CHAPTER FIFTEEN

The patrol had only left a day ago and already Sootclaw was in agony waiting. The fact that they had not immediately returned gave him hope – even if they found nothing on RiverClan territory, they were now looking elsewhere. Maybe there had been a clue or a trail for them to follow. Still, every time he heard pawsteps enter camp and scented RiverClan, his heart skipped a beat before he recognized whoever had just walked in.

It didn't help that Auburnfur and Mothpaw had shown up in ShadowClan camp yesterday, shortly after the patrol left, to report that not only was the Dark Forest starting to appear, but that they were already attacking cats. WindClan had been plagued by these wraiths, or shades, and now they were showing up in ThunderClan too. Sootclaw was sure it wouldn't be long before they attacked ShadowClan, and he shuddered at the thought. He had to keep his Clan safe.

His anxiety must have been palpable, for Redfur kept assigning him on patrols. He was leading the patrols, likely as an attempt to channel his worry into productivity. Yesterday he had led both a hunting patrol and a sundown border patrol, and today he had already taken out the sunrise patrol. Sootclaw found some solace in these responsibilities – after all, these responsibilities were once what he had coveted most – but whenever the patrol he led was finished, and he had reported any sightings of the darkness to the Clan's two leaders, he found himself back in camp, staring worriedly at the entrance. Sometimes he thought RiverClan cats would appear. Sometimes he thought that wraiths would.

Today, Pigeonflight was keeping him company. He lay on his back, legs sprawled, and complaining dramatically about the humidity. The grey-and-white tom had been on the sunrise patrol as well, so Sootclaw allowed him his leisure, listening half-heartedly to the tom's comedic remarks. Pigeonflight stopped when he noticed that Sootclaw wasn't really listening, and then rolled onto his stomach., placing his head on his legs in a rather put-out manner.

"Sorry," said Sootclaw.

"Moping isn't good for you," mewed Pigeonflight, adopting a more serious tone. "That's what cats always told me, when mom died. You told me it too."

"I'm not moping," said Sootclaw, too quickly.

"You're lying around camp waiting for news. It doesn't seem healthy to me."

"I'm resting," Sootclaw said. He was defensive now. "Not sure if you've noticed, but I've been busy lately."

"Mhm."

Sootclaw gave the young tom a sharp glare but held his tongue. Pigeonflight wasn't wrong. The results of the patrol either meant his family was alive, or a final, brutal confirmation that they were dead. There was a darkness buzzing around in the back of his head, his own brother wouldn't talk to him, something evil was killing all their prey and – he paused. He really was moping.

"I appreciate you keeping me company," he said, blinking warmly. Pigeonflight looked surprised, perhaps expecting an angrier response, and then smiled back.

Sootclaw got to his paws just as Eaglestar came into camp, Reedthroat and Whitestream at his heels. It had once been odd to see Eaglestar leading patrols of RiverClan cats, but by now it was a common sight. It was the same with Toadstar, who often took out groups of ShadowClan cats. The animosity between the two Clans, once heightened due Falconswoop's treachery, was all but gone. It led Sootclaw to another thought: what if RiverClan can't go back? He had seen their territory at the time of the crash and even now, moons later, he could see the destruction and polluted water from across the Thunderpath. It was hard to imagine anyone living there.

He shook the thought away just as Eaglestar padded over. The golden-brown tom looked tired, but he always looked tired these days. The ShadowClan leader gestured to Sootclaw. "A word?"

After nodding a quick goodbye to Pigeonflight, Sootclaw followed Eaglestar to the other side of camp, where they stood in the shade of a large pine tree. A few drops of moisture from last night's rain glittered on the needles. The loam at the edge of camp was damp and springy under Sootclaw's paws, compared to the hard-packed ground of the camp centre.

"Another patrol, Eaglestar?" Sootclaw asked. They had quickly determined he was the best cat for it. His sensitivity to the darkness allowed him to identify and track it from far off. The little pieces of it still buzzing in his head helped with that too, though he hadn't told Eaglestar about them.

