FEAR OF THE DARK
"Have you run your fingers down the wall,
And have you felt your neck skin crawl,
When you're searching for the light?
Sometimes when you're scared to take a look,
At the corner of the room,
You've sensed that something's watching you."
Darkness. That's all there was down here. A vast expanse of endless black, stretching in all directions. All light had been swallowed. With no light, there was no heat either. It was so unbearably cold down here, yet he had grown accustomed to its biting chill.
He had to twist and turn amongst the gnarled and twisted trees, their low-hanging branches like boney talons reaching low to the ground. As if an owl was swooping in low to snatch him up and carry him off.
Dark gray paws silently treaded along the damp, cold dirt underneath. Scornful amber eyes scanned his surroundings. Darkstripe felt oddly at home slithering around in the shadows of this dark forest. Everything just seemed to fit; his name and his pelt and this place. It was like he was meant to be here.
If that was the case, Darkstripe would like to rake his claws down whoever planned for him to be here. While he felt strangely like he belonged here - the Dark Forest was driving him crazy. He was isolated. There was no way to track time. The last cat he met was Tigerstar by sheer chance, and that could have been anywhere from minutes ago to moons ago.
Tigerstar. That name spurred on many emotions in Darkstripe; longing, respect, fear, hope, love, and hate. The tom he had been so loyal to, becoming his shadow, had abandoned him. Tossed him aside like he was rotting crowfood.
"In the Dark Forest, cats are meant walk alone." is what he had said. In life, Darkstripe had both received and inflicted pain. Severe and minor. But the cat he followed so closely? Damning him to an afterlife of isolation? That killed him inside.
Darkstripe slinked on, "I'll show you, Tigerstar." he murmured bitterly. The dark tabby viewed him as a zealous acolyte, nothing more or nothing less. A weakling taking refuge in his strength. He felt used. "You think I'm weak, don't you? Well, I'll show you how strong I am."
Nothing made his blood run cold quite like being called weak. After all, being weak was a death sentence for a warrior. That's why the company he kept were the greatest of ThunderClan's warriors. It was why he detested Firestar from when he first saw him, his kittypet roots made him pathetically weak. He had tainted his Clan with his impure blood and made it, and everyone in it, weak.
Weakness could not survive in the Clans, and neither could the cats who were. Strength was everything. He would thrive here. He would quell the hunger in his stomach, the freezing in his bones. The tom would make it all disappear because he was not weak. He was strong. A fierce warrior to be feared by all.
The Cold and his hunger would weaken him, so he had to eliminate those threats as soon as possible. But how? Trying to find the edge of the Dark Forest seemed like a good idea. Perhaps it bordered StarClan, then it was likely that warmth was to be found. Perhaps some plump prey may venture into the dark and his awaiting jaws. The thought made his mouth water.
And his stomach snarled impatiently.
Darkstripe briskly turned around, heading in the direction he thought that StarClan would be. Doubt gnawed at his mind, remembering how Tigerstar spoke of being unable to really go anywhere. He said the Dark Forest was endless. But that couldn't be true, there's no way a forest went on indefinitely.
So he walked.
And he walked.
He then crawled.
He gave up.
The tabby layed curled up in a tight ball on the ground. His stomach was actually causing him physical pain now, begging to filled with meat. He couldn't feel anything anymore, the cold numbing him and taking his sense of touch. Darkstripe longed for death, but he was already dead.
Weakness was going to end him. It was humiliating. He, one of the fiercest warriors ThunderClan had ever been graced with, was going to die from an empty stomach? No wonder Tigerstar looked down on him with contempt.
The sound of rustling and a cat muttering curses to himself fell on his ears. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a large and muscular cat. With a broad face, shoulders, a squalid white pelt, and an array of scars. His tail was especially scarred, looking as if it belonged on a rat rather than a cat.
Darkstripe stayed completely still and unmoving. He didn't need to breathe, either, on the account that he was merely a spectre. To anyone else, he seemed dead. The cat approached him, his rancid breath hot against his fur.
"You'll do me a good, long while." he muttered hungrily. In that moment, Darkstripe had an epiphany. There was nothing to eat down here - except cats. The dark tabby suddenly sprang up, taking the other cat aback. He sank his teeth into his throat, feeling warmth flood his mouth. Oh, how long had it been since he felt warm? A day? A moon? A year? He didn't know, but he didn't care. Then, he ripped out the cat's throat.
