A/N: Chapter twelve is officially finished. However, seeing as the original rough draft of this chapter exceeded twelve thousand words, I've split it (again) to lessen the reading length. Currently editing the next chapter as we speak! It will be up tomorrow.

Chapter 12, Part One: Oblivion: Part three

End

Gray.

The ashen forest was oppressively suffocating. Every last tree was completely hollowed with death, the empty logs of corroded bark left standing a bitter reminder of what had once been verdant woodland. Each pillar of timber looked as unstable and fragile as an eggshell, ready to crumble to pieces at the slightest inclination, yet they all somehow remained standing. The forest floor, too, had become impoverished. The soil had become barren and sterile, cold to the touch, while the grass had dried and shriveled into withered flakes.

The putrid, rotting stench of festering decay and carrion stung my nose and throat as I stood in repulsed silence at the grim, sickly bland and desolate wasteland the gray had wrought, extracting all remnants of life and color from the forest. The sky and its guardian glow of light had been obscured by an aphotic blanket of stark charcoal, drowning us all in a sea of darkness and making it impossible to tell whether it was dusk, dawn, or somewhere in between.

This was something that far out succeeded the faux illusions and artifice of a nightmare. Absolution was in the air. There was no other way I could describe it, but a sense of finality and death. It was immensely disconcerting to be faced with such a macabre reality, an offsetting chill that traveled from the tip of my nose, tickling my spine, to the base of my tail.

Was this the wrathful end of StarClan I had been clamoring for this entire time? This gray, this deteriorating sickness that leeched the life out of everything it came into contact with?

"Do you believe me now that this has to be stopped, Cloudstorm? We don't have time to waste. We must act now."

"And do what?" I demanded, whipping around to glower at Goldenshine. "Even if I was willing to help you, don't you see what's happened? This illness has probably already claimed half of StarClan by now. Do you really expect me to believe that this can be stopped?"

The instant I had opened my eyes I found myself in a distorted reality scarce of color and life. Subconsciously or maybe more so instinctively, my mind seemed to make peace with the idea that I had been sentenced to the deepest, vilest slums of the Dark Forest as punishment for my crimes against StarClan. I had been killed, right? So it would only make sense that my final resting place be in the darkest pits of the forsaken forest where I'd first plotted to destroy StarClan.

Then everything changed when my eyes zoned in on the glowing pelt of a familiar tom. If I thought he was a hallucination than those thoughts vanished when his brown irises locked onto my amber ones. My sight sharpened and I realized that he truly was here.

"Goldenshine?" I croaked groggily.

His face split into a grin and with fervor of emotion that wasn't customary of him, said warmly, "Welcome back."

Welcome back? What did he mean? Had I missed something here? Deciding I'd have an easier time of questioning Goldenshine from a standing position, I made to climb to my paws.

Ignoring a yowl of protest from Goldenshine not to be so hasty to get up, I struggled to my paws, grunting slightly from the exertion and soreness of my muscles straining. Before I could barely even get my paws set beneath me all the breath was systematically knocked out of my lungs as a blur of cream fur came barreling into my chest.

"You're back!" Amberheart's muffled cry sang into my fur. "It really worked, you're alive."

My fur spiked as a jolt of surprise rippled across my skin. Amberheart was here too? Then did that mean I was in StarClan? How was that still possible if I was dead, though? Surely I, of all cats, deserved the Dark Forest, right?

My confusion lasted for all of two seconds before I was overcome by a great wave of passion and pressed my muzzle against the top of her head, burying my nose into her fur and drinking in her sweet lavender scent while relishing in the feel of her body against mine. I wasn't sure how this was possible right now, but the warmth of her skin against mine was enough to tell me that she was real.

I never want this moment to end, I thought fiercely, feeling the rumble of her purr reverberate through my body, vibrating off of my bones.

My ears perked as I heard Goldenshine give a nervous cough. "Uh, Cloudstorm, I don't want to interrupt your tender reunion, but we need your help."

We?

