((New chapter, new problems. Hey, I need suggestions for a Badger Lord name. And maybe some hare's names too. Not good with names, you see. So any badger or hare names will be appreciated.
This chapter might not be as good as it could be, because I was kind of in a rush to get this chapter up before I leave for Florida (going to Disney World for Spring Break.) I figured if I didn't get the chapter up before I left, there would be no hope for it to appear until somewhere around the last week of March. Still, I like this chapter, which is rare because I normally don't like what I write when it's fan fiction.
Anyway, I'm not going to start writing the next chapter until I get around three reviews and I'm probably not going to post it until I get around…hmmm…four or five. Hey, I don't like it when people won't post until you review much either, but I like feedback, probably more than is good for me.
Goodbye for now, I'm leaving Texas in a couple days, and, if I'm not skewered by some rabid costume-wearing freak or if my plane does not crash, I'll be back. If I don't post for more than three months, than those rabid costume-wearing freaks
in mouse costumes got me. You'll have to come up with your own ending.))
Root had avoided Darkclaw for two days, or at least had avoided being alone with the wildcat. Despite the otter's assurances that Darkclaw only liked food that could "fight back properly," Root did not trust him. Glittering green eyes followed the squirrel whenever he looked over his shoulder. The fur on the back of his neck stood up constantly, and twice the squirrel had been devoured in his dreams, and each time he had awoken to find Darkclaw absent from the small campfires they built. He did not know if the wildcat slept, and had never seen him eat more than a mouthful. It was as if the wildcat was immortal, and required no sleep and no food.
So, Root had avoided with all his minute power the circumstance he currently found himself in. As soon as they had found a place to stop for the night, Darkclaw had left silently without bothering to give an explanation, and Redsplash and the ferret had left soon after, to go fishing, and had left Root by himself attempting to light a fire. Redsplash and the ferret had been gone for less than thirty seconds before Darkclaw emerged from the foliage and stood across the clearing in the heavy forest draped in fog, watching the squirrel who, in turn, stared back at him.
"Redsplash and Fatefiend went to go fishing." Root told him, hoping that, for some reason, the wildcat would care and go searching for them.
Darkclaw merely smirked as he prowled across the clearing and settled down directly across the small blaze from the nervous squirrel. "I know."
"How?" The question was not exactly planned. In fact, Root had planned on turning tail and getting out of Darkclaw's presence as soon as possible, but the question was uncontainable.
"I was watching." Came the wildcat's amused response.
"Oh." This statement was a bit confusing. Why would the wildcat leave the three of them just to listen in on their conversations?
"I do it routinely." Darkclaw revealed, as if reading the squirrel's mind. "Old habit, I'm afraid. Back in my castle, there were some who would plot behind my backs. Beasts least expect you to overhear plots against you when you have just left them. Stupid of them, but useful to me."
"I…didn't ask." Root replied. And it was true, he hadn't. Not aloud anyway…
Darkclaw smirked at him, and, smugly inclined his sadistic face to the left, "You're afraid of me."
Root froze for a second, and then blinked. "What makes you think that?"
"It's simple." Darkclaw said with a long yawn, revealing all his pointed teeth and causing Root's heartbeat to triple it's speed. "You are prey, and I am a predator. I can smell fear, and you, little squirrel, reek of it."
"I'm not-"
Darkclaw continued as if anything Root might have to say was not at all important. "Which has made things a bit difficult, you understand, for me." His evil green eyes slide smoothly over towards Root. "Do you know why it has made things difficult?"
"I cannot imagine." Root responded truthfully, feeling the first bit of frustration sneak under the heavy blanket of fear in his mind.
"The otter and the ferret are not half as strong as they believe themselves to be. Not physically, and, by all means, not mentally, but they do possess something I require." Darkclaw laughed here, and his laugh was more damning than amused. "By some miracle of fate, the two most sought-after creatures in the west have wandered freely into my presence, or at least, have stayed there of their own free will."
"Sought-after? Those two?" Root could not imagine anyone being crazy enough to enjoy spending their time with the otter and the ferret, not enough to actively seek them out.
