Goosefeather trundles through what remains of the clans.
Everywhere he looks, he sees a moorland littered with the corpses of cats that he used to know. Fierce warriors. Noble leaders. Fellow medicine cats. His clanmates, his friends, his own kin- their faces are forever frozen in wide-eyed displays of agony and terror. He wants to offer them a respectful farewell. To groom the tousled fur of those who fought until the very end. To seal the lips that parted open to release a final, strident breath. To mask the stench of death beneath the aroma of mint leaves and lavender. If he were just given the chance, he would spend the rest of his days turning each tormented visage into a reflection of the peace that is reserved for all who give their lives in honour of the warrior code.
But alas, Goosefeather must keep moving. If he doesn't, he will share the same fate as the bodies. A fate that awaits no burial. Only The Vermin.
They are everywhere. Thousands, millions- their numbers can't possibly be fathomed. They scurry in every direction, mangy pelts emerging from behind rocks and patches of tall grass. With claws and teeth, they tear their way out of their enemies, claiming bowels as their spoils of war and not caring for the names or ranks that the carrion used to possess.
The Vermin might be distracting themselves with the bodies, but it won't be for long. Sooner or later, they will covet the smell of fresh meat over the decaying crow-food. And so, Goosefeather pushes on, one foot dragging behind the other. The terrain in front of him slants into a hill. Grunting to himself, he forces his weathered limbs to begin the climb and holds back an urge to choke when he trudges past more corpses with familiar, rotting faces.
Once at the top, he's surprised to find his apprentice, Featherpaw, lying next to a rock ledge. His silver pelt is tainted with blood and one of his eyes is buried somewhere behind a massive, crimson gash. With his back against the ground and his head aimed at the sky, the young tom looks as though he had spent his last moments trying to catch a glimpse of the golden sun amidst the nimbi.
Bracing his heart to bear yet another loss, Goosefeather sulks towards the body. Once he's close enough to see that the blood is still fresh, that's when he notices Featherpaw's chest moving up and down.
He is still breathing.
Goosefeather breaks into a sprint. The hasty advance sends vermin flitting down the hill to inform their comrades that there is still one cat left standing.
Upon reaching his apprentice, Goosefeather crouches next to him.
"Featherpaw- can you hear me?"
The tom blinks and looks back at his mentor with his good eye, wincing at the pain of trying to move the other one.
"Goosefeather…?"
The response came out as a weak and barely coherent mumble, but it's infinitely better than nothing. Goosefeather further examines Featherpaw. Apart from the blinded eye, there are bites and scratch marks scattered all over his skin. Most of them are already boiling with infection. It would take a lot of cobwebs, burdock root and marigold to treat each of those injuries, but it wouldn't be impossible. Goosefeather just needs to get back to where he stored his supplies.
"Featherpaw, you are going to be alright. Listen to me, I'm going to lift you up and take you back to the oak tree. Are you ready?"
The tom doesn't respond or make any gestures to indicate that he had listened. Nevertheless, Goosefeather turns him on his back and tries to hoist him up by the scruff. Featherpaw immediately starts groaning and wringing in pain, compelling his mentor to lay him back on the ground, which allows the apprentice to let out a long and relieved sigh. An exhale that could be his last, and Goosefeather is almost too late to realise that.
"Featherpaw! Featherpaw- Don't fall asleep. Do you understand? No matter what, do not fall asleep."
Featherpaw's head wobbles up and down a couple of times, as if his mind needed to overcome the weight of his own body to stay awake. He then speaks again.
"Did we win?"
Goosefeather gently places his paw over Featherpaw's mouth.
"Hush now. You must save your strength."
Over the heartbeats of silence that follow, Featherpaw's eye gradually grows wider and wider, until a white halo surrounds the entirety of the amber iris. The halo speaks of realization even when the apprentice is quiet, and Goosefeather's head sinks. He wants to say that the clans won, that the battle hadn't turned into a bloodbath, but Featherpaw is too smart for that. He would be quick to recognise the telltale signs of such a blatant lie.
Though not without reluctance, Goosefeather lets go of Featherpaw's muscle and decides to tell him the truth.