I brought my gaze from Amberheart to stare at him. "What are you-" The words died in my throat as my eyes made contact with the toriseshell she-cat at his side. "Leafbreeze?" I couldn't believe it. "How?" I gaped in astonishment. My gaze wandered around the bleak clearing, my eyes widening wider as I saw Brightstar and the brown tabby that had confronted me early in the forest by her side.

I took a weary step back, my fur standing on end at the sudden appearance of all these cats, all these past adversaries. I looked to Amberheart for some source of understanding and reassurance before reeling back in shock at the dried blood crusting on her face.

"Who did this to you?" I demanded as my blood boiled at the sight of the long cut trailing down her face. "What's going on here?" I snarled at Brightstar. "What are you doing here?" I whipped my head towards Goldenshine. "Better yet, where is here? Somebody better start explaining things now and fast!"

"Is he always this mouthy?" Leafbreeze huffed to Goldenshine, looking mildly irritated.

Goldenshine shot an exasperated glance towards Leafbreeze, a tiered smile playing on his face before focusing his attention towards me. "I guess we'll start with what happened before we resurrected you."

I seemed to go deaf in one ear, tilting my head to side, looking at Goldenshine incredulously. "What?"

"Just listen," he placated. "We're not in a position to waste any more time."

Thanks in part to the efforts of Goldenshine and Leafbreeze; I had apparently been miraculously resurrected from the dead. I had actually been given a second chance at life. If that knowledge wasn't surreal enough to send my head reeling, it appeared that past enemies were now working together and the very existence of the Clans was now being threatened thanks to the surreptitious acts of Rosethorn's madness.

What seemed to only augment the dire of the situation was the startling knowledge that Rosethorn had used my blood to cause all of it.

Fault?

How was I supposed to feel about this? My blood, it was my blood that Rosethorn had used to sentence the Clans to death. My desire for vengeance had led her to choose me as the one suitable for the fuel needed to create the disease that had rotted StarClan from the inside out.

I couldn't begin to fathom the number of times I'd reiterated my want to personally be involved in the destruction of StarClan, but this escalated things beyond anything I could have ever imagined. Rosethorn wasn't stopping at just StarClan. No, she wanted everything gone, abolished from the earliest traces of history. And she'd managed to achieve all of this from the shadows, playing both sides of StarClan and the Dark Forest like the oblivious pawns we were.

Goldenshine had prattled on about how we had to combine our forces if there was any chance of reversing this degeneration, but seeing the effects of what had occurred during my death, however; I wasn't convinced there was a way to reverse this. What could we do? Honestly, what chance did we have of stopping this?

"So you're saying you're just going to sit here and do nothing?" Brightstar demanded, marching up into my face, petulant and determined.

A growl rumbled in the back of my throat as I narrowed my eyes to slits. "I'm saying I don't see any point in trying when it's clear nearly all of StarClan has already succumbed to this gray."

"Don't you understand that if StarClan falls the Clans will suffer a similar fate and be annihilated by the storm?" Brightstar snapped. "Why do you think we tried so hard to stop you and the Dark Forest? StarClan is the very foundation upon which the Clans depend and survive on. It's what keeps their reality in check and holds it stable. If it were to fall the world as the Clans know it will as well. Regardless of how you feel towards StarClan, there's a forest full of cats below who don't deserve to have their lives unjustly taken away."

I snorted contemptuously. "You're one to talk about unjustly taking lives away."

"As are you!" she shot back. "By my recollection innocent cats have died by your claws as well. How justified is that?"

I froze, momentarily stunned by the seething remark, feeling my heart lurch in surprise. I had killed innocent cats… I had personally taken the lives of others, and for what? Because I had been ordered by Icefrost to do so, was my mind's initial reply before I realized just how petty and hollow that sounded.

I averted my gaze from Brightstar to cast a sidelong glance at Leafbreeze. Why had I killed her? With how everything had turned out, what reason did I have to justify killing her, Buzzardflight or Berrypaw? My body seemed to sag low and heavy to the ground, weighed down morosely by the bitter realization that I had become just the thing that I had fought so hard and yowled to the heavens that I was not: a pawn.