"This one is a bit different," said Eaglestar. "It's one thing to be vigilant on our territory for these… intrusions… but all we're finding is evidence that there's something out there. It won't be long until whatever wraiths attacked WindClan and ThunderClan will attack us too – I know you must be thinking the same thing – and it's not enough to just patrol the borders."

Sootclaw found himself nodding along, his claws digging into the loam as he thought about the creatures. Right now they were simply being reactive. But when the attack came, if it overwhelmed them, well… what could they do? "What are you asking of me, Eaglestar?"

"I want you to start leading patrols out of our territory. North, beyond the border, or even along the lake to WindClan. I want to know where these wraiths are coming from, or if we can predict when and where they will attack."

"Yes, Eaglestar." In truth it was unusual to be patrolling outside their territory, but these were unusual times. The way of life they had always known was starting to change. StarClan had dictated there would always be four Clans, yet now ShadowClan was sharing space with RiverClan, WindClan was staying with ThunderClan, and they were no longer just defending their own borders. This war… Sootclaw shook off the thought. He didn't like to think of StarClan. He found himself angry at them for what they had done. Even if their intentions were good, their meddling had only brought more trouble.

"Take Nightwind and…" Eaglestar looked around the camp, where Nightwind was finishing a meal, and trailed off. There was no one else to take, Sootclaw realized, who had not just returned from a patrol or who was not needed elsewhere. Even Pigeonflight was getting ready to go back out on chores. "Take Nightwind. Go north, outside of our border and ThunderClan. See what you can find."

Sootclaw nodded again. He was doing a lot of that lately.

"Oh, and one more thing," said Eaglestar, gently. "I know it's been hard for you, Sootclaw. But you are a fine warrior, and I need you to step up now."

That took him by surprise. He blinked gratefully at Eaglestar, the praise bringing warmth to his chest, and he straightened his shoulders. "Thank you, Eaglestar."

With that, Eaglestar left to go talk to Toadstar, who had just emerged from the nursery with two of his kits hanging off his pelt. The grey warrior flicked his tail at Nightwind. Her eyes widened when she saw the gesture and she bounded over. Despite the fear they all felt, it was easy to see she was still excited to be patrolling as a warrior.

"Are we going on patrol?" she mewed.

"Yes. This one is different though," said Sootclaw, and then he explained to her the purpose of their mission. If it worried her, she didn't show it. In fact, he suspected she would be excited to leave ShadowClan territory. The warrior himself had only been that way a couple of times, escorting Eaglestar to the Moonpool when the tom needed to talk with StarClan.

As he suspected, Nightwind grinned a moment, and then sobered up when the reality of it dawned on her: they could run into wraiths. "You believe it?" she asked. "What the other Clans said about these wraiths?"

He nodded, gravely. "It seems like kit tales, I know, especially if you haven't felt the darkness before, or you didn't see it in WindClan's eyes."

"I didn't say that," Nightwind mewed as they left camp. The day was cool and damp, and a brisk wind moved through the trees. Sootclaw set a demanding pace for the two of them. This was not a leisurely walk; he wanted to be out and back as quickly as possible. "It's just… even when we played games as kits, we never fathomed something like this."

He shot her a glance as they moved through a towering stand of spruce, where the trees became further apart and cast long shadows over the earth. "It's evil," Sootclaw said at last. "It's a terrible, corrupting evil, and yet... It's easy to think it's some supernatural darkness, something bigger than all of us, but at the end of the day, it's just cats who want to harm others." A never-ending cycle of the Dark Forest reaching out to cats who had that inclination and nurturing it until they could become its warriors and do the same in turn.

"Does that make it easier to defeat?" asked Nightwind.

Sootclaw thought a moment and shook his head. If the Dark Forest was just some malevolent entity, than it would be easy to believe StarClan could strike it down. But they were on their own, and the evil was much more real. He knew it because he knew how easily he could have fallen prey to it, should Dawncloud not have entered his life. "No," he said, grimly. "That makes it so much more terrifying."

They fell silent after that.

.

They were well past the ShadowClan border, somewhere north of ThunderClan, when the suffocating stench of darkness hit Sootclaw just as his head exploded with the buzzing of a thousand bees. He had to stop from the momentary pain, gritting his teeth and digging his claws into the earth. Nightwind stopped with him and looked at him, concerned. "Sootclaw?"

