As one part of the story comes to a close, another continues...

Chapter 33: The Cat who Quenched the Darkness

Birdfeather watched the border collapse wanting to scream, her heart stuck in her throat like she had swallowed a big, ugly bramble that was blocking her voice from escaping. Others were screaming around her, and Old StarClan swarmed towards them. The whole world was shaking harder than it ever had in the earthquakes. Birdfeather watched the earth crack beneath her paws and vanish, and she watched as her family vanished from view. Each of them in turn either fell, screeching, into the voids of the earth, or just disappeared in a puff of white mist.

The shaking stopped as quickly as it had begun. Birdfeather felt still the brambles in her throat surrounding and piercing her heart. She couldn't move out of fear.

"Birdfeather." She heard pawsteps approach. Rushfire touched his nose to her ear. "Birdfeather?"

"I can't do this." Birdfeather stared straight ahead, at the silvery grass beneath her paws. She could feel things changing, but she didn't dare to look up.

"Enough, we have work to do." Jayfeather's mew was harsh. Birdfeather was surprised that he hadn't fallen away from her. She stayed staring at her paws until he was standing right next to her. Even with Rushfire and Jayfeather on either side of her, she felt powerless – or perhaps that was the wrong word.

"Oh, no," said Rushfire. "Birdfeather, we need to move. Old StarClan realized we collapsed the border. They're – Jayfeather, do something!"

"Come on, Birdfeather, snap out of it." Then Birdfeather felt Jayfeather's presence take over her mind, and his thoughts seeped into hers like she had never had her own mind at all. She shivered as she felt his energy coursing through her: his raw anger and fear as well as his determination. It was enough to make the brambles in her throat subside a little bit. She dared to look up.

It was not the Old StarClan it had been moments ago. Here the trees grew wild and dark among the silver grass, and there were dark clouds circulating in the usually star-lit sky above them. Deep crevasses scarred the grounds, but they were no longer standing on a hill. It was more like an island. The deep cracks in the ground opened up into empty violet sky. Birdfeather looked around. She wasn't sure where the Dark Forest had stopped and StarClan's hunting grounds had begun in the first place.

More pressing, however, were the starlit cats staring up at them, their eyes entirely black except for a few odd sparks where their pupils ought to have been. Their claws were long and black, wreathed in shadows. She thought she recognized them as StarClan cats, but it was too hard to tell. Birdfeather's fear crept up in her again as a few leaped for the odd island of stone and grass they were perched on.

"We have to run," said Rushfire. Birdfeather glanced up at him. The RiverClan medicine cat apprentice had locked his jaws and unsheathed his claws, looking more like a warrior than a medicine cat. She bet he could have been an awesome warrior. She wondered to herself if the only reason he was a medicine cat was that he had always been bound to her.

"There'll be time to meditate on stupid things later," said Jayfeather, his voice reverberating as if Birdfeather had spoken. She glanced at her mentor to find him staring at her and realized that his powers were of empathy: he was in her mind. "Great, you're brilliant, let's go."

Birdfeather nodded and turned after him as Jayfeather leaped off their island and onto another a few tail-lengths below them. Rushfire nodded at Birdfeather. She took a deep breath and jumped, feeling the ground fall away below her for barely a second before she locked onto more celestial grass. This secondary island crumbled a little bit as Birdfeather landed. Rushfire followed; Birdfeather could feel him rock the island as he landed.

"They're like stepping stones," said Jayfeather, half to himself, glancing up towards another island-like precipice a little farther away.

"Sure, but don't fall in," said Rushfire. "We can't swim in that."

They made their way over the scattered pieces of spiritual hunting ground without any more comment, Birdfeather feeling her mind numb as she jumped and skidded. She glanced over her shoulder once or twice to see that Old StarClan cats, now entirely corrupted, were still chasing them. But they seemed unable of speech or proper thought.

"Where are we going?" asked Rushfire as they made a final leap. Here the hunting grounds of StarClan, corrupted with the huge trees of the Dark Forest, stretched out before them. There were still cats behind them.

"I'm trying to reach out to the others," said Jayfeather. "Any of them."

"But they fell – "

"They can't be dead." Birdfeather spoke too loudly, like she had when she was a kit. Rushfire jumped at the sound of her voice. "I would know if they were dead."

"Where did they go, then?" asked Rushfire.

"Where they need to be," said Jayfeather. He sighed, shaking his head. "Nothing makes sense anymore. I'm…"

"You're afraid because I'm afraid," said Birdfeather. The three of them started jogging away from the islands, not knowing where they were going but knowing that they had to get away.