What I thought was me doing what was needed to achieve my goal of one day getting a chance to sink my claws into the pelt of Brightstar was Rosethorn toying and playing with my mind and emotions, all the while in control of everything even when I believed I held power over her.

My heart gave a lurch as an image of Hawkgaze flashed across my eyes, and I suddenly felt ill. He had died for nothing. They had all died for nothing. The reality of those words echoed hollowly throughout my body.

"Stop it!" Amberheart implored, coming between the two of us. "Arguing isn't going to solve anything here. We need to work together and there's going to be any hope of saving everything."

Her words of teamwork fell on deaf ears though, as I swooned slightly on my paws, oblivious to everything around me except the suffocating weight of the truth behind the last couple moons of my life. Nothing, I couldn't wrap my mind around it. Nothing, nothing, nothing.

I stared dazedly at Leafbreeze, my mind caught in an overwhelming stupor of the truth. "Nothing," I squeezed out, catching her attention and making the others fall silent as I took an unsure step towards her. "Everything, it was all for nothing. Your death, it was all for nothing but death and more death."

Leafbreeze's eyes hardened, flaring with a steely type of coldness that seared my pelt with unbridled loathing and abhorrence that saw me as nothing more than a ghastly abomination undeserving of life. And she had done just that, I realized. She had given me life. Me, the very same cat that had spat, mocked, and ridiculed her, the monster that had killed her.

Why? It didn't make sense.

"Why did you do it?" I rasped, thirsty for the answer. "You died for nothing. I-" the words caught in my throat. "I killed you for a sinister truth that even I wasn't aware of. You can't get that back like I just have. You're not even a whole cat in death for what I did." I motioned towards the heart by her paws, noticing it for the first time. "So why?" I pressed imploringly. "Why would you help revive me, bring me back from the clutches of death? You have every right not to. I'm nothing more than a monster as you once called me. Why would you agree to give life to the same cat that took your own?"

I stared into her hate filled eyes broken and lost. I had nothing left to draw off of. No anger, no hatred to fuel my actions or fulfill my motives, no one to direct my blame at. I felt drained, more tiered and putout than I'd ever been in my life.

Goldenshine cast a timid, fleeting glance at Leafbreeze's stoic face, shifting uncomfortably on his paws at the building tension. He opened his mouth to possibly answer for her when Leafbreeze shot him a sharp glare, halting his words before they even managed to creep from the recesses of his throat. Even in death she still held that superior aura of a seasoned mentor over the lithe tom.

She turned back to meet my questioning stare, the hatred for me ever present in her amber eyes. "Don't mistake your resurrection for something other than what it was," she said tightly. "If it had been up to me you would've remained dead where you no longer be a threat towards anyone; but the others here, most importantly Goldenshine, thought that you deserved a chance to redeem yourself. And I still don't agree with his choice," she growled briskly, causing Goldenshine to wince. "Someone like you has too much sin to atone for. And no matter all the good deeds you could do from here on out wouldn't convince me otherwise that you're not the monster that you've made yourself out to be. And from what I've seen from you tonight, it looks like we can add coward to that list."

"Coward?" Amberheart gasped. "Leafbreeze that's not fair!"

Leafbreeze snorted derivesly. "Fair, you say? Was it fair that I had to die for some fabricated goal that's gone and blown up in your mate's face?" she sneered at Amberheart. "And yes, he is a coward. Now that the roles have been switched, he's lost his nerve to do anything about the mess he's helped cause." She shot a rueful glare my way. "What a pitiful excuse for a cat you've become, Cloudstorm. What happened to that arrogant tom that vehemently told me I was a brainwashed puppet and forced me into tricking my former leader into giving up all her lives? Where's that tom, huh, Cloudstorm? Where's the same cat that once uttered, 'don't worry though, Leafbreeze,'" she dropped her voice into a mocking tone, glaring at me spitefully. "It won't be all bad. In the end you'll see that everything I've done was for the benefit and bettering of the Clans and everyone else. I promise you that."