"It's… close," he ground out, swinging his head from side to side and trying to find the source of the darkness. It wasn't close enough to present an immediate threat, so he wasn't yet worried about fighting or protecting Nightwind. He shut his eyes and tried to fight back the throbbing of pain, imaging it like a black wave pulsing from the centre of his mind that he had to continually press down. Often Dawncloud would help him suppress it, but she was asleep now after her long journey through the mountains. They never talked about what the darkness in his head meant. What it had meant for Russetheart. What that said about Sootclaw's future.

Finally, it subsided and he scented the air again. "Northeast," he said at last, taking a deep breath and regaining some energy. "Come on!"
He bounded through the forest, which at some point had turned from the thick conifers of ShadowClan into a mix of elms, ashes, and oaks whose newleaf canopies made the forest shine a bright green. It was still cool, but the sun was bright, and it should have been a lovely day – except for the darkness pulsing before him. It was so unfair, that it could appear and corrupt even when the sun was shining, birds were singing, and flowers were in bloom. It made Sootclaw feel like nowhere was safe.

As they drew closer, Nightwind hastening to keep up with him, another scent hit Sootclaw. A familiar one. He wanted immediately to be sick: Kitetail. His brother was out here, with whatever darkness was attacking him. Nightwind must have scented the medicine cat too because her eyes had gone wide as saucers and she increased her pace so that Sootclaw had to keep up with her. Where does she get her energy?

He burst through a clump of bracken into a clearing and saw them, two shifting and smoking figures walking circles around Kitetail. The brown tabby's fur was fluffed with fear, his ears flat against his head, but he did not move. Could not move. They're toying with him, Sootclaw realized, with a sickening jolt.

He acted on instinct and leapt at the first one. The darkness in his head yelled and he frowned, gritted his teeth, and as his paws connected with the figure it dissolved into smoke. Behind him, Nightwind cried out. The second figure had turned onto her. Sootclaw whipped around and leapt for it just as Nightwind dodged backwards. His claws caught it in the back and it dissolved. For a second Nightwind looked relieved; then her eyes widened and her mouth opened in another cry as she saw something over his shoulder.

Sootclaw turned around again. The first wraith had reformed, though it looked thinner, the clouds of black mist less dense now. It lunged for him, passing by Kitetail, who still remained paralyzed with fear. Sootclaw met it head-on and it changed course, passing just by his shoulder. He felt the rush of air as claws formed from the smoke and just narrowly missed his head. As soon as he landed, he turned on his back paws and reached up with his front paws, ready to defend himself from another blow.

Nightwind, now behind the creature, leapt onto its back – or where its back should have been – her claws driving through the smoke. It dissolved under her attack and this time it did not reform. Sootclaw rushed over to her. "Are you all right?" he asked, shivering as he remembered how close the claws had been to him. If they had cut him… he remembered the story about Rootfur and his wound. Yet it seemed they had driven the wraiths away for now. Perhaps it took too much power for them to maintain their presence in the world.

Nightwind nodded, but she looked shaken. As one would expect.

"They were real," said Kitetail, from a tail-length away, still sitting very still and not looking at them.

"Yes," said Sootclaw, padding over to his brother, unsure of how to act. He was relieved to find Kitetail was okay, though another part of him was absurdly angry that Kitetail would be alone out here in the first place. What were you thinking!? But he held his tongue.

"No, not like that," Kitetail said, shaking his head. "I know the wraiths are real. What I mean is, before you came, for a moment they were… they were cats. Not just shadows."

Sootclaw understood then. "First the dead prey. Then the smoke. Now, material form. They're getting stronger. We can dissolve them as shadows, but once they're fully formed…" Once they're fully formed, they would be much more dangerous. The Dark Forest was preparing an army.

"Are you okay, Kitetail?" asked Nightwind, somewhat shyly. She had never really known Kitetail before, Sootclaw realized, having only been a kit when he left the Clan. To her, he was just another Clan's medicine cat.

He nodded, but he was trembling. "They didn't hurt me."

