped.

She was able to manipulate her body and mind into going to sleep rather easily, but her sleep was restless.

Though she reached out to StarClan, the nightmares had quickly taken hold of her, altering the course of her dreaming. It was as if she was sucked into a dark void that she couldn't pull herself out of, and in that void she was subjected to an onslaught of gruesome sounds and images.

Greysight let out a yowl as she was pulled underwater. Her body was completely suspended in this underwater darkness; but no matter how hard she kicked, she couldn't overpower the force holding her in place.

She thrashed in a panic, her body's need for air growing stronger and stronger by the second, so much so that it was affecting her mentality. She knew it was a dream, but that changed nothing. Everything felt so real, her mind was tricked into perceiving it as reality, and reality was hard to deny.

Finally she could take it no longer and Greysight's jaws parted, as if to take in a gulp of air, but instead of water filling her lungs, nothing happened.

Just like that she found herself standing on hard ground, no longer suspended by water. Her pelt wasn't even wet. Even so, her heart pounded rapidly in her chest and she had to take a few deep breaths, her ears ringing from the terrifying experience.

A thunderous crack made her jump suddenly, and the tremendous boom and vibration she felt following it almost made her lose her balance. Greysight's head whipped around to find the source of the noise, she couldn't sense where it was coming from; she couldn't see anything, she couldn't sense anything.

The ground beneath her started to rumble, shaking every bone in her body.

She whipped around in blind fear as she heard another loud chorus of cracks, followed by long creaks and groans and the aftershocks that followed. One erupted so close to her that she stumbled backward, nearly falling over.

She fled the area, going who knows where straight ahead, going 'ahead' was the only place she could go.

A scream erupted from the darkness. It was short at first, but rapidly grew in its intensity. Greysight was forced to a halt as she was subjected to an image in the darkness. All she could see was a number of dark figures, nearly unintelligible if not for their shape and size.

Greysight flinched at the sound and watched in horror as one of the larger shapes quickly took hold of the smaller one attempting to flee, and several other large shapes gathered around it, joining in.

Everything was a blur, but the cat's intense, bloodcurdling screams sent a chill through her pelt. She could only watch, frozen, as the cat was overtaken by the shapes as each one began to thrash about and bite and pull.

The cats cries became choked and Greysight flinched, taking a step back. She wanted to look away, but she couldn't tear her eyes from the scene, watching as they pulled and pulled until an audible snap sounded and one of the larger shapes was shoved back, holding its new prize as the others continued to assault the victim, whose screams of agony filled Greysight's ears, shaking her to her core.

Her body trembled despite her, and she grit her teeth, baring them at the scene before her, burning tears threatening to slip from her eyes as she bore witness to this cat being torn apart.

Finally, Greysight clenched her eyes shut, able to escape only the sight and not the sound. Doing so seemed to make the noises increase in intensity, and she felt like she could hear every tear, every snap, and every drop of blood they spilled.

"No!" she cried, gasping as a sharp pain shot through her skull.

Screaming. Tearing. Pulling. Snarling. Cracking. Crying.

"Stop!" she screeched, throwing back her head as if that might put an end to her pain. She growled shakily, tossing her head from side to side before ultimately tucking her chin to her chest and letting out a tremendous shout in an attempt to overpower the noises in her head.

The scene became more and more distant, being sucked away into the void until it was gone completely, and Greysight was alone.

She was left panting, her ears ringing, and her head pounding after the ordeal. She felt completely exhausted, like her body would crumple if she tried to take even a single step.

Greysight's breaths were long and dry, and her legs felt weak beneath her.

Was it finally over?

"Pitiful she-cat."

Greysight jumped as she heard a whisper in her ear and rapidly turned to look over her shoulder, expecting to find the speaker whose cold breath she had seemingly felt touch her shoulder.

Unsurprisingly, there was nothing there.

She was afraid, and her courage was starting to dwindle, but Greysight stood her ground, waiting for what might come next.

The last thing she saw was an intense light flare up in front of her, and the heat it carried with it, scorching her whiskers as she let out a yowl.


The other cats leapt awake and immediately set their sights on the source of the noise after a brief moment of panic and confusion. Greysight was awake, breathing deeply in her nest after having awoken them all with a piercing cry.

Lostheart had quickly rolled over and gotten to her feet, having been the closest to Greysight as they slept.