Darkstripe watch coldly as the cat fell backwards, gagging and choking on his own blood. Once he was sure he was lifeless, he licked at his maw clean of blood. The tom couldn't let any warmth go to waste.
"You'll do me a good, long while." Darkstripe sneered, opening his maw and letting his ravenous hunger take control. It was pure bliss to feel full again, to feel warm again. But he knew that it was only temporary.
So he would hunt.
And hunt he did.
Other cats became nothing more than mice and squirrels for him, just another food source. One that was scarce, but when he found it he would stay full and warm for days. Though his travels revealed to him some horrible sights.
The further one travelled into the Dark Forest, it became so much darker - near impossible to see. Creatures became a common sight, too. Entities that stalked cats in the shadows, just like he did. They were so hard to describe, he was unable to fully comprehend what he saw. But what he did know was that they were nightmarish masses of blackness, teeth, and claws, with beady white eyes.
They attacked any cat on sight for daring to enter their dark domain, ripping them to sheds and disembowelling them. Yet they completely ignored Darkstripe as if he was one of them. The tom never understood why, until he once again ran into Tigerstar.
Again, emotions ran wild in the deceased ThunderClan cat; joy, longing, fear, anger, love. "Tigerstar!" he cried out in greeting, "h-how long has it been?" Darkstripe inquired, almost purring. Part of him felt ashamed that he wasn't criticising Tigerstar for abandoning him. But at the same time, he wouldn't have been able to learn how to thrive down here. He was shown how to be strong.
The former ShadowClan leader sized him up, "Darkstripe, it's been a long time. You look different,"
The tom raised an eyebrow, "how so?"
"Your eyes, for one." Tigerstar responded, "your sclera is black, not white. There's something. . .off about you," he partly wanted to mention how the darkness seemed to thicken around him, like he was more Dark Forest than cat. But that was surely his imagination. His voice, too, sounded different.
Darkstripe frowned, feeling perplexed by this revelation. What could cause such a thing? "Well, anyways. I think we should stick together, I can-"
"-I told you before, cats are meant to walk alone in the Dark Forest." interrupted Tigerstar, moving past Darkstripe.
The dark tabby leered, "you think I'm weak, don't you?" he spat.
The tom only glanced back briefly, "so you finally get it, Darkstripe. You were always weak, you couldn't even kill a kit." he responded bitterly, "you cling to me like the scared little kit you are,"
Darkstripe ignored the stinging in his heart, instead focusing on the anger brewing within. "Y-you can't abandon me again!" he protested.
"I just did." Tigerstar responded, this time not even glancing back towards the other cat.
Those three words and his callous tone killed Darkstripe inside a second time. He wasn't good enough for the tabby once again, and he would be left isolated for a second time. He couldn't bear it. He wouldn't stand for it. Not matter how great his respect was for Tigerstar - he could not and would not accept being called weak. To be placed on the same level as that damned kittypet made a wild storm of outrage stir within him.
Darkstripe would show Tigerstar just how wrong he was.
The tom knew just how to do it. Every fibre of his being was screaming at him, begging him to find StarClan. It was almost as if it was instinct, like he was getting ready to pounce on a mouse. So that's what he did.
Darkstripe headed north, his destination being StarClan. How did he know that it was this direction? He had already walked in this direction before a while ago -or was it years ago?- and it had taken him nowhere. Like the darkness around him, this forest stretched out to infinity.
Or it used to.
Only minutes later he found himself at the edge of the Dark Forest. His brow furrowed in confusion. None of this made sense; a different appearance, suddenly knowing which way StarClan lay and actually having the gull to go there, and now the Dark Forest was retracting? Was it all linked? Had he gone mad and, in his delusions, began having hallucinations?
Darkstripe got his answer when he stepped out of the dark and into the light. It was a blessing to feel grass tickle his paw pads again. It was amazing to feel the warmth of a green-leaf day. The sky above was the epitome of beauty, full of dazzling stars and bizarre (yet gorgeous) clouds. In fact, everything looked as if it was made of stars and held a blue hint to it. It was like something he could only dream of.
If only Tigerstar was here to share it with him.
But he then notice something about the ground around him. It was growing darker. Darkstripe looked down, discovering the ground was twisting and morphing into the cold, dead ground of the Dark Forest. The darkness spread itself, like blood in water.
It all clicked together in that moment. The different appearance, knowing where StarClan was, the forest seemingly shrinking. Darkstripe hadn't kept track of the amount of cats he had preyed upon, but consuming them had done something to him. It was as if there was a little piece of the Dark Forest inside every cat that resided within it, and as he consumed them it all collected inside him until he was more Dark Forest than cat.