"It's more than that," said Jayfeather. He took the lead, not looking back at them. Rushfire followed half a step behind Birdfeather, occasionally looking over his shoulder and letting his pawsteps falter a little bit to gauge the distance between him and the corrupted Old StarClan warriors. "I feel like I'm being chased."

"You are being chased."

"Not by them." Jayfeather lashed his tail. "I feel like something's coming for me."

Birdfeather and Rushfire exchanged a glance as the medicine cat of ThunderClan picked up his footsteps. Birdfeather wished the empathy stretched both ways between them, so she could feel what Jayfeather was feeling and help him with it. She thought hard about being positive in this moment.

"I appreciate it," said Jayfeather. Rushfire didn't even ask what they were talking about.

"Look, running away is great, but where are we going?" asked Rushfire the next time he looked over his shoulder.

"We're here for a reason," said Jayfeather. "Hopefully that reason will make itself apparent."

"That reason is obvious," called Birdfeather. "I have to set this place on fire."

"This place?" squawked Rushfire. "But it's StarClan!"

"Did you ever see trees like this in StarClan?" hissed Jayfeather. He led them under the cover of Dark Forest trees, and suddenly it was like they were in the Dark Forest again. The canopy so completely blocked out the low light from the storm clouds it sent a shiver up Birdfeather's spine. Rushfire stole a glance over his shoulder and sighed in relief. Birdfeather looked back to see that the cats that had been chasing them paused where the trees began, just staring into the depths of the darkness, and sat down.

"That's not relieving," said Birdfeather.

"But they're not chasing us," said Rushfire. "Do you think they can tell that this is Dark Forest terrain?"

"I don't know why they would?" Jayfeather pawed at the grass, which was just the same grass that ran through StarClan's hunting grounds. "We needed to stop running. We're just going in circles."

Birdfeather looked up and figured that he was right. She hadn't been paying much attention, but it felt dizzying. She sat down on the ground and looked at her paws, trying to steady her heart and think. Where were her littermates? Her parents? Everyone else? It scared her that they expected her to do something alone. What if she accidentally interfered with whatever it was they were doing?

"Birdfeather, you're hyperventilating." Rushfire put his paw against her chest, like he was checking her breathing for a cough. Birdfeather closed her eyes tight and tried her best to slow her breathing.

"I'm terrified," she whispered.

"I don't blame you," said Rushfire. "But you have to relax so we can figure this out, okay?"

She nodded and thought about Rushfire: how stupid and arrogant he had been as a kit, how much she had hated him, the first time he joined her under the Moontree and she was stuck with how handsome he was. She thought about dreams where he was impaled as well as dreams where they just sat together and talked. She thought about his eyes lit up when he told her he had requested the name Rushfire.

"You two are disgusting," said Jayfeather. Birdfeather opened her eyes to look up at Rushfire, remembering only then that Jayfeather was still reading into her feelings and thoughts. "Remind me to make you clean everything when we get back. Ugh."

Rushfire tilted his head to the side, confused.

"I'm really glad you're here," said Birdfeather. "Remember how I promised you we'd meet soon, when this is all over? I want to keep that promise."

"Me, too," said Rushfire, but he was still confused.

"I just wanted to tell you that I love you," said Birdfeather. "Because I never said it before."

Jayfeather sighed audibly. Rushfire glanced at the older medicine cat over his shoulder but then turned back to her and nodded.

"As long as we put our Clans first," he said. Birdfeather nodded. "You know I love you. You know I always have."

"Can we get a move on?" said Jayfeather.

"Yes, sorry," said Birdfeather. She took a deep breath and thought about all the prophecies, about what quenching eternal darkness would mean. The StarClan cats were still pacing at the end of the trees, watching them. She could nearly taste their fear.

"Jayfeather, I want to know what they're thinking and feeling," said Birdfeather, glancing at the StarClan cats waiting for them. "I want to know who they are."

"Is that a good idea?" said Jayfeather.

"I know I have to go somewhere, meet someone," said Birdfeather. She tried to stop her trembling. "Maybe they know."

Jayfeather nodded and tilted his head to the side. His eyes seemed to go cloudy again, like he was blinding himself on purpose, but then they cleared. Birdfeather waited, watching her mentor, almost afraid at what she was asking him to do. Then his vision cleared quickly, and he gasped.

"The very edge of StarClan territory," he said. "That's where it must begin."

"Then let's go," said Rushfire.

"How will we get there?" asked Birdfeather. "We ran in a straight line and somehow still managed to go in circles. It's like this place is constantly shifting."