"Greysight!" she exclaimed.

She was at Greysight's side in seconds, looking down at the blind she cat with deep concern.

Greysight blinked her sightless, bulging eyes and hurriedly pushed herself up, still trying to catch her breath and calm her beating heart.

The fur on her back slowly began to lie flat as she did so, but many of her clanmates were still on edge, particularly Darkpelt, whose tail and spine had grown two sizes.

Not soon after Lostheart inquired, Moonfur, Ambergaze, Roseclaw, Mintleaf, and Velouria all showed up in the warriors den.

"What's going on?!" Roseclaw demanded. "That sounded like Greysight!"

Her gaze fell on Greysight and Lostheart, who were both now looking her way.

Greysight suddenly scowled, realizing all attention was on her. The skin beneath her pelt flushed hotly in embarrassment as she realized she must have cried out in her sleep, waking up the entire clan.

"Calm down!" Greysight hissed at her. "I'm fine."

Thistleprick was the only cat who seemed to relax easily and he let out a short sigh of relief before flicking his tail as he rose to all fours.

"What was that about? Come on, Greysight, you nearly stopped my heart. Wow, what are we going to do with you?"

Though she would have normally been annoyed by his flippant remarks, Greysight was actually a bit grateful for Thistleprick's disposition for once.

"Sorry." she managed bitterly, trying to act as casual as possible, all the while biting back the shame she felt.

The others blinked.

She pointed her nose in the direction of Roseclaw and Mintleaf, whose fear scents nearly overpowered the scent of all others in the den.

"I'm not hurt. I didn't mean to scare everyone. I just...had a bad dream."

It sounded so stupid. She sounded like a kit, great StarClan why did she have to go and do that?

"I didn't even think you were capable of feeling fear." said Thistleprick.

That did it.

Greysight quickly stood to her full height, her tail lashing once behind her.

"Whatever. Who's going to go on dawn patrol?"she demanded quickly as she moved through the others toward the entrance to the warrior's den. "What? No one?"

Not even stopping to gesture his way, Greysight said, "Come on, Warflight, we'll take care of the dawn patrol. Someone else can put together a hunting party."

Warflight quickly hurried after her to follow orders, sharing a brief, dumbfounded look with Branchfur before he left.

It was certainly a strange way to start their morning.

Naturally, everyone was curious about this supposed "nightmare", but if it was relevant to the clan or prophecy Greysight would have told them, or maybe she would later. Either way it wasn't their place to press this sort of thing, Greysight had made that very clear the other day, and no one wanted to suffer under her wrath.

"Weird." Thistleprick murmured. He yawned and stretched his neck. "I'm going back to sleep..."

Roseclaw blinked, losing her look of worry as she glanced Thistleprick's way, her face scrunching up in irritation.

"Oh no you don't! You're already up and we need to form a hunting party, so thank you for volunteering."

"What?" he groaned tiredly. "Rosie-"

"Don't call me that! My name is Roseclaw."

"I'll go with him." Darkpelt grumbled, putting an end to the would-be argument before it got too heated. "Raggedear, I'd like you to come as well."

Darkpelt locked eyes with Raggedear from where he sat beside Moonfur, who he had taken to sleeping beside instead of his brother. Moonfur was going to settle down in the nest though, having been on guard all night long. Raggedear nodded in response and the deed was done.

"What about me?" asked Branchfur before Darkpelt could take his leave.

"You need to stay here with me to guard the camp while the others are away." added Lostheart quietly.

They needed to have cats guarding the camp at all times, and Ambergaze and Moonfur needed to rest. Lostheart and Branchfur were the only ones who could take up the task.

"She's right. You stay here."

Lostheart had spoken Darkpelt's words before he even had to; and with that, everyone began to slowly file out of the warrior's den at their own pace.

"Does that happen often?"

Lostheart glanced at Velouria. She wasn't expecting Velouria to say anything, much less to her.

"No." Lostheart answered, in reference to Greysight's outburst. "That's never happened before."

"Hm."

Velouria fell silent, her eyes looking forward as she walked alongside Lostheart toward the center of camp.

Lostheart inwardly wondered what the old she-cat was thinking as she watched her from the corner of her eye, watching her unreadable expression and impenetrable gaze.


AUTHOR'S NOTE

Short, but I couldn't help it. I was eager to update, so I split this longer chapter into two.