"Why were you out here alone in the first place?" asked Sootclaw, trying to be kind as he held back the frustration.

"I wanted to talk to StarClan," Kitetail said. "About the wraiths, and Rootfur's wound, and what we could do. They stopped entering my dreams, and I thought…" He let out a long sigh and his shoulders deflated. "It doesn't matter, anyway. I went to the Moonpool and no one answered. We're on our own now."

The Moonpool.

Of course.

"Kitetail, that's it!" Sootclaw exclaimed, his energy startling both of his companions. "That's why they targeted WindClan first and ThunderClan second but ShadowClan hasn't seen them. That's why they were here attacking you! They're coming from the Moonpool!"

X

"So, Fogpaw – " Locust began, glancing over his shoulder at her. They had spent most of the walk in silence, but had now come to a stop in a small alley. Internally, Fogpaw braced herself for whatever he was about to say. She already knew it wouldn't be good.

She didn't even want to be out here with anyway, but it she was only allowed to leave the motel while under guard. Locust was the only way she could get any fresh air or stretch her legs. Plus, being trapped in the motel meant being trapped with all the cats she didn't want to face at the moment. Grainheart talked of crafting a plan, but in Fogpaw's eyes they had all just given up. Just like Petra, she thought. Just like Stripedpaw.

So she looked over at Locust and allowed him to continue.

"You've probably noticed," he continued, "about the kits."

The chill of that struck her worse than the chill of the day itself. Fogpaw found a lump in her throat. When she reached out to his thoughts they were an emotional, noisy mess.

"They don't live," Locust admitted, meeting her eyes and then sighing as he looked off to the side, where a chain-link fence separated them from a busier street of the Twolegplace. The fence… there's a hole in it, Fogpaw realized, squinting.

"There's something wrong with the queens here," he continued, apparently finding the resolve to broach this topic. Fogpaw thought his statement was a very reprehensible way of putting the blame on the she-cats. The toms could certainly be at fault as well, if not instead. But she held her tongue as her skin started to prickle. Whatever Locust was getting to couldn't be good. Locust continued: "But the kits you brought are healthy. They're older than any of our kits have lived to be – they'll grow into strong adults. So we need them, to keep our band. Otherwise we'll eventually die out."

He paused, then fixed her with a keen glance and said the words she had been dreading. "He also thinks you and Tawnyfeather would not be afflicted by the curse, if you were to bear kits."

Fogpaw knew where he was going with this and she did not want to hear it. She took a step backward, puffing out her cloudy grey fur and snarling at him. There was no way in a thousand years she was going to become a queen here.

"Look, Fogpaw, the band isn't that bad. It's a home, once you accept it," Locust said calmly. "And I know maybe right now you don't want kits, and that's okay, but I hope that someday soon, you'll want to be a part of our family." He did not move forward, just watched her with that stupid smug, impassive face. She was filled with disgust at his words; Fogpaw had no interest in him or in having kits. She unsheathed her claws and scratched them along the pavement, watching him carefully.

Then the muscle in his jaw twitched again and he stopped. His legs began to shake. Then, before her eyes, he slumped to the ground and began to seize. Fogpaw took a cautious step forward and looked at him, so strong, now reduced to a quaking lump. He said there were herbs back at the motel that could help him…

Her eyes flickered to the hole in the fence. Locust couldn't stop her from leaving. Freedom was a tail-length away and she could almost taste it. She glanced back to Locust. She could take him back to the motel – or she could run from this place and find help. If Grainheart and the others weren't going to seek freedom, she would bring it to them.

She slipped through the hole in the fence without a glance back at Locust and stared out at the city street. The ground was black and sticky under her paws, and a monster roared by. Fogpaw peered into the distance. Which way led out of the Twolegplace? Then she spotted them, just over the rise of a few nests – or houses – in the distance: trees. She glanced up at the sun, which was in the other end of the sky and was beginning to set. If it set in the direction away from the Clans… the trees were the right way.

Now invigorated, she ran off, speeding down the side of the street and straight for the trees. She ran as fast as she could, and somehow even faster, like her body was rebelling against the moons of captivity. The wind flowing through her fur felt so good, the pavement moving under her paws, the feeling of finally being free… she would have let out a cry of joy had she been any other cat.