"Yes, ironic isn't it? But Fatefiend is the missing son of the most powerful tyrant of our times. The Nameless One is threatening dozens of places and realms around the world, and the only way that these places can get the Nameless One to call his armies back is to give them one of the two things he is searching for: his son." Darkclaw smirked at this, shaking his head. "Now, Redsplash, she's even more important than the ferret. The Nameless One wants his son back so that he can kill him, but Fatefiend holds no additional value. Redsplash, though, stole something from the Nameless One and for that he is willing to give up raiding and killing forever. No one knows what it is, and Redsplash does not know that I know why the Nameless One searches for her."
"I could tell her." Root threatened.
"You could, but there would be no point in it." Darkclaw replied with a smile. "If she finds out you know, then she will abandon us both. And, believe me squirrel, if it weren't for the fact that those two are so valuable, I would have ripped you apart long before now. You'll stay alive, though, as long as Redsplash and Fatefiend want you to. Amazing, isn't it, the power that they do not know they have?"
"Yes…" Root agreed slowly. "So the Nameless One wants them both?"
"Yes, but the Nameless One isn't the only one searching for Redsplash. There was another…an otter the exact opposite of our beloved Redsplash. He is a hero, and he was searching for her once…but I have heard no news of him since last season. He has, apparently, disappeared or died, but he had friends. They still search for her, as do numerous others with minor reasons and minor power. She has an amazing amount of power, the otter, but she cannot use it herself. Only others can use it, and that, perhaps, is the most ironic thing about the entire situation."
"So, once it's the most favorable time for you, you're just going to betray those two?" Root demanded, infuriated by this, though he did not exactly know why. He should have expected it. Darkclaw was a Warheart after all.
Darkclaw paused at this, and frowned. "No, squirrel. You misunderstand my intentions." He seemed, if anything, a bit shocked by this. "I would no more willingly betray those two than I would chop off my own paw. But if it came down to their lives or mine, then, yes, I would betray them. But I am not searching for anything currently, and do not need whatever those two lives could get me. Besides, I…" Darkclaw suddenly smirked and leaned slightly towards the squirrel, "Would you like to know a secret, squirrel?"
"Is it the type of secret that could get me killed?" Root asked hesitantly, fighting back his insatiable curiosity for a moment.
"Is there any other kind of secret?" Darkclaw responded, his smirk revealing even more of his teeth.
Root winced and then, feeling regret already, asked the question: "What is the secret, then?"
"The two of them are amusing enough for me to want to keep around, and they are leading me straight towards the one impressive goal I have not yet accomplished. Do you know what that goal is?"
"No…" Root admitted.
Darkclaw revealed every single one of his fangs in a wide grin as he replied. "I have killed a wolf, and I have killed a mother badger and her two cubs. But never have I killed a fully grown male badger."
Root gaped at him, "You're…you're going to kill the badger lord?"
"I might try, once the ferret and the otter are someplace where they cannot interfere or be harmed. The problem with badgers is that they always manage to take somebeast with them when the die…if there are any others around to be killed."
"Who's gonna be killed?" Fatefiend demanded, appearing like a ghost through the heavy fog.
"Well, the fish've already been killed, if that counts." Redsplash remarked cheerfully as she, too, strode from the forest, though she carried with her several fish.
"I'm surprised you two managed to find a decent place to fish." Root said, looking quickly away from the wildcat who still sat smirking at him.
"Oh, there had to be a stream along here somewhere. Wherever there are trees, there is water." Fatefiend replied cheerfully. "And, besides, Red over there can sniff out water like I can food. It's a pretty useful skill if you ask me."
"He didn't." Redsplash responded roughly as she settled herself by the fire and began cooking the fish. Although Redsplash's cooking skill were normally ranked up there with only the worst cooks in the world, Root had been assured that she worked wonders with fish. Which was probably the only reason why Fatefiend had let her touch the food at all.
Darkclaw did not speak to Root again that night, and barely said more than a single word sentences to Redsplash and Fatefiend. If the two noticed his terseness, they did not speak of it. Instead they spent hours telling jokes about and to Root, who only responded by not responding at all. Redsplash, too, became introspective and aloof as soon as the food was prepared, and, eventually, Fatefiend too stopped talking, and the evening finished in completely silence.