"The Vermin has won..."
Those words make the white halo recede, leaving the iris as the only herald of Featherpaw's inner thoughts. But rather than despair or sorrow, displayed in the apprentice's gaze, there is just the haggard acceptance of a warrior who's abruptly woken up to join the dawn patrol.
"So everyone's dead…"
Before he can respond, Goosefeather hears a series of chitters. He turns his head around and sees a squirming, brown-and-black mass of vermin gathering at the bottom of the hill. They are gazing upwards, yet none of them stare at Goosefeather. All of their snouts are pointed at the cat who's sprawled on the ground, injured and mumbling to himself.
"You warned us…"
Goosefeather turns to his apprentice.
"Featherpaw, we have to move."
Expecting no reply, he again tries to haul Featherpaw up with his jaws. The tom doesn't complain this time, but he doesn't make an effort to maintain his balance either. He just continues with his musing.
"You just wanted-... To save us…"
"I can still save you-"
Talking makes Goosefeather lose his grip. Featherpaw plummets to the ground without letting out any sounds of pain or even discomfort. Such numbness is a possible symptom of shock. Or maybe an effect of the adrenaline that is rushing through the tom's blood. There's no clear answer and no time to study the matter, for the chitters are growing louder. Any moment now, The Vermin will be fully mustered and their climb will commence.
Goosefeather crouches over Featherpaw's face.
"I know it hurts, but I need you to be strong. Can you do that for me?"
But his eye doesn't even match Goosefeather's. It's lost somewhere in the grey horizon that extends beyond the slaughter.
"I'm so sorry…"
The mentor leans closer to his apprentice.
"Don't apologize."
"We didn't believe you… You said you had a vision, a-and we didn't even trust you…"
Goosefeather frantically shakes his head.
"That doesn't matter anymore! You're wounded and you need my help- that's the only thing I care about now. Do you understand?"
Featherpaw doesn't reply. He just stares at the moor where so many clan cats will rest, waiting unceremoniously for the wind to make dust out of their bones.
"Featherpaw?"
The question is met with silence. Goosefeather prods him in the shoulder. He doesn't flinch.
"Featherpaw!"
He shakes Featherpaw to snap him back into consciousness, but his eye doesn't even blink.
"No-no-no! Stay with me!"
He desperately shoves his ear against Featherpaw's chest, searching for a pulse. All he hears is a single, lethargic beat of a dying heart.
"Featherpaw, please- we're all that remains, I can't lose you now!"
Goosefeather pleads and howls and hollers. Nothing works. Nothing wakes Featherpaw from his final sleep, and no amount of effort will bring the clans back. There is nothing left of them except for him, the medicine cat who begs for his friends, his kin and his apprentice to return.
"Please-… Please don't go!"
He stops when his throat can't take another scream. As he stands alone by the ledge, panting, he sees from the corner of his eye that The Vermin has finally caught up to him. A myriad of teeth chatter in their approach. The ravenous voids that they have for eyes are fixated on Featherpaw's body. Those creatures don't know who he was. They will never be able to comprehend how a bright tom like him should have lived for a thousand seasons, caring diligently for cats who would have loved and protected him from all adversities.
The Vermin doesn't deserve to take a single bite out of Featherpaw- and Goosefeather will make it clear to them. He bares his teeth, arcs his back and snarls.
"Stay back, you filth!"
One of The Vermin takes a step forward. It stands on its hind legs and emits a guttural roar before leaping right for Goosefeather's throat. As it flies through the air, the creature splits its head open to reveal a mouth full of fangs and snake-long tongues. The cat is quick to react. He snatches the aggressor in the air and snaps its neck between his jaws. Once the body stops wriggling, Goosefeather spits it back to the rest of The Vermin and growls with all the revulsion that a cat's heart could ever contain.
"Your kind deserves to die a thousand deaths. Take another step and I swear on StarClan's name that I'll deliver!"
