'As the seasons change
Remember how I used to be.'

'Sound the Bugle' - Bryan Adams

¢нαρтєя ƒσяту: тнє ƒσυятн ∂єƒєαт

"You couldn't have whipped out that lightshow earlier? Would've come in handy against the last three," Arrow sniffed.

Icepetal jerked her head to glare at him, only to pause, mouth half-open with a stinging retort on the tip of her tongue. "You're all alive."

"Of course we are! I'm insulted at how little you believed in us," Lathai laughed, then winced. She leaned heavily on one side. Beside her, helping Arrow to his paws, was Tornheart, or at least Icepetal thought it was Tornheart. The oath-taker looked lucky to be even walking, so wounded and bloodied, her pelt hung in tatters. Most of the old scars on her face had been reopened. Yet Arrow still looked at her as if all the stars in the sky glittered in her eyes.

"It was tough though," Tornheart nosed Arrow's fur aside, peering at his injuries.

"I'm not trained to fight in wars," Lathai complained.

Arrow snorted, "There's only so much training can prepare you for. War is another thing entirely. If I never have to fight in another one I'll be happy."

"Did we win?" Icepetal stretched out in the mud, resting her weary muscles. There was still fighting going on around them but for now they had a respite, a little time to regain some of the energy they'd lost. She didn't know how she was going to get back on her paws and fight again. Death had been whiskers away just moments ago; she could still feel its breath on her heels. She shivered, looking at Frozengaze's body out of the corner of her eye. That could have been her.

She tumbled back to reality, snapping to attention, "where's Eaglestrike? Where's Rainpatch? Where are they!?" she interrupted Lathai's extravagant tale. "Where are the others?"

"That's why we're here, Icepetal. We can't find them, and you, the Chosen, need to go after Crimson and kill her," Tornheart said.

"Wait, Crimson isn't dead? How are you alive if she isn't dead?"

"She ran off, I don't think she could quite handle the reality that she was losing. Her magic was weakening, her body was weakening. She's not strong enough to put up much of a fight," she answered. "I think she's heading back to her mountain."

Icepetal rubbed at her muzzle with a forepaw. "We need to find Rainpatch and Eaglestrike. I can't beat Crimson without them. She'll kill me."

"But you heard Tornheart, she's weak," Lathai yawned.

"I'd like to see you fight her with this," Icepetal growled, rolling to reveal the old scar that started at the lowest point of her shoulder, ran across her rib cage, and ended near her pelvis. It wasn't just an old scar anymore, not with blood pulsing out of it with each thump of her heart. She couldn't remember when it had been reopened, maybe Frozengaze had caught it with a claw, but she'd bleed to death before reaching the mountain if something wasn't done. "Can you heal it, Tornheart?"

The black-furred cat looked uncertain. "There's not much left, I used so much of it creating the storm and the fire. I-I don't know if I have enough to fix you, I'm so sorry. Why did I use so much? I knew I'd have to heal someone!"

"Stop!" Arrow nipped at her shoulder, "take a deep breath. Relax. You are the most amazing cat I know with the most incredible power. If anyone can save Icepetal, it's you."

"Okay, okay, I'll do what I can." She placed her paws directly over the worst part of the wound ignoring the blood seeping over her fur. "Talk to me, Icepetal. Distract me, talk about anything, just make sure I'm concentrating on you only."

Icepetal blinked, "oh, I, uh, what do I talk about?"

"Tell her who you fought, about the battle," Lathai supplied, "I want to hear what you did too!"

"Ah, right, of course. Well we were going to stick with the original plan, wait in the city till a runner came to us or Crimson's soldiers ran into us, but then we saw that pillar of fire, and the ground started to shake. Arrow recognised your magic, Tornheart, and we figured out that the red monster had something to do with Crimson's magic. I knew Frozengaze was never far from her side, and if you were fighting Crimson you wouldn't be able to fight him as well," Icepetal flinched. Was it normal for the healing to hurt?

