I'd say we're getting closer and closer to the end here, if I wasn't winging this whole fic. I've been thinking of adding in some shorts of future events (AVoS and maybe TBC) after this fic wraps up story wise. Of course these shorts would be an alternate timeline because I've got ideas for a sequel that I'm probably not going to write haha
But anyway people wanted to know how Starclan was reacting to everything and I knew how big a plot hole I left when Starclan went and left immediately after the battle. Soooo here you go!
To the anon who keeps asking me if this story is complete... it's clearly not complete. Please stop spamming anon reviews asking when it's going to be completed. Asking me to complete something or to continue something really grinds my gears. Ignite will be completed when I say so and not before then.
Also there's a surprise at the end of the chapter. :D :D :D
Reviews are appreciated!
"Why aren't we down there doing something about this?!"
"Doing what exactly? You're going to go down there, when one, it isn't allowed, and two, do what? Anger whatever Firestar has become?"
"Dragon, he's a dragon," Leafpool meowed weakly, wondering if it was worth trying to raise her voice over the crowd.
"We're Starclan! Why aren't we protecting the clans from that thing! You all heard what he said! He's going to kill them all!" someone wailed, coming from where the Windclan cats of Starclan were congregated.
She hadn't even been here for that long and everything around the former Thunderclan medicine cat was falling apart.
When the battle was over, Starclan had quietly picked up the spirits of the warriors, apprentices, queens, elders and kits alike who had fallen to the claws of the cats of the Dark Forest. There hadn't been a grand farewell, or a moment to share with their loved ones before they departed to Starclan. They all had been rushed to the stars, leaving their clans in disarray.
It wasn't fair. She hadn't begun to make it up to her kits, especially Hollyleaf, after all the pain her secrets and lies had caused her. She had never thanked Squirrelflight, her dear sister, for everything- for keeping the secret, for risking it all for her. She never apologized to Bramblestar, not even at his nine lives ceremony, for tricking him into believing her kits were his.
But most importantly, she didn't get to give her father a real goodbye, and left him with a fractured heart to remember her by. The stone had taken advantage of her death and corrupted Firestar's form into something monstrous. But she knew her father. She was confident that he wouldn't hurt anyone, not even as a dragon. She tried convincing cats of that, because even after listening to his heartbroken roars from Starclan, he hadn't done anything but watch over Thunderclan.
That was until he threatened the other clans. Firestar and his transformation hadn't gone over well within Starclan's ranks, but was treated with wariness at best from the majority of cats and outright hostility at worst from the small minority. Now his words had sent Starclan into a panic, and she couldn't tell who was genuinely fearful of the clan's futures and who was trying to stoke the flames of hatred against him.
She wished she could do something for him from Starclan. Surely as a Starclan cat, she had the power to make his life a little more comfortable than watching him keep still and quiet above the Thunderclan camp?
"Enough!" Tallstar yowled out. The cats around him abruptly shut their mouths in shock. Tallstar was never one to raise his voice or get truly angry. He had been filled with a lot of anger in his youth, but he had mellowed out significantly once he became the leader of Windclan. It took a lot to get him angry, almost like Firestar himself.
If you got either Tallstar or Firestar angry at you, then you probably either: deserved it, or really messed up somewhere.
Tallstar sucked in a deep breath, trying to calm himself down. "Ever since that stone implanted itself into Firestar and changed him, all I've heard from many of you are your scared little mews and your angry growls that he'll destroy the clans. What exactly has he done so far that screams 'clan destroyer'?" he growled.
"Didn't you hear what he said?! He said that he would kill everyone just now!" someone yowled, though Leafpool didn't know who.
Tallstar rolled his eyes. "No, he said that no one will have anything to fear from him as long as everyone sticks to their side of the border. Are you all so ancient that you've become hard of hearing, even in Starclan?" Leafpool glanced over at the Starclan cats Tallstar was growling at, and thought that they did look a little faded. "Do I have to go down into Onestar's dreams and personally tell him not to pull any hare-brained plans like last time? Because I will if no one else will do it! I'll tell him that if he does anything like last time, he will be the catalyst that ends up destroying the clans, not Firestar! Is that what you want me to do?" he snarled.
"Well personally, I'd love to know who was the mouse-brain that sent that vision of Firestar destroying the lake to the medicine cats," Yellowfang remarked, sitting a few tail-lengths from Leafpool. The tabby suddenly scowled, the thought of these cats believing that Firestar of all beings destroying everything and killing everyone disgusting her.
"What about when he burned Thunderclan's territory to the ground? Thunderclan still hasn't recovered from this!" someone yelled out from where, shockingly enough, the Thunderclan cats were sitting. She thought the Thunderclan cats of Starclan stood behind Firestar.
But no, there was dark brown, broad-shouldered tom with amber eyes(almost the same shade of amber that Tigerstar and Bramblestar possessed, she noted) glaring into the crowd.
"You mean that time when Onestar ordered his warriors to threaten Sandstorm and in turn trigger Firestar into his feral state? Seems more like it was in self-defense to me," Yellowfang snorted.