The Vermin does not hesitate. Bellowing in unison, they throw themselves forward. So does Goosefeather. Everything becomes a frenzied flurry of clawing and biting and kicking. One. Two. Five. Ten. He loses count of how many enemies he has struck and just focuses on tearing apart whatever flesh he comes into contact with. His legs burn as The Vermin latch onto him with their unearthly maws and try to take him down, but Goosefeather doesn't give in. He stays on his feet, fighting like the many warriors who refused to go down that day until their very lives had to be ripped from them.
After what could have been a few heartbeats or a whole lifetime spent in battle, it seems as though the stream of assailants has ceased. Goosefeather takes deep breaths and narrows his eyes to contemplate the carnage. Cats and vermin lie dead all around him, their blood coming together in thick pools that soak his paws.
Somehow- be it due to luck or his ancestors' blessing- he has survived the fray.
Goosefeather looks back at Featherpaw, relieved to see that The Vermin didn't get to desecrate his corpse, but also confused by the sight of a black cloud whorling its way out of the gash on his eye. Before Goosefeather can even think of getting closer to investigate, the body erupts with a burst of fog. Dark wisps rise from within every open wound, the silver pelt loses its shine and the muscles become as scraggly as the ones of a starving elder, all in the startled blink of Goosefeather's eye. By the time he realizes what is happening, all that remains of the apprentice is a withered and unidentifiable husk.
Goosefeather falters back with a gasp. The wisps are drawn to the spiralling motions of the black cloud. Fog meets fog, and the ensuing darkness grows thick enough to fully envelop Goosefeather. The screams of a young tom resonate all across the gloom. Although the mentor swipes desperately at the dismal air, his paws don't come across any solid matter and the fog simply rolls by him, carrying Featherpaw's voice away with every swerve.
Upon turning around to chase the murky remnant, Goosefeather sees that more wisps are arising from the bodies, enervating every remaining fibre when they depart and expanding a massive barrier of fog upon their arrival. Featherpaw's remains join the rest, and the hairs on Goosefeather's back stand on their ends when he hears the tom's screams becoming one with the snarls and shrieks of an ear-splitting dirge.
Once all the bodies are dissected beyond recognition and all the wisps finally become conjoined, a shape begins to form within the shadows. Its contour bears close resemblance to a rat, except that this beast could double a badger in size. Its eyes are two spheres that glow upon Goosefeather with the colours of the gloaming that gives way to a cold and hopeless night.
The beast lumbers forward. From the darkness which entrenches it, a crooked merge of shattered bones that barely resembles a leg, held together by strips of pulsating flesh, juts into Goosefeather's view. He steps back. Whatever that monstrosity is, fighting it would be suicidal. One swipe from its ossified claws could cut his head clean off. Running past it isn't a reliable option, either. It would require Goosefeather to traverse the fog, which could be like running blindly into a fox's den, for all he knows.
Unfortunately, those are all the conclusions that he can reach before finding himself one step away from the ledge. Seeing its prey cornered, the beast lowers its watchful spheres in separate directions as its vertical jaws become unhinged.
"You… Murdered… Spawn."
Its voice, as grating as the squeaks of a sick rodent, is echoed by the meows of dozens of cats. Although he is facing something that could only be rooted in the nightmares of the most demented minds, the Goosefeather replies with confusion, and even curiosity.
"You can speak?"
There is a moment of stillness, and then the beast's head splits open once more.
"You… Murdered… Spawn."
Goosefeather doesn't understand what he is being accused of, but in talking, he sees an opportunity to at least buy himself more time.
"What do you mean by that? Who did I murder?"
A portion of fog promptly recedes, revealing the vermin that surround the beast. They clamber and tumble over each other in an uncontrollable skirmish, but they don't take a single step past the beast, who in turn observes them as a queen would watch over the kits that play fighting by the nursery.
Goosefeather nods slowly.
"Right- your spawn..."
The Vermin's Queen stares back at him.
"And you murdered them.."
The accusation makes The Vermin roar, scratch and bite in Goosefeather's direction. He totters closer to the ledge, but keeps his head held high like a clan leader would have done.
"They tried to murder me first. I was only defending myself."
"You are wrong… Spawn does not murder…"
Goosefeather can't believe the certainty in that response. Furious, he swings his tail in an arch to encompass the death that surrounds him.