"We had to make sure Frozengaze was too busy to attack you, so Arrow and I went looking for him, not that it was easy locating him. Do you know how huge this battle is? There were far too many soldiers all wanting to take a chunk out of us. Crimson's bone soldiers found us, all three of them at once. Terrible luck," she purred weakly. "Arrow saved my life, killed Nocture before he could slit my throat."

"Frozengaze killed Shatteredlight right in front of us, just tore her throat apart like she was some piece of prey. She was supposed to go home, Tornheart, she was supposed to see her family again and tell them about all the things she'd been doing for them. I nearly died trying to kill him, he nearly killed me, and all I could think about was how I'd let Willowclaw down. He's so far away, stuck in a tribe that are just using him, waiting for us to go get him. What if we all die? What if Eaglestrike and Rainpatch are already dead and I have to face Crimson myself? Littleflame's already gone."

"I love all of them and I don't know if I'll ever see them again."

Tornheart pressed her face against Icepetal's, "Let's go find our family."

"Am I going to die if I get up?"

"No, you're not bleeding to death anymore."

Lathai snarled and dragged a soldier that had drawn far too close to the ground, snapping its neck with a quick jerk. Two more chased after their fallen comrade, only to meet similar fates. She moved quickly, fluidly, cracking skulls and pulling out organs. "We need to go," she said around the scruff of a young tom, "before we get overrun."

"If Crimson's abandoned the war then why are her soldiers still fighting?" Arrow inquired as they ran, leaping agilely over a pile of corpses.

"They'd dropped dead if she commanded. She probably told them to fight till the last drop of their blood hit the ground, so that's what they'll do," Tornheart supplied with a light shrug.

"You've got to admit," Lathai smiled, "having an army of mindless killers would certainly come in handy. Can you imagine how easily we would have one if we'd had the army?"

Icepetal used her momentum to bowl over an unsuspecting soldier, slitting its throat as they rolled, finding her footing after a little slip to continue forwards. "We could have stayed in the city and watched from the rooftops," she mused.

A particularly loud yowl sounded from just over a slight rise and Lathai's posture went rigid, ears flattening against her skull. "I know that voice," she swerved in its direction. "It's Titan's."

The city boss was struggling, surrounded by soldiers that weren't letting up. He turned on his heel, slashing up and down, claws gliding through the skin on a soldier's chest, biting down on the back of another's neck as he did. Perhaps he'd aimed to produce a killing bite, but the ambitious move was avoided when a clumsy tortie fell, knocking the soldier from Titan's grip. His face twisted into a grimace of pain, spine twisting awkwardly at the momentum his quarry produced by suddenly disappearing out from under him. Slamming into the ground, the soldier nipped at Titan's paws, and the city boss snarled down at him, rearing up and bringing the entirety of his weight down on the soldier's head. It gave way with a sickening crack.

Above them the sky was torn apart by a vicious streak of lightning powering across the burning clouds, striking at the ground somewhere in the forest. It had split a line through the gray clouds and the stars shone through, oddly bright for a brief moment, until they dimmed to a fragile spark in an endless infinity of nothing. The storm was breaking up, literally breaking up, torn to pieces by the amount of raw power thrumming through it.

Titan ducked low and drove his shoulder into the belly of a soldier rising up on her hind-legs, forelegs arching down towards his head. She went down in a flurry of limbs, only to be saved by her comrades' moments later when they dragged Titan, yowling, off of her. There was blood pouring from her neck, but she wasn't dead, weakened, but not dead. Rolling, Titan flung himself out of the grip of the soldiers, dragging two down into the mud with him. He flung a pawful of it into one of their faces and finally finished a killing bite on the back of its neck, plunging his teeth in deep and then closing his jaw till a snap was heard. The soldier went limp.