"You'll get us there," said Jayfeather. He clawed the ground a few times. "Let's go. I'm tired of waiting."

Birdfeather didn't need empathy to feel his sudden nerves, so she got to her paws and took a deep breath. She turned to Rushfire, who nodded.

"Right behind you," he said. Birdfeather was grateful to have these two cats with her at this moment. She looked back at the silhouettes of the StarClan cats she didn't know sitting at the way they'd come in. Then she turned and ran the other direction as fast as her paws would take her.

Rushfire and Jayfeather kept pace without problem – Birdfeather had always been a slow runner. She sprinted below the leaves and the branches, jumping over twisting roots and small pockets of that eerie moss that abided only in the Dark Forest. The trees thinned, and she split out onto the silver grasses of StarClan again. The clouds above their heads swirled as if a storm was about to break out, but that was ridiculous. It couldn't rain in StarClan. There was a hill before her, so she sprinted up the hill, already feeling her lungs stiffen and protest with the effort of running so hard. The three of them ran until pawsteps began to pound in behind them. Birdfeather glanced over her shoulder to see that close behind Rushfire were StarClan cats she didn't recognize: old RiverClan cats with scars on their shoulders, young WindClan apprentices with eyes terribly dark, all pounding after her like she had stolen their lives from them. Birdfeather nearly choked on that realization: she was going to steal everything from them very soon. Was there nothing she could do to stop it?

Shadow coalesced before her, and Birdfeather skidded to a stop as she watched Tigerstar step forward seemingly out of nowhere. She looked into the face of the massive tabby tom, who stared at her sadly, like she was someone he actually cared about. She didn't recognize the look. It didn't make sense on his face.

"Tigerstar," hissed Jayfeather. A growl began low in Rushfire's throat. Tigerstar waved his tail, and Birdfeather felt the pawsteps behind her steady and stop. She knew there was a ring of the dark StarClan cats behind her. She also knew she had to be getting close.

"Birdfeather," said Tigerstar. "Did you know we are related?"

"Does it make a difference?" Birdfeather narrowed her eyes.

"Of course it makes a difference." Tigerstar flicked his tail innocently and sat down, like he was an elder interested in telling a story. Birdfeather felt a little bit outraged. Were she not a medicine cat, would he be treating her like this? She had just as much potential to rip him apart as Mountainstone did. "It means that a part of me lives in you. There was potential that I could have had what you have."

"That's not how it works," said Jayfeather, stepping up to Birdfeather's side. "How it works is that Birdfeather destroys you here and now, forever."

"It's Birdfeather's choice, isn't it?" Tigerstar tilted his head to the side. "You know I was put in the Dark Forest because I sought power. Because I sought greatness."

"You destroyed the Clans," whispered Rushfire. "You made RiverClan into something it should never have been."

"I thought destruction was necessary for revival," said Tigerstar. "And I was punished for it." His eyes bore into Birdfeather's. She had never heard this big, scary cat as anything but a nursery story and a threat in the darkness. Even when she had faced him before, he had been an intimidating presence. Now he looked very sad and very…normal.

"Here's what I don't understand," said Tigerstar, eyes so normal. "How is it that you, Birdfeather, get to destroy everything and get no punishment, and I suffer forever? How is it that you are allowed to burn every soul in these hunting grounds and be named a hero? How is it that when I tried to make things better, I was made into a villain?" He flicked his tail. "None of you were there."

Birdfeather opened her mouth to reply but then realized she had nothing to say. He was right, in some ways – she had never been around during Tigerstar's day. She knew all the stories of this cat, but they were elders' tales. In them, Tigerstar sounded horrible, and while he was as scary-looking as she had heard, he didn't seem normal in the stories.

"What's so bad about having StarClan and the Dark Forest mix?" said Tigerstar, eyes wide, earnest. "We could all get along. We wouldn't hurt anything. And you wouldn't have to bear the weight of all those souls."

"This is ridiculous." Jayfeather head-butted Birdfeather's shoulder. "You don't honestly believe this? He'll manipulate other cats, make them cause mayhem."

"But what if…?" She didn't want to have all those souls to think about. They would be forever on her paws. It would be just like the Gathering, with the fire that had gone everywhere. Except this time, nobody would be able to come to Birdfeather with comfort from StarClan, because everyone would be gone. All the ancestors from all the stories, the wise generations of StarClan…gone.

"Birdfeather." She looked into Jayfeather's eyes as he slapped her flank with his tail. "Listen to me. No matter how hard it may be, you have to know that you're doing the right thing."

"Says a prophecy," said Birdfeather. "Why do I need to listen to the prophecy?"