Eventually she tired and she slowed to a more comfortable pace as she neared the trees. Fogpaw passed a couple of Twoleg nests. A dog started barking and she tensed – she hadn't even scented it. But she relaxed as it did not draw closer and she realized it was stuck behind a fence. Warily, Fogpaw crept past it and toward the trees, which she now saw was the beginning of a large stand of maples, their fresh new green leaves glowing gold in the setting sun.

As soon as she was safe underneath their canopy, she allowed herself to stop and take a deep breath. She was out. But… her friends were not. She had made a promise to protect them. It would be easy, to leave and not look back, to pretend she didn't owe them anything. But without true feeling or emotion, Fogpaw needed those bonds to guide her. She couldn't leave them.

As for Locust… she had just left him there. I don't owe him anything, Fogpaw thought. But it still felt wrong.

The sound of water babbling nearby caught her attention and she padded over to find a small, clear stream. Suddenly realizing her thirst, Fogpaw began to drink, lapping up the water eagerly. From here she would have to find a way back to the Clans, somehow. Maybe she could find RiverClan by following Twolegs or the metal scent of the monster. Or… a patrol? She blinked. The thought had not been hers.

Slowly, she looked up and across the stream.

A small white tom stood there, trying his best to look confident even though the nervousness rolled off him in waves so thick it nearly choked her. He had his chest puffed out. "I'm Limepaw of ThunderClan," he announced in a squeaky voice.

"I'm Fogpaw," she said. Was this a trap? Why would such a small apprentice be sent out to find her? But she couldn't detect any malice or treachery in his thoughts. "…of RiverClan."

His eyes lit up. "That's great! I've been looking for you. I mean, we've been looking for you! You gotta come with me! This way!"

He strode off through the bracken, leaving Fogpaw no choice but to follow. She leapt over the stream and padded after him. This was too good to be true – running into a patrol out here? Why such a young cat? Her heart in her throat, Fogpaw followed. What if this is some trap by Kingfisher… but Limepaw was too young to be a member of the band, considering none of the kits survived.

Her thoughts dissipated as soon as she saw the cats in the clearing beyond. Two of them – a huge golden tom and a slender tortoiseshell she-cat – she did not recognize, but one of them she did immediately. He turned as soon as he saw Limepaw, and his eyes narrowed, an expression of angry concern – and then he saw Fogpaw.

"Oaktail!" she cried, and she ran to him. He bounded toward her and pressed his muzzle firmly against her shoulder, and for a brief moment, Fogpaw felt a flicker of something. Some far off, faint emotion. Relief. Gratitude. Kinship.

"Fogpaw! You're all right! But where are the others…?" Oaktail trailed off and winced as he amended, "…who are the others?"

"Tawnyfeather's alive," she told him immediately, and the relief that ran through him was palpable. His legs nearly gave up under him and she heard only an intense happiness seize his thoughts before he shook it off. She continued: "Lilystream's kits are there too. And Hazelthorn, and Grainheart."

She heard Oaktail's mind loudly. Not Birdkit or Marshkit, he thought. But she could tell by his resignation he had already known that. She saw images of tiny, mangled bodies buried under ash and bramble, and she winced.

"There's a problem, though," Fogpaw said, once she recovered from the image. How to explain the situation? Oaktail flinched. The other two cats were listening intently, the she-cat showing transparent worry and the tom just fully focused on her words. "The others are… trapped."

X

A/N: Things are starting to move along! The Dark Forest is coming from the Moonpool, hmm, what do you think this means? Next chapter is the Thickfur reveal (ahh!). Then back to Kitetail, and in a few more chapters, the culmination of the storyline with Kingfisher and the band... Gosh, I love Fogpaw's character so much. She's a foil to Dawncloud, considering her lack of compassion, but her powers still allow her empathy, and she's still trying to do her best.

IronDirewolf: Thanks! Don't worry, we couldn't have a Dark Forest showdown without Falconswoop returning at some point~

Thanks for reading and please review!

- PV :)