The tom opened his mouth again, only to have a tail shoved into it. "Speak carefully Oakstar. You weren't a popular tom when you first joined Starclan, and you're certainly not one now," Sunstar hissed.
"What did he do?" she heard Cinderpelt whisper to Yellowfang.
"Exiled Mapleshade and her moon-old kits because they were the result of yet another half-clan romance. Apparently the father some moons before had killed one of Oakstar's sons and Oakstar himself was extremely resentful of Riverclan ever since. But his actions caused her kits to die and he hasn't apologized for it since," Yellowfang grumbled. A shiver went up Leafpool's spine at the mention of the Dark Forest she-cat who had dragged her around like a piece of prey before Tigerstar slashed her throat open. She wanted to feel bad for her but...
"I for one, am sick of this conversation already," a commanding voice sounded over the crowd of cats. Everyone turned and dipped their heads at the four cats and moved out of the way as they made their way to the middle of the throng. The largest of the four, the ginger tom with white paws cleared his throat. "As of now, Firestar hasn't done anything to warrant being chased out, punished or otherwise, and frankly, I'm sick of hearing all the fox-dung being spoken about one of my best successors. If he shows any signs of wanting to kill or if he acts in such a manner, it will be dealt with then, not now when he's clearly trying his hardest not to step on anyone," he meowed.
"Not that you all can decide on what he is anyway," the black she-cat spoke up. "First he's too powerful, then he's an imposter, then we need him again to fulfill the prophecy, but now he's a monster that needs to be dealt with? Make up your minds," she growled.
"All of you- out of here! Go do something, go hunt, do something besides moan about Firestar please," the silver furred tom said. "And you," he turned to the last cat. "Control your clanmates. Please." The brown tabby she-cat flattened her ears, embarrassed by his words and by the actions of her clanmates.
A nudge to her side broke her attention away from the founders. "Come on, let's get out of here. All this negative talk is making me nauseous," Cinderpelt joked. She let her former mentor nudge her up to her paws, and then they got away from the now dispersing crowd of cats. "Why don't we hunt a little? I've gotten ever better at it since I made it up here," she suggested cheerfully, a skip in her step. Her leg, once stiff and ruined from her injury, was now healed and as healthy as the rest of her body. Apparently she had been stuck within Cinderheart until the she-cat decided that she was the master of her own destiny, not Cinderpelt, not Starclan, not anyone. Cinderpelt had only recently made it to Starclan, just days before Leafpool herself joined.
"Leafpool, you're spacing out again."
"I want to visit him," she blurted out. Cinderpelt abruptly stopped, sighing. "The message I gave Bramblestar wasn't enough. He's still angry and distraught over me. I can't let him stew over it or there's a chance he really will destroy something," she explained.
"I know Leafpool. I get it, I really do. But no Starclan cat has been able to enter his dreams for a while, not since Starclan attempted to bring him back after he was chased out." They both knew what happened to Bluestar. The blue she-cat was still recovering from her coma and from all the burns she sustained. She hadn't even been able to make it to the Dark Forest battle.
"It's the stone, isn't it?" she sighed dejectedly.
Cinderpelt nodded. "It's been blocking any and all attempts at us contacting him. It's like it's trying to turn Firestar against Starclan or something."
Leafpool's ears flicked up as an idea formed in her mind.
"What if I ask the stone?"
Cinderpelt blinked. "What?"
"What if I ask it? If I can talk to Father? It knows that Firestar loves me. Surely it wouldn't block one of his hatchlings-" stars, it sounded weird coming from her- "from trying to console him in what surely is a confusing time for him?"
Cinderpelt didn't say anything for a few heartbeats. "How?"
Leafpool titled her head, quietly asking Cinderpelt to elaborate.
"Bluestar has been the only one to connect with the stone, and she doesn't even know how she did it. How exactly are you going to connect with the stone?"
She flicked her tail, a determined gleam in her eyes. "I don't know. But I have to try something," she declared.
Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls:
We got FANART.
Unfortunately fanfiction hates links, so those reading this on fanfiction, please go to my A03 and see the fanart there! I literally have the same account name there, so ya'll have literally no excuse not to check it out.
This was made by the amazing Sworishina who also helped me brush up some of the Japanese in the chapters with Hanako and Hisako in them. Thanks a bunch for that!
"But- but- Skyclan! This Firestar only has one set of wings, the tail is wrong and where is the stone in his chest?" you may ask. This is an artistic rendition of how Sworishina perceives Dragon!Firestar. Everyone perceives characters differently, and that's fine. Some people perceive Firestar as a Somali and others see him as an Abyssinian. Some see him with dark ginger fur and others with bright orange.
For instance, I will never perceive Firestar as being smaller than Sandstorm. Sorry if that hurts your headcanons.
I almost added in a part where someone tells Tallstar that he's only on Firestar's side because of Jake but I just didn't know where to shoehorn that in. (I also almost threw Jake in there entirely, because why wouldn't Tallstar tell Jake about what's happening with his son?)
Tell me how I did.