Part of the coming plot was inspired by the Biblical Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, but I put my own spin on it. :)

CHAPTER NINE

I stood there, paralyzed and dazed, as Jay's Wing and Lion's Roar dashed forward, Dove's Wing and Wolf close behind. I shook myself back to reality and followed them.

Lion's Roar, Dove's Wing, and Wolf were fighting off the snakes while Jay's Wing tried to roll the old tom out of the way. I dashed over to help him, as the others seemed to have the snakes under control. In the end, Dove's Wing had to help us carry him away. We barely escaped with our fur, and Wolf got bitten. Luckily, it was a small snake that only left a little venom, so Jay's Wing said it would be okay.

The old rogue was almost too far gone for us to get anything out of him. He was unconscious, bleeding from many wounds that were clearly heavily poisoned.

"Come on, come on," Jay's Wing muttered under his breath as we carried him away from the snake-infested streambed. At last, we set him down a ways away from the hissing snakes and the tabby tom could perform a proper examination.

"He's dying, and fast," the blue-eyed tom said grimly. "We'd better question him now. There's no saving him."

I nodded and inched closer to the dying tom. He was in a horribly sorry state, snake bites aside. The old rogue's fur was matted and torn—he had been a fighter. He looked like he was the sort of cat who had seen it all and knew it all. I guessed him to be older than even the senior warriors—elder age, but still going strong.

Well, he had been going strong. Those snakes had pretty much done him in. I leaned in close, Wolf and the others crowding around me with wide eyes.

Jay's Wing prodded him gently on the shoulder with a half-sheathed claw. "Wake up," he hissed. "We need to talk to you."

The old tom opened his eyes a crack and rasped out, "Are you the ones they told me to come here for?"

"Yes," Dove's Wing replied with a slight tremor in her voice.

"Who are they?" Wolf asked suspiciously.

"The Originals—the first cats," the old tom breathed out.

"They came to you, too?" Lion's Roar asked.

"Yes, obviously," Jay's Wing snapped at his brother. Well, they weren't brothers in this time and place—gah, time travel is so confusing. I had known them best as brothers, so in my mind they still were, and Dovewing was just a distant relative, not Jayfeather's sister. So many names and times—why did I get involved in this in the first place? Once was enough, honestly.

I was distracted from my train of thought by the old tom's coughing. "I'm dying," he rasped. We made no attempts to disprove him—it was pretty obvious he was. "I've lived a long, good life, and I'm ready for the stars. But the Originals need me to tell you something..."

He coughed once more, and this time, some blood came up with it. I was burning with impatience and curiosity, and our time was ticking. This old rogue needed to tell us his secret now, before he died.

"I had an interesting life," the rogue began, before being interrupted with another series of hacking coughs. "Never mind that, I've got to tell you now, before I go. But I learned over my moons and seasons that the dead are not gone forever... they watch over us in the stars or the shadows, depending on their natures."

We nodded. Being from the future, this wasn't news to us.

"Go on," I urged him.

"But they walk alone—unless they can be gathered," the old tom whispered, his voice trailing off. For a moment, my heart was in my throat, and I thought he was dead, until he coughed again and struggled to sit upright.

Jay's Wing pushed him back down. "No," he warned. "Stay still."

The old tom scowled at him, and I was suddenly reminded of Mousefur. He continued, "There are... spirits, for lack of a better word, of various plagues on the world. They must be convinced to gather spirits of the dead, and they are very stubborn..." He had another coughing fit, and I frowned, concerned not only for him, but for ourselves.

"How many spirits are there?" I asked.

"Multitudes," the old rogue rasped. "But you only have to convince the main five: Malady, Hunger, Slaughter, Despair, and Death."

A chill settled over me. This was not good. This would be extremely difficult. They could never make it easy, could they?

"And why do we have to do this?" Lion's Roar inquired.

The old tom shrugged weakly, his strength fading. The poison in the snake bites was finally winning over his body. "I don't know," he whispered. "I'm just the messenger. Good luck..."

And then the rogue sighed and lay still. Jay's Wing pressed an ear to his chest. Then he lifted his head and said solemnly, "He's gone."

There was a long silence, in which we sat with our heads bowed around the old tom's body. I sighed unhappily. This was an ignoble end for such an experienced old cat.

"We should bury him," I said at last. The others nodded in agreement, glad of a slight distraction that would take our minds off the now-dead rogue's grim advice.

Wolf, Lion's Roar, Dove's Wing and I carried his body away from the Snake Stream's banks, following his scent trail back to his den. It wasn't much of a den—he had probably only slept there for one or two nights. He was a traveling rogue, then.

We buried him a little ways away from the den in the scant earth of the mountains and sat around his shallow grave, all thinking the same thing.

At last, Wolf burst out, "How are we going to convince these evil spirits that this is a good idea?"

"What is 'this', anyway?" I wondered aloud. "The Originals and Rock were pretty vague—I thought that this wandering rogue would be more specific."

"I think we're supposed to gather spirits of dead cats," Lion's Roar mused.

"We're forming the Tribe of Endless Hunting—and StarClan, too, I suppose," Jay's Wing finished.

Dove's Wing sighed. "This is too difficult—convincing sickness and death that we need to form StarClan? They'll just laugh at us, and then kill us!"

"I don't think so," Jay's Wing disagreed, casting a meaningful glance at me. I understood what he was getting at.

"The Originals made our task hard, but not impossible," I explained. "They wouldn't instruct us to do something that couldn't be done."

"Are you sure?" Dove's Wing asked, still dubious.

Wolf shrugged. "Well, if we're going to do this, we'd better get to it." She looked at Jay's Wing. "How is this going to work? You're the expert on dreams and other weird stuff like that."

Jay's Wing sighed and rolled his eyes. Lion's Roar, sitting next to him, chuckled quietly. I gave him a little smile. I missed his presence by my side, but now was not the time for emotion.

"It's not that simple," Jay's Wing sighed in exasperation. "I can't just fall asleep and talk to them. These are 'higher beings'. They'll take us to where we need to go when they're ready—or when they think we're ready."

I nodded. That made sense. "Okay, we'd better get back to the cave. We've been gone a while."

"Shouldn't we do some hunting first?" Lion's Roar suggested.

"That's a good idea," Wolf agreed, changing track from glaring at Jay's Wing to smiling cheerfully at the prospect of some action.

I shrugged. "Okay, that's good by me."

Jay's Wing and Dove's Wing decided to go straight back to the cave, after perhaps making a detour for some herbs, and we three headed off to hunt. Just like old times—three friends in the mountains.

It was enjoyable, but the last good thing to happen before the Originals called on us, and that experience was not enjoyable at all...