It was dark and it was moving. Root knew he was dreaming, but that did not make it any less frightening. He was in that blankness again…that place in his mind where his memories should have been. Where his past, his whole life was supposed to be…but was not. All he could remember from his past was being in a cold, dark, rainy place and screaming over and over, but never making an audible sound. This place always made him feel drained, weak…oppressed and drowning. Fear and hatred existed in raw forms in their freakish place, and Root hated them with a passion that was mingled so freely with fear it was sickening to him now, seasons later.
He reached out a paw, knowing he might has well just get this dream over with, and touched the moving, squirming, wall beside him. Whatever lived on that wall, or, perhaps, the wall itself was alive, he had never been able to find out. Without light he could not see, and there was no light where this dream took place. Still, he stumbled forward several steps, never able to understand why his legs moved as if broken, or why his left paw was slashed to tatters.
Pain in his ribs reminded him of the way his lungs always burned uselessly in this dream. Nightmare. Reality. Whichever. Suddenly, and against everything Root knew was supposed to happen, a light flared to life. He froze and did not have the slightest inkling what to do. A light? In the dream? What kind of blasphemy was this?
"Well, mate, gotten yourself into quite a fix now, haven't you?" Called a voice, full of concern, near-amusement, and slight impatience. Before, in the dream, there was no sound, but once the voice carried to his ears he could hear.
There was a steady dripping noise that came from everywhere, and his tortured breathing was insanely loud…and…some tortured creature was crying. Not little sniffles, but huge, tortured cries that ripped at Roots conscience. Someone was lost, alone, and, from the sound of it, dying. And there was light. And sound. And…and…
"Root!" No one called him by his new name in the dream. He must be waking up.
And, yes, he was awake and gasping, looking up into the exasperated face of Fatefiend. "Mate, would you stop screaming and find some happy dream?" The ferret demanded incredulously.
"Really. I was right in the middle of poking out the Nameless One's eyes and you woke me up." Came Redsplash's voice, especially whiny now that she hadn't gotten to kill anyone in her dreams.
"Sorry…" Root said, his tone breathless and hoarse. Obviously he had been screaming in his dreams. More embarrassed than anything else, Root rolled onto his side, curled into a ball, and closed his eyes. Redsplash snorted and was momentarily quiet. Fatefiend, though, was still within paw's reach of him, apparently staring down at him.
"You know," Fatefiend said quietly, "If your dreams are that bad, perhaps it's your mind trying to tell you something."
"Stop talking stupid and go to sleep." Came Redsplash's grumpy voice.
Fatefiend snapped something rather rude back, and Redsplash threatened him with a death that would take seasons to finish. Fatefiend responded with a gesture, and Redsplash retaliated, but both were too tired to do anything else. Both the otter and the ferret were asleep and snoring uproariously far before Root even closed his eyes for longer than a blink again.
Root had absolutely no idea what he had gotten himself into, but he knew it was unpleasant. He watched, his jaw hanging open, as the wildcat held the otter, by her neck, high up in the air and gave her several good, violent shakes. The squirrel stepped forward, unsure what he was planning on doing but upset by the treatment of the otter, but was stopped by the ferret's paw. Fatefiend grabbed hold of Root's ratty tunic and dragged him back, shaking his head back and forth frantically. Darkclaw gave a small hiss of irritation as the otter's fangs dug into his paw and her hind paws slammed against his chest and scrambled furiously, leaving tiny scratch marks from her claws through his shirt and angry red lines across his broad chest and vulnerable stomach.
"They fight like this all the time, mate. Don't bother 'em. It's a bonding ritual I think." Fatefiend remarked to the astounded Root.
It was early in the morning, barely an hour or two after sunrise, and Root had awoken from a light and dreamless sleep, tired, surprised to find the two of them scuffling. Obviously, the wildcat was winning, but the Warheart spawn obviously did not appreciate the long rips in his tunic that the otter's claws had given him. In fact, he seemed more irritated by his ruined clothing than anything else as he threw the otter down on the ground and stalked away with a short roar of frustration, his tail whipping around in short, agitated, strikes as if slashing at the otter.
Redsplash lay in the dirt for a few seconds and then feebly pushed herself up onto her elbows, "Come back, you coward!" she yelled after the fuming prince, her voice breathless and choked, "I was winning!"
"You were n-" Root started as he leaned down and pulled her to her feet. His retort was cruelly cut off by Fatefiend's elbow slamming into Roots ribs.
