Chapter 17, Otherworld

Shadowflight hit hard when she smashed onto the ground, but not as hard as Rockpool. She looked up, and saw the star flecked sky, and white snow swirling down on her.

She scrambled to her feet, and was met by a very odd sight.

Instead of a sharp mountain peak, there was a large stretch of flat land, all buried in snow. A large, flat grey boulder sat in the snow. But on top of it…

Nightwind was suspended in the air above the boulder, her feet a few inches from the grey surface. She wasn't moving, and her eyes were half closed. She looked as though she was standing calmly on the ground, but she was floating…

But she was surrounded in a ball of eerie, bright green light that was swirling around and around.

Demon sat a few feet away from the boulder and Nightwind. Bits and pieces of metal and wires surrounded his front paws. He had a long wire stuck into the green light, then attached to a piece of metal that was by his paw. He pressed his paw to it.

And few feet ahead of him, and right where the flat land ended and sloped steeply down, was a bright golden-orange light. Everytime he pressed his paw to the wire and metal, this light flashed.

And then the porcupine jammed his paws onto the metal and wire, and held it like that, his yellow eyes closed. The golden light grey brighter and it roared with sound. Demon pulled back, as a huge golden-orange fire danced around, down far below where the bottom of this mountain met the next one.

But the fire that started way down there came all the way up here, and huge flames leaped around.

Then Demon leaped foreword a last time, and jammed his whole body onto the wire. There was a crackling, and Shadowflight looked up to see huge lights flowing across the night skies. Reds, yellows, greens, blues! It danced together in three long, thick ribbons. (AN: the Aurora, and I'll explain why later.)

Demon looked up at the colors for a second, them back at the golden fire. There was a sound of exploding, and a foot thick, bright, very long pathway started a few feet away from where the flat place ended, and stretched on for what seemed like eternity. It was a deep, bright gold, and it was very clean. The snow would come swirling down, but couldn't touch it.

And the golden fire still raged below. Occasionally, a flame would leap up and lick at the bridge, then fall back.

Demon staggered away from the piece of metal and wire. The colors in the sky still danced. Then without warning, the porcupine shouted, "I did it!"

Then he turned around.

"Shadowflight!" he whispered, his eyes were wide with wild insanity. "You came. I knew you would. Your friends…they took the other way. The wrong way." He paced foreword slowly, unsteadily, as if he had forgotten how to walk. "I did it!" he shouted again, tilting his head to the colors that swirled in the sky. He looked back at Shadowflight, his face illuminated by the eerie green light swirling around Nightwind.

His eyes were brimmed with tears of pure ambition and victory. He looked back at the fire and the pathway, then back to Shadowflight.

"What did you do?" she whispered.

"I…," the porcupine smiled viciously. "I opened up the Otherworld." He looked at the glowing gold path. "Forever, since when my mother told me of a world where all was perfect, I have wanted to open this world and go into it. I have done it. I knew how, it is the pure ambition of all my kind to open it up and go into it. Nobody has done it before. I have! Nobody wants to make a guard tunnel, then put a cat in the green light…and where can a porcupine get metal? But I could do it! YES! YES! YES!" he shrieked the end, until his voice got cracked and hoarse.

"Shadowflight…" he whispered suddenly, grabbing her and pulling her an inch from his face. "Come with me. We could be happy." His eyes glittered with ambitious greed. "I love you. We'd be happy!"

Shadowflight wrenched herself out of his strong claws. "No," she said, "I can't let you go in there. There are probably already inhabitants in that world. You would be a mystery. A terror!"

"There are inhabitants," he whispered, "And I would have to be a terror! But I must go there! Come with me, Shadowflight!"

"NO!" she screamed. She stepped over to the path, and blocked it from the porcupine.

"I can't let you in," Shadowflight said.

He let out a scream of pure fury, and leaped at her, much faster then Shadowflight had seen. He was acting like a cat, a agile cat, not a heavy, slow porcupine.

He stopped a few inches away, his tail raised. "Move…" he whispered, "Move now or I'm going to hit you."

"I've been hit before," Shadowflight rasped, crouching at the beginning of the pathway.

And the tail came smashing down, and then there was pain, pain, pain…

Another world… dodges crowfood I know this doesn't seem like warriors anymore, and the next book is going to be so different from warriors that... I'm not going to tell you what happens though! Demon is such a weird character. I started writing about him, intending him to be the one who makes Shadowflight and Rockpool fight. But he's become a villain! This stuff I'm writing about comes from my crazy imagination…I'm printing out my stories and sending them to my friend, and I drew a picture of Demon trying to make the path appear. It's so good! He looks like a real porcupine. I guess I'm a pretty good artist…I know how to make the cat's hind legs look right…and they're body shapes…Review, my fine…erm…reviewers!