The soldiers appeared to have gotten together something that resembled a plan of attack. Two were slinking towards Titan's haunches, the other three keeping him busy at the front. When Titan lifted a hind-leg off the ground a soldier tore forwards and yanked his other one out from under him, sending him hurtling to the ground. Another leapt onto his back keeping him from getting up. The teeth of another sunk into his scruff and throttled his head against the ground, bashing it into the thick mud. There was another wrenching at his tail, and another just watching. He had a cruel air about him, murky blue eyes alight with pleasure, and his grin grew every time Titan let out a noise of pain. He flicked the soldier bludgeoning Titan's head on the shoulder and it stopped, lifting up Titan's head so that his neck was exposed. Sharp claws glinted in the light of the fire.

Icepetal knew exactly what was going to happen. She'd seen it done by the tribe-cats, an execution style killing – a way of making their prey look pathetic and weak before killing them. Rendering them immovable, forcing them to watch their death as it neared their throat. There was no better way to kill a city boss than that. How many of his loyal followers were lurking in the shadows or watching dying in pools of their own insides? How many of them would see their precious leader paralysed under the claws of the cats he'd vowed to kill?

Beside her sounded a cry of utter distress and Icepetal watched in utter disbelief as Lathai threw herself between the soldier with the cruel eyes and her father, just as the blow fell. In the slow heartbeats that followed it was like the beginning of the war, Titan releasing a throaty roar of hatred and promise, plunging tooth and claw into the soldiers that had threatened his life. They fell like leaves in leaf-fall, but not lazily in a slight chilly breeze. No, they fell violently, in a mess of blood and guts, dropping tattered and destroyed. They coloured the mud around them red.

But when Icepetal blinked she realised that Titan had not even moved. He still remained hunched over, chest heaving, body shaking. Illuminated by a powerful flash of green, Apollo stood over the remains of the soldiers, water streaming down her muzzle, face twisted into a look of pure horror, sides rising and falling in quick succession.

"Lathai! Lathai!" Titan sounded broken as he howled the name of the she-cat to the uncaring stars above. "Come on, don't do this to me, just get up, we can go home, your real home. You don't have to stay with Miraz anymore, I promise. Please, please! I-I promised your mother...I promised her I'd keep you safe. Don't leave me alone."

Slack jawed Apollo fell into the mud beside Lathai, nosing gently at the pretty she-cat's fur. There was something akin to devastation seeping into Apollo's expression as the words she whispered her friend's fur went unheard.

"You were supposed to protect her! That was your job! That has always been your job, ever since you stepped into my city. I assigned you to be her protector, her friend, someone she could trust with her life and look where it got her! Why was she here!? Why did you let her fight?!" Titan screamed at Apollo.

The assassin responded numbly, "she told me she was strong enough. I believed her. I believed that she could do this. She promised me she'd come back. She promised, Titan. When has she ever broken a promise? Please don't blame me for this."

"Don't blame you!? Why wouldn't I blame you? You're responsible. A war like this is no place for my daughter, my sweet, sweet daughter." Titan cradled Lathai's head under his chin, breathing in her scent before it was replaced with the stench of death. "Every cat breaks promises. They don't deserve to die for them." He sounded completely, utterly, broken.

"I'm sorry," Apollo mumbled, scrambling to her paws and backing away from them, "I should have never left her side. I should be the one lying there. I should be the one dead. Lathai shouldn't be dead. None of this should be happening!" her expression turned icy cold, "you started this war, Titan! I didn't want anything to do with it and neither did she but you dragged us into it and look what's happened because of it! It's your fault just as much as it is mine. Your war killed your daughter." She turned to escape, to flee into the darkness.

"Wait! Apollo, wait!" Icepetal called, "where's Eaglestrike?"

The look on her face when she turned did not look promising. It was a terrifying mix of apprehension, uncertainty, and grief. "How should I know?" her voice cracked and wavered. "He hates me now. There's nothing left on this battlefield for me anymore."

"You're leaving...? Where are you going to go!? We're your family," the SnowClanner pleaded.