"We let her believe what she wants to, squirrel." The ferret hissed quietly as he too pulled the otter to her feet.
The tall otter swayed dangerously for a second as if she were about to tip over, obviously disoriented. "Bloody coward," she muttered darkly, "Runnin' off when I was winning."
Root shook his head and sighed, "You weren't winning, Redsplash." He told her truthfully. "I thought he was killing you."
"What?" Redsplash screeched indignantly, nearly falling over with the force of her yell. "I was not losing! Everything was going precisely as I planned!"
"You're gonna have to face facts, Red. You're nothin' without that bloodwrath of yours." Fatefiend piped up, and when Redsplash turned her furious gaze on him, he pointed at Root as if the squirrel had somehow made him say it.
"Bloodwrath?" Root inquired, curious.
"Red goes completely crazy every now and then. Her eyes go red and everything. It's great to watch, because the stronger she gets the stupider she gets and-" Fatefiend started to informed him in a cheerful tone. However, when he saw Redsplash's glare he wilted slowly and hunched his shoulders forward, "Yes, uh, I'll just go, and…bother Darkclaw now…" He muttered darkly.
"That's the first good idea you've come up with all season." Redsplash snapped at him as he sulked off in the direction the wildcat had left in. She turned her leaf green eyes back on the squirrel and frowned at him, "You know, I like my breakfast in the morning." She informed him grumpily.
Root, who had detected that respect only came from violence and fighting, physical or verbal, in this group, crossed his arms over his chest and returned her glare, "Oh, do you? Well, then you'd better get cooking. Morning won't last much longer."
"You were supposed to be our cook! It's why we saved you!" Redsplash bellowed at him, obviously not liking the fact that the squirrel was standing up to her.
"I didn't ask you to!" Root shouted back.
"You were starving! We saved you! You owe us!" Redsplash was waving her arms in anger now, although she wasn't hitting him, she seemed to be striking at phantom squirrels that surrounded her.
"'Us?'" Root inquired, "You're a group now, are you? Is that why you three are always fighting? Because you're have just such a great friendship?"
"Of course! How many good friends do you know that don't fight?" Redsplash asked, still waving her arms around.
Root was stupefied by this question of hers. Friends fought, it was true, but they did not hold each other above the ground and shake them by their necks. "Your life is not healthy!" he finally settled on saying, quite loudly actually.
Redsplash stared at him, blinking three times before finally saying, in this completely shocked tone, "Of course it isn't!"
Root stifled a scream, "You're hopeless." He informed her, not sure what else he could say.
"You're ugly!" Redsplash bellowed back.
"Am not!"
"Are too!"
"Am not!"
"Are too!"
"Damn it! Just stop talking unless you have something smart to say!" Root's temper, though very slow to actually catch, exploded like wildfire once lit. There was no way he would calm down for a while now. He paced in furious lines, glaring so strongly at the otter that she seemed, for the moment, cowed. In fact it did not look like she would be talking for a while.
"You're so stupid!" Root snapped, deciding that if the otter wasn't going to talk he might as well, and stopped pacing because he was making himself dizzy. "You're so afraid of looking like you don't have control that you don't notice everything you do is idiotic! That cat could rip you apart in a second if he wanted too. That's nature, otter! You can't fight nature! If nature says something can kill you, then it can and there is nothing you can do to fight that! You're lucky that wildcat needs you alive, or he would have devoured you by now!"
"I really don't-" The otter started half-heartedly, still, obviously, shocked by Root's continuous outburst.
"No one here thinks you're a coward! Except for maybe the wildcat, but he's completely insane anyway, so he doesn't count! No one sane thinks you're a coward so you don't have to go running around trying to prove it all the time! Personally, I think you're out to prove something because of some weakness you had as a cub that cost you something you'd rather have kept, but despite being stupid and headstrong, I doubt you have any other faults, so stop worrying about it!"
Redsplash rocked back on her heels, her eyes so wide it was becoming slowly apparent that not many had ever yelled at her like this. She got over her shock easily, though, and leaned forward, poking the squirrel in the chest with her right paw. "Don't you dare tell me to 'stop worrying' about anything! You have no idea what I have to 'worry' about and you're the stupid one! We all know you're terrified of Darkclaw! If you were smart, you'd see he's been playing with your mind since you met him! He's trying to scare you, and you're letting it work!"