"You can't forgive Tigerstar," said Jayfeather. "You can't stop the darkness that is here. StarClan drove the Clans apart. StarClan planted all these ideas in the heads of the medicine cats. They're trying to make us all kill each other. It must end."

"It will end, once the threat of you is gone," said Tigerstar.

"Stop talking to her." Rushfire's voice went low and in a dark growl. Before Birdfeather could say anything he pounced, claws outstretched. Tigerstar stared straight at Birdfeather as Rushfire's claws connected with his shoulders. Then he shook his head and seemed to be sucked in by the ground. Rushfire landed awkwardly, then turned to face Jayfeather and Birdfeather.

"We're wasting time," said Jayfeather. "Good work, Rushfire. Let's go, Birdfeather."

"You know that wouldn't have ended well," said Rushfire, touching his nose to her ear. She twitched at the contact. "Birdfeather?"

Birdfeather nodded, glancing at the spot where Tigerstar had been. It took her a few seconds to realize that they were right. She was just desperate.

"I just don't want this to be real," said Birdfeather. "All those amazing leaders…"

"Are not helping anymore," said Jayfeather. "We're here to protect the Clans." Rushfire nodded. Birdfeather closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and nodded. She looked over her shoulder, but the Old StarClan members were unmoving, just watching them. So Birdfeather began to walk away from them, not running this time. Her heart was beating so fast she thought if she began to run, she might explode. Rushfire and Jayfeather flanked her as she walked along the silvery grass, watching it blow against her russet-colored paws. They walked up and down hills, around knots of Dark Forest trees, until finally, the grass began to grow taller and look much less dead. It began to look like grass again. The clouds over their heads dwindled, and starlight peered through at them. Birdfeather descended a hill as Dark Forest trees opened to welcome her into a slight indent of rock in the ground. She felt a shiver run up her spine. This place…

"Spottedleaf, Bluestar." Jayfeather's voice was a little awestruck. Birdfeather glanced over to see the named Old StarClan leaders sitting in the center of the clearing. Their eyes looked dead, their pelts near-transparent. They didn't look like StarClan cats, more like shades of themselves. As she entered the hollow, she looked around and realized that countless admired leaders surrounded them: all the cats that were given the private information, at least. Rushfire shivered and pressed closer to Birdfeather's side. Jayfeather sat down before Bluestar and Spottedleaf, his claws unsheathed, his hindquarters tensed as if knowing he may have to fight.

"It's not easy for us to say this." Even Spottedleaf's voice sounded far away.

"We're using every last bit of energy we have to keep clear heads," said Bluestar. Other voices murmured things from the shadows, between the trees, which seemed to grow darker by the second.

"Darkness isn't bad, but this light has been tainted for moons," said Spottedleaf. "We have fallen to it."

"I don't want this." Birdfeather spat out the words like she was throwing up. She felt tears brim at the corners of her eyes. For so long, she had been walking this path knowing where it would lead. Now that she was here, her paws tingled a little bit. The brambles were back, but they surrounded her heart. She felt paralyzed. She felt Jayfeather's warm thoughts in her mind, Rushfire's pelt beside her. She knew what she had to do but was too afraid to do it.

"It's alright, Birdfeather." Spottedleaf's eyes were her own, not covered in dark shades. Her image flickered, like fear was hidden deep behind her mask of acceptance. "We want to help the Clans."

"Do it," said Bluestar. "Please, Birdfeather."

"Stay close to me," said Birdfeather to Jayfeather and Rushfire.

"We're with you," said Jayfeather. She smiled at each of them and looked around the hollow at the cats in the shades. She recognized each of them and knew what amazing things they had all done for the Clans. She looked lastly at Spottedleaf, who nodded and closed her eyes.

There is no other way, thought Birdfeather. She took a deep breath and focused on the flame deep within her. When she opened her eyes, she looked up at the sky, at the clouds that suddenly squirmed out of the way as the stars lit up as bright beacons of orange and red. Tears running down her face, Birdfeather let the fire within her rage freely. She quenched the darkness - and the light as well.

The Dark Forest burned. StarClan burned. That night, the stars were on fire.

I know this is a really sad thing if you think about it. This decision has been coming for a while, and it's been really hard for me as well as the characters in the story. But the world was dying, and anyways, these poor spiritual cats have been corrupted, so...

I do know that this is kind of a weird path for a story to take, but I hope it works? I hope it makes sense? If not, feel free to pester me, and I'll answer all the questions as best as I can. :)

Don't forget to review/favorite/follow/recommend to your friends! Thanks, pals ;)

~Elsi