I flinched at the mocking rendition of my own words, dropping my head in shame. How quickly something I'd said with the utmost confidence could then be taken and thrown back in my face, augmenting my guilt and sense of worthlessness even more. I'd sat there and took Leafbreeze's relentless berating, deserving every last ounce of her hate speech. I had become the ultimate walking contradiction and there wasn't a thing I could say in my defense.

What a fool I'd been. Everything seemed so dark and empty now, like a dry canyon with a shadowed abyss for the bottom. I had helped sentence a forest of innocent cats to death, the same cats I'd claimed I was fighting for in the first place. I was everything that Leafbreeze had claimed me to be. A monster and a coward, hah, what an ironic combination I'd turned out to be.

"Cloudstorm," a firm voice spoke amicably.

I raised my heavy, downtrodden head to meet Goldenshine's fervor filled brown irises, glowing brightly in the dark. What did he want? Was he here to finish up his mentor's fire fueled assault against my near nonexistent hubris?

"I know how you feel," he spoke calmly. "The pain, the complete feeling of utter worthlessness and self-pity, I know it well. I know what you're thinking, the feeling and knowledge of knowing the part you've played in this destruction. I played my part just as you have and I regret everything I've done to help cause," he said, the soothing tone of his voice seeming to having some appeasing effect on me. "You could've stopped it that day, you know? The day when you had Rosethorn beneath your paws, powerless and helpless to do anything to stop you, you could've killed her then. You were going to kill then. But I," he chuckled bitterly, "No, I persuaded you not to, told you that she was necessary to our goals coming to fruition."

"That day I unknowingly sentenced the Clans to death and I regret it now more than you'll ever know. I regret ever allowing myself to fall into the Dark Forest's ploy. I'm not saying I agree with all their methods, but StarClan isn't deserving of this fate. Are there things that need to be changed? Absolutely, but if we're really expected to bring about that great change in StarClan, but more importantly in the forest, we need to start now by working together and stopping Rosethorn."

"Besides, you owe me," he joked, nudging me in the shoulder. "You said so yourself that somehow someway that you would repay me. Well I'm calling in on that favor now. Help me rectify our mistakes and stop this madness from engulfing us all."

Our gazes locked, his strong glowing brown one with my amber one as the intensity of his words traveled circles around my head. I tilted my head to the side, eyeing the golden tom and reveling in how much he'd grown in strength from that timid, stumbling tom of what felt like hundreds of moons ago. Where had this inner fire come from, the sudden courage to go out and save the world?

Goldenshine had come a long way, traveled and traversed a path darker than any other one of us and managed to find the light. If he had the heart to stare his own mistakes in the face and the inner strength to go out and try to fix them then couldn't I?

"You still have a chance to make things right!"

My ears rang with Hawkgaze's words and I in turn met and returned Goldenshine's vivacious gaze with my own, feeling a surge and wealth of energy suddenly course through my veins, igniting my spirit. No cat deserved to have their life striped away unfairly from them, the familiar words roared, echoing throughout my body. I didn't just sit back and watch Clan cats suffer. I was going to do something! I was going to help! I was going to take action!

I gave Goldenshine a brisk nod. "Let's do it."

"Well, I'm glad that's settled then," a cold voice washed over us, "Because the severity of our problems has just increased."

A spark of anger flared up in my body at the appearance of Icefrost, who had somehow managed to sneak up on us, before suddenly dying in that same instant.

"What- what's happening to you?" Goldenshine gasped, his eyes etched wide in horror.

I wasn't that far off from sharing his sentiments, staring at the appearance of the former gray and black stripped tom. No, he was gray; Icefrost had always been gray, but not at this degree, this sickly dead color. Starting at his paws and having traveled all the way up to his underbelly and the tips of his chest, Icefrost's body had been overshadowed by the grim lifelessness of the gray. It would only be a matter of time before it fully enveloped his body, and if the desolate trees around us were any indicator, he wasn't much longer for this afterlife.