"I'm afraid of him because I'm smart! If he wanted me dead, I'd die! Fear is good for you! Without it you'd be just another brainless, stupid, violence-craving idiot! And I'd rather not be just like you!" Root poked her back, his own paw a fist as if slammed against the fur right beneath her collarbone.
"You can just die!" Redsplash roared and lunged towards him, bowling him completely over. But Root, instinctively, latched unto her arm and brought her, protesting loudly, down with him.
They rolled about on the ground, each trying, it seemed, to gouge the other's eyes out, or snap the other's neck, or just break a couple ribs here and there. Finally, Redsplash's knee slammed into Root's stomach and Root lay, gasping, on the ground while Redsplash climbed to her feet. She made a peculiar sound, like she was about to spit on him, and Root swung out his left leg, and it collided with Redsplash's knees. The otter went flying, and landed face-first in the dirt to Root's left. Both of them stayed where they were, winded, for an obscenely long amount of time, about twice as long as the actual fight took.
"I won." Redsplash finally announced. Root rolled onto one of his elbows and raised one eyebrow, sending her a look that said very clearly 'you just don't know when to stop talking, do you?'
"Excuse me?" He managed after a few seconds, still a bit winded from the blow to his stomach.
"You fell down first. I won." Redsplash clarified stubbornly, as she pushed herself up into a sitting position. Only then did she seem to realize that Root had split her lip in some accidentally accurate punch. Sending him a glare of reproach she lifted a paw to the injured lip and seemed to be testing how bad the wound was.
"Some warrior you are." Root remarked as he, too, sat up and began feeling his ribs to see if any of them had been seriously injured. "Having to come up with excuses as to why you won."
Redsplash frowned at him. "Squirrel," she said slowly, "I have killed more beasts than you have probably seen in your life."
Now, this probably wasn't true, but she had undoubtedly killed more creatures than he remembered seeing in his life. "Where's the proof?" he demanded.
"Proof? Proof?" She demanded, sounding incredulous. Suddenly she shoved her arm directly under his nose and pointed to a nasty looking gash that ran at least two inches from her shoulder towards her elbow. It was wide and winding and looked like it had hurt along. "Got that from one of the spikes on the Nameless One's walls when I was helping some mouse escape. The guards surprised us and I went over the wall. Managed to grab hold of one of the spikes to keep from falling to my death, but on the way down one of 'em slit open my arm. I hung there until sunrise, and then lost my grip and fell. I imagine I had a pretty nasty landing, because I got a concussion and a couple broken ribs, too, but by the time I woke up, this little scar was already healed."
Root was about to say something when she gestured at the space right above the ankle of her right foot. "Nearly lost this foot to a pike when I was chunked I into a lake. A rat ripped open my stomach with a skinning knife once, and I've been shot in my side with an arrow. My legs have been broken, and I've been cut 'bout a hundred times by the Nameless One's dangers. I have plenty of proof, squirrel. What I don't have is a reason this all had to happen to me. Or revenge on those who did it to me in the first place."
"Well, I don't see any reason to hurt you either, Red. What with your charming personality and all." Root replied sarcastically, rolling his eyes.
She stared at him for a second and then burst into laughter. "You remind me of L-" she paused, and winced, her face paling. Redsplash shook her head and finished the sentence uncomfortably. "Someone…you remind me of someone."
Root tilted his head to the side, wondering who, exactly, had managed to survive Redsplash's presence that was like him. "Who?" he asked, not caring overly much if she didn't want to talk about.
"No one you'd know." She wasn't looking at him anymore, but past him, her eyes not really focused on anything and her tone a bit listless.
"How do you know that?" Root replied. Of course, the only beasts he remembered were Redsplash, Darkclaw, Fatefiend, and the two foxes. Other than that, his mind was a blank.
"Because, you're a squirrel. He died before he ever met a squirrel." Redsplash responded bitterly, stood up, and walked away, leaving Root to himself.
"Oooh…aaaahh…am I supposed to be impressed?" Root muttered to himself. "Stupid dramatic otter, can't even answer my questions…pity the poor beast that never got to meet a squirrel." He continued to mummer to himself as he began cooking food for himself and, just because he was in a bad mood, making sure he did not make enough for any of the others.