"We aren't family, Icepetal. I'm just the lying, deceiving, coward that joined you to kill you all. You don't want me in your family."

Icepetal looked down at the ground, "why didn't you kill us? What stopped you?"

"I fell in love with him, and with how you all lived. I fell in love with your family knowing that I could never be a part of it," Apollo smiled sadly. "Say goodbye to him for me."

"Where will you go? What will you do?"

"I'll do what I did to get here," the assassin raised her head to peer at the sky, "I'll chase the sun."

"Tornheart!" Arrow's cry of concern dragged Icepetal's attention away from Apollo. The oath-taker was falling to her knees, mouth opened in a silent wail. A drop of blood rolled down her cheek, splashing into the mud. She clawed at the ground, eyes open and full of pain. "What's happening!?"

"We have to go," Tornheart wheezed, drawing in long breaths of air. She'd stopped quivering but her eyes were blank. When she looked at Icepetal a spider made of fear skittered up her spine. "I...the bond...one of them is hurt. Really hurt."

It felt like the entire world had been yanked out from under Icepetal's paws. "Where are they? Do you know where they are?" she pressed.

"Just over there," Tornheart jerked her head in the direction they'd been heading, using Arrow's shoulder to clamber back to her paws.

They ran and ran and ran not knowing what they would find when they stopped. All Icepetal could see was one of them broken and bleeding, dying alone so far from home. She had to get to them, she had to reach them, and she had to tell them how much they meant to her. They couldn't die; they couldn't leave her to do this alone. They couldn't leave the fate of the world in her injured paws. Icepetal the half-Clan exile was not supposed to save the world.

"No!" the cry rang out over the battlefield but she couldn't tell whose voice it was, so cracked and weary and hoarse.

The smoke parted. Foxleaps away was a pile of reddish fur melding with blue. She was too far away to see who it was that was injured or if even both of them were injured. Choked, throat refusing to allow words past, Icepetal stumbled through the mud, refusing to acknowledge the wetness beneath her eyes.

One of them raised their heads and screamed to the sky, "Rainpatch!", and Icepetal's heart shattered into hundreds and thousands of tiny pieces, scattered all over the world, thrown to the wind. An ugly sob ripped its way through her throat.

The world was cruel. But Crimson was crueller.

"Eaglestrike," she whimpered and the tom whipped his head around, eyes a hurricane of so much pain. "Eaglestrike, he's not...he can't be, tell me he's not." He only shifted to the side.

She didn't know what it was, a stick or a branch or a fencepost, she didn't know and she didn't really care for the details. The only thing mattered was that it was impaled through Rainpatch's stomach, straight through with morbid preciseness. Right through his stomach. All the way through. In one end, out the other. Glistening with his blood, wearing it like a trophy. His mouth was open perhaps in a final scream of pain that no one heard. He'd been left to die in excruciating pain all alone, and that was what hurt Icepetal the most.

"Tornheart can fix him. Tornheart can bring him back, she'll save him, you'll save him," she thrust her muzzle into Tornheart's face.

"I...I can't. There's nothing left for me to use, Icepetal. It's all gone, the last used to save you. I'm sorry." There were unshed tears filling up those green eyes, dimming them, chasing the cheerful light from them. Searching her face, that face mangled by enemy claws, Icepetal found nothing but truth.

She dropped to the ground in a pile, burying her face in Rainpatch's neck fur; his body was cold. Death had been and gone, it had taken any warmth from the tom's body long before anyone could mourn him. She cried. She wailed. She screamed. She begged for him to come back. She told him how much he meant to her. She said so many things to ears that would never hear them, and it killed her.

The storm gave way with an almighty roar of thunder, clouds vanishing. Behind them unfurled all those dead stars, ones that had once shone with promise now shone with coldness. They had fought all night – from dusk till dawn.

It was dawn and there was no sun to herald it.

'I'm a soldier wounded so I must give up the fight
There's nothing more for me
Lead me away
Or leave me lying here.'