It explained why the urge to come to StarClan was so potent. That part of him wanted to spread, to expand. Only Darkstripe was strong enough to do such a thing. No one else; for they were all weak and feeble.
So he would spread the dark, swallow up the light and snuff it out. With each paw step a new part of StarClan became corrupted and began spreading. This continued for hours as Darkstripe merely strolled along, leaving vast blackness in his wake.
"Darkstripe!" a voice suddenly yowled. In response, he swivelled around to face them. The tabby saw both familiar and unfamiliar faces. His eyes were fixed on the cat who called his name. Bluestar.
She was the youngest he had ever seen her, powerful but not masculine. The she-cat's gaze was cold and angered. "This has gone on for long enough!" the old ThunderClan leader spat. Her voice, too, held the same power her presence did but it added wisdom and courage into the mix.
Bluestar had been a strong leader, in Darkstripe's eyes, until she allowed the kittypet to join their ranks. Thanks to her ThunderClan -his Clan- had been forever polluted. He was only here to return the favour. He sneered, "not by a long shot. This isn't over until you're all wallowing in the dark and freezing to your bones." he could feel something swirling and twisting in his mouth, and it certainly wasn't saliva.
"Just. Like. Me!" he roared. At first, little droplets of blackness trickled from his mouth and off of his chin, but after his final word it spilled from his mouth like a flash flood. A wave made entirely of the void.
It swallowed up every cat present as they yowled in fear and surprise and all the light surround them. It wasn't like the darkness found deep in the heart of the Dark Forest. No, this was pure darkness. A complete absence of light. For it had been devoured.
"I-is everybody okay?" called a shaken Bluestar, frantically scanning her surroundings - or lack there of.
"I'm fine. But I can't see a thing! What did he do?!" a voice responded.
Another voice chimed in, "we have to find a way out! Just run-"
The sound of tearing flesh ripped through the dark.
"Lionheart?! Lionheart are you-" the voice let loose a gargled cry before dying off. Suddenly, an unholy symphony of screams and tearing flesh and sickening crunches exploded through the darkness.
Bluestar could only yowl frantically, twisting and turning in all directions to find a way out. But how could she? Which way was she even facing? Was she even in StarClan anymore? She began to shake and valiantly attempted to stop herself from hyperventilating. This darkness was choking her. It was claustrophobic. She needed out.
"You're not the only who brought their friends, Bluestar." Darkstripe called out. Suddenly, he emerged from nothing, the blackness peeling off of him like a second skin. Part of his upper lip was now missing, which revealed his rancid teeth underneath. "I left you for last,"
Bluestar tried to tune out the song of carnage around her. She hissed fiercely, "I will fight to my last breath, Darkstripe!"
The tom snorted, "you really think I would ever give you a warrior's death? You don't deserve one. You destroyed ThunderClan when you let Firestar join our ranks!" the sounds of slaughter suddenly ceased. "I wanted you to see what you've done. If it weren't for you none of this would have happened! You doomed StarClan!"
"I did no such thing," the she-cat spat.
"It seems when you went senile it stuck." Darkstripe scoffed, "I just have one thing to ask, Bluestar; are you afraid of the dark?"
Bluestar bared her teeth, "no."
"You're about to be." he smirked. Roars resonated through the void as the horrors spawned from the Dark Forest pounced on Bluestar, picking her apart like a disturbed cat would a mouse. Darkstripe left the void, entering back into what was left of StarClan.
The void began spewing from his maw again, suffocating anything and everything around it. He could hear the squealing of horrors as they were birthed from the blackness. Darkstripe wanted everyone to feel how he had; cold, afriad, outraged, hungry, outcasted, helpless, hopeless.
"Do you see how strong I am now, Tigerstar?!" Darkstripe cried out, "this was all for you!" He exclaimed.
Everyone would be as he had when Tigerstar abandoned him; alone and afraid in the dark.
Aaaand that was The Lighteater: Fear of The Dark! This was actually a really good chance to build up on Darkstripe's character and give him the spotlight (more like the blacklight huehuehue) and also add a little to the Dark Forest. It's so underdeveloped it hurts me, really. So I added eldritch horrors in there because, hey, practically no development means I can do whatever the hell I want.
The ending is heavily inspired by Batman: The Dawnbreaker's ending (which I would so recommend reading because it's partly the reason Dark Worlds exists)
The next oneshot is The Merciless: Battery, go speculate on what that is if ya feel like.