Redsplash was wandering through the forest, thinking deeply about parts of her past that she normally avoided thinking about at all. She was slowly daggering herself up out of the hole her mind had fallen in, and trying to pay more attention to the forest around her so she could get back to where the others were. Where Root, the causer of all this deep-thinking, was located. But the forest was confusing, and it was better to stay in her own thoughts than face reality. The forest sounded oddly, strange sounds emitting from the core of the forest that she was currently trampling on through.
For instance, she kept hearing her name. "Redsplash…" There it went again. That voice calling her name. She stopped where she was and scowled at the nearest bush. She hated forests. Too enclosed. It was open water she liked.
"Redsplaaash…." Redsplash grunted in annoyance and set off towards the voice, but tried, hopelessly, to block it out. Unless one of her idiotic companions was playing a trick on her, there was no one in this forest that knew her name.
"Redsplash!" the voice was stronger now, urgent. Recognition struck. Fatefiend.
"Fatefiend, what stupid prank are you playing?" she demanded loudly.
"No prank! No prank!" Fatefiend called back, sounding, surprisingly, a bit panicked.
"Give it up, ferret. She's not going to be any help." Darkclaw joined in the conversation, sounding too cynical even for his normal self.
"Like we have any other choice." Fatefiend responded. "Red, listen, I can see you. Take a couple steps to your right and then a bit forward." Redsplash did like he said, but was a bit frustrated by the whole thing. When she saw Fatefiend though, it all became clear.
Fatefiend was hanging, in a net, from a gigantic oak tree. Along with, it appeared, Darkclaw, although Darkclaw was in a different net and a different tree. Redsplash could not have stopped the laughter if she tried. It burst out of her and she doubled over, laughing so hard her ribs hurt. When she finally got control of herself the two of them were glaring rather angrily at her.
"All right, you two, just…stay there…for a second-" She stepped forward.
"No! NO!" Fatefiend bellowed, but it was too late. Redsplash stepped, laughing and relaxed, into the trap and, within seconds, was hanging from the same tree as Fatefiend, but in, obviously, yet another net.
"Well…" Redsplash said, as she stopped laughing abruptly and the two of them glared even more angrily at her. "Damn."
It was around midnight when Root began seriously believing the others had abandoned him. Before he had reassured himself with the fact that they had left all there food here and had, in an attempt at vengeance for them leaving him alone for so long, partaken of their food rations. Now, though, that the sun was down and some demonic owl kept hooting somewhere in the distance, Root was sure they had left him here. Which was, and Root had no trouble admitting this unlike some might, completely frightening.
Here he was, truly all alone for the first time he could remember in his life, in a place he had never been, and without any idea as to how to get out of the forest at all. Added to that was the stupid owl, the threat that there could be anything outside the light of his tiny fire, and the added bonus of being completely weaponless…not that he could wield a weapon anyway, but it would have been nice to have something sharp and pointy to make him feel better about being abandoned.
With a sigh more shudder than anything else, he stood up and grabbed his pack. He loaded as much of the other's food and objects into his pack as possible and even found a small dagger in Fatefiend's pack. Shoving the blade through his belt Root set off into the forest. Lacking any real interest, Root glanced at the forest floor and noted strange little imprints in the dirt. Otter tracks…his mind whispered and he frowned lightly wondering how, in the name of all that was good and non-abandoned, he had known that little tidbit of information. But this had happened a times before, where he knew something he had not known he knew, and never, once, had this strange form of intuition been wrong. Not once in all his remembered life.
So, with a light shrug, Root decided to see if he knew how to follow these tracks he recognized. Something told him he could follow them until he found the paws who had made them, but, still, Root followed. It wasn't that he was interested in finding Redsplash again, or that he was really that interested in the tracks in the first place, but they gave him a direction to go in and that was more than anything else had so far. He tracked the otter with no real interest, but when the tracks were too hard to discern from the other tracks on the ground, Root was rather unpleasantly surprised to find that he could follow other clues as to where the otter had gone, without such visible signs as the tracks. He did not like possessing such a talent without being aware of it. It made him wander, as he wondered through the forest in vague search of the otter, what other talents he might possess.
