Chapter 3

Dawn was breaking by the time Twilight came to. Immediately last night's events came crashing down on her like boulders; Sky dead, her home destroyed, BloodClan.

Twilight let out a dry sob. Her grief was almost unbearable, the city itself seemed different. Her friend, dead, gone, just like that.

In a split second she made her decision. She was leaving the city, she could not stay here, there were too many bad memories. Even death would be better than this. At least she would be with Sky, wherever she was now.

She ran; there was nothing else to do but run. Her only goal was to put as much distance between Titan and BloodClan as she could. Past her old den in the park, past buildings and startled humans, across a small Thunderpath surrounded by human nests, until finally she came to the outer limits.

Twilight slowed to a walk, her breath coming in heavy ragged gasps and rising in clouds. She could just see the BloodClan sentry ahead; it was Needle, a gray tabby tom with jagged stripes and two thin fangs. Luckily, she had only ever heard of him; he had never seen her. She had been formulating her plan as she ran, and was sure it would work.

She stepped out from behind the snow covered bushes. Immediately Needle spun around and unsheathed his claws.

"Under Titan's command you go no further!" he spat at her, showing his lethal fangs.

Twilight narrowed her eyes as if in contempt, while underneath she was shaking with fear. "I am here under Titan's command. He needs you and I am to fill your post while you are gone."

Needle blinked in shock, but recovered quickly and snarled, "I've never seen you before. What's your name?"

"Scrape," Twilight said hastily, hoping no other cat was named that. Needle seemed convinced.

His next words made Twilight's blood run cold. "Under Titan's code, you need to answer a personal question about BloodClan for me to make sure you are telling the truth."

"Go ahead," Twilight gulped, fighting to keep her voice calm. Everything seemed to press in on her, the leaves of the trees, the boulders near them, and even the sky and air. Twilight was finding it hard to breathe.

"Name a disciple of Whip."

Twilight almost fainted with relief. No cat other than BloodClan knew the names of the disciples, for they were kept under constant surveillance and were never revealed until they gained fighter status. But she did know one of them.

"Steele," she answered. Needle nodded once, let her take his position, and sped off toward the city.

Twilight did a quick go-around to make sure no other cat was in sight, then sped off toward the trees and fields.

She did not care where she ended up, she just needed to find a place where BloodClan couldn't find her. After passing a secluded area of skeletal oak trees, she came to a huge Thunderpath.

So many snarling monsters raced by on it all she could see was a blur of color. Twilight quickly decided she was not going to cross it, distanced herself a fair bit away, and begin to walk level with it.

She came across a very big human nest with many monsters crouched by it; she had to cross a small Thunderpath to get by. On her way, she passed what might have been a large ravine at one time.

She stopped without meaning to do so. The ravine had a small creek of water in it because a large metal pipe emerging from the human nest had been dripping water into it. Other than that there was just brown earth, a rotting tree trunk, and a few large rocks.

There's nothing special here, Twilight thought, and forced herself to keep walking. But something magnetic kept urging her to go there; as if some powerful and majestic something had once been here, only to disappear. Twilight walked on, and the feeling decreased.

When it was the evening and Twilight had walked so much that her paw pads were cracked and raw, many of these feelings had occurred. One had been in a deep hollow near the Thunderpath, where four trees might have stood once because of the position of the ground at the four corners. Another had been a little while back on the moorland that Twilight was still on; it had been a shallow dip in the ground, nothing special.

Twilight momentarily stopped because she knew she had to find a place to spend the night, surely no BloodClanners would follow her this far. Then her mouth dropped in dismay; the Thunderpath curved over to meet another Thunderpath as large as it was on the other side.

As quickly as Twilight had been disappointed, her heart gave a great leap. Just beyond the curve in the Thunderpath was a farm, with a large barn and no other animals about. Surely there would be mice and nice, soft hay to sleep in.

In excitement she dashed forward, covering the short distance in less than five minutes. When she reached it, she concluded that monsters and their humans must be afraid of the dark, for there were not many on the Thunderpath. In no time at all she had gotten into the middle without having a monster get nearer than five fox-lengths. She crossed the other side just as easily and headed toward the farm.

As soon as she left the Thunderpath she realized she had viewed the farm from a hill; there was a great field of dead cornstalks between she and it. Twilight memorized where the farm was, then made a beeline through the field toward it.

The leaves were rough, and soon she was very hot and the scratchy leaves had torn some fur from her pelt. She rolled in some melted snow to relieve the irritating scratches. Twilight began to think the whole world was cornstalks, nothing else was existent.

Then there was more light visible than before, and then the cornstalks opened up to reveal an open dirt clearing, with a light red barn with stone at its base in the center. And just in time too, because the sun was beginning to go down.

"I've never been so pleased to see something human-made," Twilight said to no one as she dashed toward it, relief piling on top of her like waves. After the tough leaves in the field, the dirt ground was like a cushion to her paws.

Inside the barn, there was many bales of hay; dry, yellow and soft-looking. Twilight stumbled into a pile, arranged it into a nest, curled up inside it, and almost immediately fell asleep.

She barely registered the fact that she had escaped BloodClan, nor realized that a pair of eyes were now looking down at her from the opposite side of the barn, curiosity brimming in their green depths…