The dark tom's blue eyes were smothered in pain as he stiffly padded closer to us, grunting gruffly as if each step weighed him down. "We don't have any more time to waste!" he snarled coarsely. "If we don't act now all the cats' resident of this realm will suffer the same fate as the forest!"

I and Goldenshine quickly checked our own bodies for traces of the gray disease, sighing in relief when we discovered we hadn't been affected. Was it possible that the gray's influence didn't reach to cats of the living? And then my ears rang with Icefrost's words of, 'Cats resident of this realm,' and my blood turned cold.

No. I was almost too petrified to look before slowly trailing my eyes over the other dead cats. It appeared Brightstar, Lionstar, and Leafbreeze had caught on quicker than I did as they all then glanced down in horror to see the early signs of the gray's influence having already overtaken their paws, slowly making its ascent up their forelegs. I noticed with a start that the gray had failed to claim Leafbreeze's heart though, it still residing by her paws, untouched and beating.

With a pang in my heart of not wanting my fears confirmed, I turned to Amberheart. I blanched as a tremor of dread rippled across my body, standing my fur on end, at the sight of the gray having claimed nearly half of Amberheart's body.

Her frightened eyes met my crestfallen ones and I knew then, now more than ever, that I had to stop this. I had lost her once. It would never happen again.

"I want you to go and round up the others cats and warn them about what's happening," I said quickly, turning to Brightstar. "StarClan and Dark Forest both."

"Dark Forest cats?" Brightstar said incredulously, beginning to argue. "Are you –"

"No, he's right," Lionstar cut her off. "No cat, no matter their past deeds or allegiance deserves a fate like this. We'll gather as many of them as we can get to believe us in the hollow and tell them what's currently happening. From there it's up to you, kit."

I nodded to him, turning back to Amberheart to speak softly, "I want you to go with them."

"What?" she began to protest. "Cloudstorm, no, I'm coming with you."

I shook my head, staring into her eyes to make her understand the dire of the situation. "I can't put you in that kind of danger. Well, no more than I've already caused upon you. Wait for me at the hollow and I'll be back soon."

"No!" she argued, stomping a paw angrily. "I won't let you go into anymore danger alone, especially not with him," she snarled towards Icefrost.

I licked her cheek reassuringly, whispering soothingly into her ear. "Don't worry; Goldenshine will be by my side. Between the two of us there's not much trouble Icefrost can cause."

Amberheart pressed against me, trembling. "What if something happens to you," she said morosely. "That she-cat is dangerous, Cloudstorm. What if she does something to you, what if-," her voice cracked. "I just got you back when I thought you gone. I couldn't bear the pain again if you were to…."

I pressed closer into her, closing my eyes and inhaling her scent one last time. "I promise I'll make it back," I swore to her. "And I'll fix this. Somehow someway, I'll save everyone."

Painfully, I pulled away from Amberheart, drinking in her beautiful image one last time before turning to Goldenshine.

"Are you ready?"

He gave a grim nod, eyes flashing with burning determination. I turned my attention towards Icefrost, resisting the urge to snarl at the dark tom. I hadn't forgotten that he was the reason that I had needed to be revived from the dead in the first place. For now though, we needed his help.

"Lead the way," I growled.

I thought it was physically impossible for the Dark Forest to look anymore sparse and bleak then it already was, but as we crossed through the fog barrier into the Place of No Stars, I was proven wrong. The gray's influence had already reached even here.

Death.

The air reeked of it, swallowing us up in a pungent, overpowering scent of decaying infestation that seeped into my fur. The gnarled trees that had once towered high above, obscuring the sky from view, had been eaten and eroded away, the only thing left in their place empty hollow husks. The ground was littered with the remnants of the tall grass, brittle pale stalks that disintegrated to dust at the slightest touch.