"Do you see all these corpses? They belonged to good cats- cats who lived in peace and prosperity until your kind came in and decimated them! You don't get to be bitter over a single loss in the slaughter that you've brought upon us."
The Vermin Queen glances at her spawn, and they fling themselves forwards. Goosefeather unsheathes his claws, ready to fight, but he soon realizes that he is in no danger. In their maddening gluttony, The Vermin are throwing themselves at the bodies of their comrades. He looks away from the atrocity, and in doing so, he sees that The Vermin Queen is scrutinizing him with her drooping eyes.
"Spawn does not slaughter… Spawn does not murder… Spawn feeds."
Goosefeather tips his head to the side and narrows his gaze in disdain.
"Well, pardon me if I fail to see the difference."
As if beckoned by an unspoken call, The Vermin rush back to the fog. Some of them carry corpses atop their backs. They sink into the wafting darkness, and the Vermin Queen vows to them. Her glowing eyes begin to tumble and swerve in unpredictable directions as if her head was morphing into a wholly different shape. Even then, she is somehow able to share her strange words of wisdom with Goosefeather.
"When cats kill spawn, they leave spawn to rot… Cats murder. When spawn kills, spawn takes bodies… Spawn feeds."
When those last two words are grumbled, The Vermin Queen finally shambles out of the fog, and the cat has no need to ask who exactly is being fed by the spawn.
An abomination towers before him. A tangled mass of legs, tails, heads and maws, reaching out and twitching and gaping, all moulded into a gore-soaked body that seems to come from a world where there are no such concepts as symmetry or proportions.
Goosefetaher's head whips back to the ledge. Fog has taken over the cliff below, effectively trapping him. He dares looking back at The Vermin Queen. She is standing on six limbs, none of which mirrors the size of the other. Goosefeather's eyes water at the sickening stench that emanates from each body part. Through staggered breaths and clenched teeth, he asks the only question that his mind can formulate.
"What on earth are you?"
From the beast's chest, or at least, what Goosefeather surmises to be its chest based on how the eyes are not too far above that point, a face begins to show its form. The face is trapped behind a layer of septic skin, but even then, Goosefeather could recognize it even in the darkest pits of The Dark Forest.
The Vermin Queen speaks using Featherpaw's mouth. Its movements are mimicked by the other faces that have melted into the amalgam.
"You forget our name… But we do not forget you."
The sight of his apprentice causes a rush of sorrow, guilt, shock, utter perplexity and so many more emotions to overwhelm Goosefeather's senses. He howls out at the beast without regarding her temperament, for he has finally witnessed what fate awaits him, and thus cannot fear the unknown any longer.
"Speak some sense, you wretched thing! If you are to kill me, I demand to know what you are and what in StarClan's forsaken nightmares brought you into existence."
Five indifferent tails whisk near Featherpaw's face. His voice is manipulated to express neither displeasure nor amusement on The Vermin Queen's behalf.
"We are vermin… We are born from hunger."
Hunger- That was the whole reason for the massacre. The Vermin needed forest prey to feed their ever-growing numbers. The clans had stood in their way, and they had suffered the devastating consequences of trying to halt what was unstoppable.
"Cat is not remembering…"
"What do you mean by that?"
"Cat always forgets… But then remembers."
"Remembers what?"
"That the cats have fought spawn before… That you have died before."
Another indecipherable answer. Goosefeather shakes his head furiously. He opens his mouth, but he doesn't get to complain. A symphony of dissonant hisses drowns his thoughts. He turns around to find the source of that noise in a mob of cats who are climbing up the cliff. The fog has taken control of their bodies, ripping their heads open to imitate the maws of The Vermin that took their lives.
Goosefeather watches in disbelief. The bodies, though in different states of decay, all look exactly like him. Speckled fur, pale blue eyes. And their voices- together they tell a story of one soulful defeat after another.
"The clans will win, you needn't worry- The battle has started. Be at the ready!- What is going on? Why is no one coming to us?- No, no this can't be- I can't be all that's left!- Featherpaw, stay with me!- Please, don't go. You deserve to live more than I do- Take another step and I'll rain Starclan's wrath upon all of you!- Show yourself, beast!- Wait, stop!- Get away from me!- Please, I beg of you. Make it stop!- Make it stop!"
