Chapter Five
Panicking
Pale, weak moonlight shone over me as I headed back to the nest in the apprentice den. 'My nest.' It felt so strange, knowing I'd been there hundreds of times before, but can't remember anything. It seemed everywhere I went, deja vu was there, trapping me in its weird sensation.
As I walked through the den, my subconscious realized it was suprisingly empty, but I didn't realize until I noticed Scarletpaw curled into a ball in the far corner of the room, shaking. A massive feeling of dread washed over me, prickling my pelt with worry.
"Scarletpaw…?" I mewed worriedly as I padded over to her. "What's wrong? Where are all the other cats?"
She was still trembling as I reached where she was cowering. Somewhere off in the distance, an owl hooted as I leaned over.
"Scarletpaw?" I repeated, getting more worried by the second. "What happened? Wha-"
I was cut off by a crackle as the entire cave filled with a near-blinding light. An acrid smell burned my nose as smoke invaded my lungs. Something was burning.
Fear blasted me harder than the light as I looked up. Scaretpaw WAS ON FIRE. Her entire pelt blazed brighter than the sun, as sparks flew from her pelt and landed, sizzling, on the ground.
A sound boiled inside me. Whatever did escape my lips couldn't be considered a scream. It was as if my entire body was just sending out waves of fear as sound.
The figure in front of me was changing. It didn't even resemble a cat anymore, just a ball of flame at least twice my size, growng and morphing into something else. I turned to run, but there was a wall of orange where air used to be.
After a couple seconds, the thing trapping me here was barely anything except for blazing reds and oranges and yellows. It twisted into some sort of a pillar, bending around me. Even the adrenaline inside me seemed to burn up from the heat.
The flame, all of it, seemed to rasp something to me, its 'voice' just crackles and hisses.
"I'm coming for you, Brushpaw."
Then, it pounced on me.
I woke up screaming, the most unholy shriek that seemed possible. I scrambled to my feet. Another dose of pale light washed over me in my nest. As soon as I realized where I was, I let out a sigh of relief almost as big as the scream before it.
Luckily, no one else was in this den, except for Scarletpaw, staring at me with her own worried eyes.
"Are you okay? It sounded like you were having a nightmare."
I opened my mouth to explain, but paused. Did I really want to tell this to her? Everyone said she was my sister, but for all I knew, she could be a complete stranger. Everyone could just be studying me, keeping me under watch.
In the end, my paranoia won out.
"Nothing, sis. Nothing..."