We stood upon a ravaged, cold, miserable looking land polluted by the smell of sickness, fear, and death with a near pitch blackness that seemed to echo hauntingly with the frightened mewl of kits and the tortured and dying wails of agonized cats as we stumbled around nearly blind through the forest.

"We'll this is where you earn your keep," I growled at Icefrost. "Lead us to Rosethorn."

"Certainly," the dark tom replied snidely, his fangs flashing in the dark. "However, it is excessively difficult to find someone when I don't first know where they're at." He turned to Goldenshine. "You're her ex-apprentice. Where is she?"

Goldenshine took a deep breath of the air and immediately recoiled back as if he'd been clawed in the face, wheezing and coughing. I came to his side, touching my nose to his flank and blinking in shock as I saw flecks of blood splattered across the ground.

"We can't stay here much longer," he wheezed painfully. "The air isn't safe for any of us to breathe for much longer."

This wasn't good. The environment had deteriorated to the point where now the air was hazardous to even us living cats.

"Do you know where Rosethorn is or not?" Icefrost demanded, ignoring Goldenshine's coughing fit and earning a glare from me. "Is it her thorn forest?"

The golden tom wheezed horribly, a rattling noise coming from his throat that I didn't like the sound of. "No, she's not there," Goldenshine coughed. "I know her too well by now. She'd want to be somewhere where she could enjoy the destruction of the Clans. The pool," he wheezed. "The dark pool, that's where she is."

Icefrost whipped around without another word, setting off in a romp headed north.

"Come on!" I nudged Goldenshine with my nose. "We lose sight of him and we're stranded here."

We followed closely behind Icefrost, tailing after his quickly fleeting form as he twist and turned over the ravaged, bog ridden forest, the ground sinking in at unexpected intervals as we traversed. The further in we seemed to draw, the viler and oppressive the air seemed to become.

I was starting to have trouble breathing. The pressure from the increasingly thicker climate was disrupting my ability to naturally draw in and out breaths. It was becoming a strenuous battle just to direct air in and out of my mouth, having quit earlier trying piteously to breathe out of my nose.

Goldenshine wasn't any better off. His once bright golden fur was now dull and listless, the rattling hiss of his breathing become worser by the second. The dying land had taken a more deleterious toll to his body than mine, but none more so than it had to Icefrost.

By now almost half of Icefrost's body had succumb to the gray. His gate had started to become agonizingly slower, almost as if he was trying to wade his way through mud. Although, he may have been his hardest to hide the pain from us, there was no way of shielding the pure tortured look of anguish in his eyes.

"How-how much farther?" I huffed, struggling to control my breathing.

Icefrost gritted his teeth, digging his pale paws deep into the ground as we trudged on. "We're getting close," he answered in a tight voice, his eyes not flickering from the path ahead.

A stab of frustration invaded my mind. "And how close is that? We're not in a position for you to be taking detours, you know."

Icefrost suddenly halted, whipping around to growl at me, mere inches from my face. "Listen here, and listen well," he snarled, his stale breath burning my nostrils. "I could care less about your little change of heart or what happens to your mate and StarClan. I'm only here for one cat, me. Whether you find a way to save everyone or not is of no concern to me. I'm here to kill that traitorous she-cat, nothing more. And if you get in my way at any point I won't hesitate to kill you a second time."

I unsheathed my claws, staring challengingly into his face. "I'd like to see you try it," I snarled. I had no qualms about taking Icefrost on now that I was fully able to move. He wouldn't be beating up on a defenseless cat this time. Icefrost returned the gesture, unsheathing his claws as well and I braced myself for battle.

"Quiet!" Goldenshine shouted, snapping the two of us out of our face off. "Do you feel that?"

"Feel what?" I asked. "What is it?"

Not answering, Goldenshine bent his head mere inches from the ground, eyes wide, listening intently. I couldn't tell what it was he was sensing, but the moment his head whipped up, eyes flashing in panic, I knew we were in deep trouble.

"She's on to us. She knows we're here!" Goldenshine shouted, before suddenly jumping back.