Goosefeather stays still. He listens and stares and suddenly remembers.
This is not the first time that the clans have lost to The Vermin. Or the first time that Featherpaw has died before his eyes. Time and time again, Goosefeather has relived the same nightmare, and time and time again, he has been powerless to stop it. The visions before the battle were not just premonitions. They were memories, suppressed by whatever entity had orchestrated his never-ending damnation.
"Cat is remembering now..."
Goosefeather gazes upon The Vermin Queen. They have spoken at the hilltop before, and across countless instances, the result has always been the same. Death for him, food for her and a new Goosefeather for the fog.
With his knowledge reclaimed, his voice becomes a cold utterance.
"Have you realized that you're as trapped in this trial as I am?"
There is no response at first. Goosefeather has tried to resist, to fight back, to threaten his enemy with an oath to free the clans from their cycle of mayhem, no matter the cost; but apparently, he had never been this stoic in the face of the beast, and that takes The Vermin Queen by surprise.
"Yes… I am trapped, but spawn will feed forever."
"So that is how you and your vermin will spend this eternity? Enslaved by your hunger and the fog?"
The question provokes a hint of trepidation when Featherpaw's voice answers.
"Hunger makes us strong, fog brings cats that fight… Cats will win if spawn doesn't hunger, and spawn will starve if fog doesn't bring cats."
Goosefeather huffs.
"So it's got you right where it wants: Relishing its clutches... And if that's so, then where do I come in? What do you gain from me outliving my clanmates if I'm doomed to share their fates either way?"
"You do not feed spawn… When cat suffers, cat feeds the fog."
A maggot-ridden paw sinks its claws into the ledge. The cat-vermin are almost upon Goosefeather. He knows firsthand that there is no escape past that point, just as much as he knows how much pain he will endure in the last moments of life that he has left.
He fixes his gaze on The Vermin Queen. Featherpaw's face has risen to be between the eyes, right below the point where the jaws meet.
"Very well. If the fog wants to feed off of my distress, then I will not scream. I'll watch everyone I ever cared about die. I'll be devoured alive, over and over again, and still, you will not hear a single sound coming out of my mouth. The fog may torture me, but in I will starve it to oblivion."
The beast answers right as the first of Goosefeather's executioners makes it up the ledge. Featherpaw's deadpan voice, in the most unconceivable of hopes, almost betrays a hint of pity from The Vermin Queen.
"That is why cat must always forget…"
What happens next is quick. A strength that outmatches Goosefeather tenfold. Rocks crashing against his ribs, claws ripping his skin open, fangs digging into his neck- Warm blood gushes out in every direction, covering his vision with a scarlet veil.
Goosefeather wants to scream. By StarClan, he wishes for some form of release in the tempest of sheer agony, but his resolve wins him over. He holds his breath and bites down on his lips, hard enough to make morsels out of them. Focusing only on that pain brings him a strange sense of comfort, one that he won't live long enough to come to understand.
The last thing that Goosefeather sees is a past version of himself opening its maw to devour his face. That, and for a moment that is as brief as his last breath, Goosefeather spots a tendril of fog above the head of the cat-vermin. The tendril lashes out in every direction. Goosefeather's silence has displeased it.
And then that last, triumphant sight fades to black.
(...)
The four clans stand as one along the treeline, facing the moorland that stretches as far as the eye can see.
The warriors scrape the earth with their claws. Some with unease, some with eagerness to dig deep into the flesh of their common enemy.
The leaders share murmurs as they strategise. Every now and then, one of them turns to their deputy and gives them instructions that are then hollered out for every clan cat to follow.
The medicine cats work frantically behind the frontlines, unpacking, counting and preparing the herbs and cobwebs that will soon be used on the wounded. Among them is a young tom with a silver pelt, who is storing a packet of laurel leaves inside the hollow of an oak tree.
And Goosefeather watches them all, blinking steadily as a horrifying memory sinks into obscurity. He will only be allowed to remember one thing:
A premonitory sense that none of those cats will survive that day.