Around a quarter of an hour had gone by when Root heard the first few snippets of what sounded like a full-fledged shouting and screaming argument. The signature sign, Root knew, of Redsplash and her companions chattering cheerfully. It did not sound like they were engaged in an actual physical fight, though, so it probably wasn't a very serious fight. They might have been arguing over the over-all color of the sky, as they had mere days ago. With another deep sigh, Root started off in the direction of the arguing beasts.
"Oh, sure, Fatefiend! Next time I'll just leave you two hanging!" Redsplash bellowed, her expression furious as she hurled her response at the ferret.
"We can only hope!" Fatefiend roared back, waving his fist at her in a threatening manner that did absolutely nothing for the conversation.
"Stop this." Darkclaw said suddenly, quietly. They did not listen.
"You asked for help!" Redsplash's voice was a full octave higher than normal as she tried to wave her fists back and swing the net closer to Fatefiend's in order to hit him at the same time. She made very limited success at both.
But she did give Fatefiend an idea. He grabbed hold of the rope net and used all his nearly considerable strength to hurl his net at Redsplash. He slammed into her and her entire net went hurtling backwards. She screeched in shock and then threw herself towards Fatefiend as the net started back towards his in its current ark. Fatefiend had time to widen his mouth and eyes before she slammed into him. They kept this pattern up for quite some time before a loud, terrifying sound ripped through the forest. It was a roar of anger and hate, of irritation and frustration, and it silenced Fatefiend and Redsplash whose nets continued slamming into each other and turning in rapid circles, but with no encouragement from them.
"Darkclaw! Don't do that!" Fatefiend said, "Especially since we've been up here for hours and I had so much to drink at breakfast."
"Aw, is wittle bittle ferret gonna p-" Redsplash started, heavy on the baby-voice.
"Otter, if you have not noticed, your one chance of freedom has just arrived." Darkclaw announced, his tone both biting a lazy as he hung calming in his net, yawning loudly.
"What? Where?" Redsplash demanding, attempting to stop her net's wild spins so that she could spot this chance Darkclaw had mentioned.
"It's the squirrel!" Fatefiend announced. And, indeed, it was.
Root was watching the three of them from a safe distance away. For some reason, the nets and the location were striking a deep, instinctive fear inside his stomach, his heart, and deep within his mind. Run…run…run…run…run…run…whispered that voice endlessly in his mind and that intuition-like sense never gave bad advice. For the first time in his life Root was almost overwhelmed by the desire to save himself and sacrifice others. Never before had he felt such fear, not even in those nightmares that, he thought, were the very embodiments of fear. No. Never before in his life had he had to face down the deep, screaming wail that fear could become that was ripping at him, pleading, ordering, begging for him to leave and leave now. Before they could get him. Before they found him. Before they cornered him and caught him. Before it was over. Before he had no chance to escape. Before they captured and killed him.
But Redsplash and Fatefiend were staring at him, talking to him though he could not comprehend the words, asking him in varying forms to get them out. They wanted to be free and if they weren't freed they would get them, and the two of them would die. Still, despite this, Root could not force himself forward. He stood, frozen and terrified and confused, while the otter and the ferret asked for freedom.
It was Darkclaw that convinced him to act. Darkclaw who intimidated and infuriated him. The wildcat that only let him live because he needed to use the other two. The wildcat looked at him, and in those pools of evil that were his eyes, there was understanding…understanding and apprehension. He knew. He knew what might happen, and what danger they were all in. Even Root did not know why he was so afraid, only that he was. Darkclaw knew and Darkclaw was uneasy. The wildcat's claws were out, and the fur along his spine was half-raised. The wildcat placed his claws gently against the netting and Root understood the threat.
For some unexplainable reason, Root knew that if those nets were cut, it would call them forward, and wildcat, squirrel, ferret, and otter would die. But it was more chance of survival than if the wildcat was kept in the nets. If he stayed in the nets, there was no chance. But if he cut free, he could fight. It was suicide, but it was purposeful suicide, rather than needless. If the nets were cut, Darkclaw's death would be bloody and gory and impressive. If the ropes were kept whole his death would be cold and painful and entertainment. If the ropes were cut, Root would die.
So Root really had no choice but to attempt to free the others, even though he knew, deep down in the pit of his stomach where all his fears lived in a dark pit that held sway even over his mind, that he would not survive this situation no matter what choice he took.