And just in time too as the ground split open and out came lashing a vine adorned with hooked thorns, whipping out to the spot he had only been moments ago.

"Move!" Icefrost ordered, avoiding a lashing vine that suddenly erupted from the ground. "This way!"

I sidestepped a cluster of vines snipping at my paws and fled after Icefrost, Goldenshine tailing closely behind me. As if someone had lit fire to the ground, the earth suddenly became ablaze with life as the long, brown tendrils of vines exploded from the earth, slashing and whipping at us from all sides and every possible angle.

"Did you honestly think it would be that easy?" a familiar voice cackled inside my head, as a wall of vines shot out of the ground to block the way.

The vines shot out, arcing through the air towards us. Out the corner of my eye I saw Goldenshine hesitate to move and had to shove him out the way just as a stray vine stabbed out to strike. I winced in pain as the vine struck out and cut me alongside the flank.

Icefrost bit down and ripped off a vine that had tried to slither and latch onto his paw, his blue eyes blazing pools of fury as he reared up on his hind legs, slashing at the tendrils. I jumped out of the way of a particular large, spearing vine equipped with gleaming thorns and pressed close to Goldenshine's side as we combined forces to bat it away.

There seemed to be no end to the onslaught frenzy, the engorged vines striking out like vipers and tearing through my flesh with their serrated thorns. From my side I heard a shriek of surprise from Goldenshine as his back legs were being ensnared by vines, pulling him down to the ground.

Blood pounding in my ears with ferment racing through my body, I lunged on top of the vines pinning Goldenshine and began to claw and tear into them.

"Leave him! He's only dead weight!" Icefrost snarled from over his shoulder, a tendril of vine hanging from his jaws. "He'll only get you killed. Again."

I ignored Icefrost's jeering, channeling my energy to continue battling the vines. I didn't care what he said. He was insane if he thought I'd actually leave Goldenshine behind. As far as I was concerned, Goldenshine was worth ten of him.

"He's right, you know?" Rosethorn's snide voice rang in my ears. "There's nothing stopping you from escaping the vines if you leave Goldenshine to embrace his demise. He's only hindering you."

"If you believe that then you've truly failed to glimpse the true potential of your own apprentice," I growled, slashing the last treads of vines from Goldenshine's legs and helping nudge him to his paws. "I'm coming for you, Rosethorn!" I growled vehemently into the empty air. "And there isn't a thing you can do or create an army of vines big enough to stop us."

"Is that so?" Rosethorn's voice mused crowingly.

The frenzy of vines suddenly halted. We stared in surprise at the hundreds of vines that lay frozen in mid-air. Then, as if being called back like a dog by its twoleg owner, the vines receded back into the earth, the splits in the ground sealing up behind them, vanishing evanescent, as if they'd never been there in the first place.

"I await your arrivals," Rosethorn's voice reverberated through the air. "Don't keep me waiting, boys."

The final words hung ominously in the air, percolating consternation into the very marrow of my bones. Goldenshine stood silent besides me, his face sharing a morose expression. He knew just as well as I did of what awaited us.

Icefrost reached in between his claws and spat out the lingering residue of a piece of vine that had been lodge there, his fur sparking in disconcert. Even Icefrost, the dark tom himself, couldn't hide the unease that rippled across his pelt at the subliminal taunt of Rosethorn's invitation.

If she was so willing to call off her vines and allow us to proceed, what real chance did we have of actually succeeding? Was there the glaring possibility that she knew we were here on a fool's errand, and knew there was no way of reversing the effects of the gray?

"Well, we've come this far," Goldenshine spoke up, seeming to sense the inner discord brewing within me. "We might as well see it through to the end."

I nodded once, trying to share in his stray spark of encouragement. "Right."

Icefrost snorted derisively, eyeing me and Goldenshine with unconcealed contempt. "For two cats still of the living, you'd best take heed of a cat who's had several hundred moons of idle time observing the world as it passes by," he said darkly. "Those are the final words of a cat walking to their death."