Recap: It's a miracle! Cariad isn't dead yet, he just goes by his new alter-ego Voletooth! Even better, he's been lawfully forced into a relationship with Morningstar's very own daughter, because these things tend to run in their families. Anyway, things are just dandy on Cariad's side of the river.


Life drifts by with unsettling ease. Cariad's routine is regimented and stalwart; he hunts for the Clan; he dreams every night of ripping them limb from limb, but knows he'll never do it; he starts answering, unconsciously, to the name Voletooth, as though he and its deceased owner were never separate beings at all, as though his blood was not spilled for his seemingly aimless cause. He has one more friend than he did last month; Strongclaw is strange and gloomy, but nevertheless, he's not Cariad's enemy. He's an enigma, much like Sunfeather, but at least he seems easier to crack.

"You're deep in thought," Sunfeather says, ripping into a squirrel. It's her favourite. Cariad not sure why he knows this, or that he even ought to, but it's not something he can presently forget.

"Don't get lost," Strongclaw adds absently, probably joking.

"It's nothing," Cariad replies. In truth, he never lets on how he really feels to the two of them- unstable, unbalanced, waiting for some kind of certain doom- because in the end, they're both still PureClan, and the divide between their kind and his will always exist.

"Wow," Sunfeather says brightly. "Strong, sulking, and secretive. I really lucked out." She pushes against his shoulder roughly, to let him know she's not wholly serious.

"Just uh, worried," he says vaguely, just to fill the empty space and their low expectations. It's not even a lie.

"About my mother?" Sunfeather asks, snorting. "She's not even here. No one's seen her since yesterday, so relax already."

He can't. Worrying is exactly his one personal hobby, now. Besides, Morningstar's suspicious absence hardly seeks to soothe him. If anything, he'll be glancing over his shoulder every minute, waiting for her leering face to loom over him, perhaps ready to once more condemn him to death.

"I wonder where she's skulking," Strongclaw muses, swiping a tuft of ginger squirrel hair from his nose. "And who'll she'll next accuse of sedition and treachery."

"It could be anyone," Sunfeather says, eyes wide and voice full of mocking wonderment. "Gosh, if only I could be so lucky and singular."

"I, for one, am merely surprised that Meadowmist hasn't gone yet," Strongclaw continues. "I don't think many would resist her if she rose up against Morningstar."

"This is a little dark for breakfast," Caraid replies weakly; the last thing he needs is for anyone to hear this, and report it back to their gracious leader.

"How will she react next time we find a fox or dog in the territory? I bet at least five heads will roll," Sunfeather says evenly, ignoring Cariad's subtle plea. She glances around the clearing, as though sussing out potential victims.

Cariad buries his face in his meal and tries to drown the two out. He is, in fact, very successful. He doesn't look up until Sunfeather twitches rather violently beside him, brushing her tail against his ribs (Cariad is ticklish, something he tries and fails not to let on). He flinches and stiffens, hoping no one's watching, but his fears are unfounded; all eyes are drawn to the edge of the the forest, the well-worn and inelegant entrance to camp PureClan. Cariad deciphers the scene before him one clue at a time; the warriors with raised hackles and blood in their inglorious smiles; the strangers in their grasp; the wounds on their bodies, the doomed path they walk. Like the flow and ebb of a tide, they are pushed and bodily pulled into the clearing, heckled by the violent, faceless warriors he has studiously ignored.

One strides forward; it is the big golden she-cat he remembers from his induction, who earned her name right before he, controversially, earned his. "Where's my mother?" she demands, imperiously surveying the inert occupants of the camp. She also, it appears, is Sunfeather's sister, though the familial resemblance is more than lacking.

It's Slatethorn, the grey tom who has glared at him on more than one occasion, that sees fit to answer. "Gone," he says evenly, unswayed by the spectacle before him. "And given her most recent decree… there's no one else here you can answer to, Dawnshadow."

"What's going on?" Cariad asks, looking between Sunfeather and Strongclaw. "There can't be another assessment so soon." Indeed, the last one had been more than hard to watch; he'd stared past the whole event, glassy-eyed, counting leaves and ignoring the tell-tale sounds of death as it played out in front of him. It occurs, when he gets no response, that they are not sure either, that things, by all accounts, are not playing by the rules. He stares harder at the warriors; many of them he recognizes from his trial, though several are older, seasoned, and seem to temper no mercy.

Another tabby rises, a brown tom with a ring of scars around his neck. This one has hardly ever bothered to glance in Cariad's direction, as though petty hate is beneath him. It likely is, though Cariad has noticed Strongclaw avoids looking in his direction, does not acknowledge or ever approach him. The dark and dismal history of PureClan and its obdurate denizens still eludes him, though he wishes it didn't; every day he wades amongst apparent blood feuds and myriads of twisted, convoluted relationships, wondering just exactly what he's skirting.

"What are you doing with these rogues? Take them to the cave, where we have need of them." He speaks with conviction, seniority, but there's an idle touch of familiarity in his tone.

"I know the protocol, father." This induces an almost instantaneous headache in Cariad, who begins to feel he will never understand the Clan and all its serpentine links, the ever-moving house of snakes. "But we didn't go looking for these Tainted, we stumbled across them. In our own territory."

Several cats begin to circle the hapless group idle, curious, spiralling inwards like birds of prey. They are not so dissimilar, in Cariad's eyes. The old tabby, meanwhile, is perplexed.

"A whole group?" he asks. "Do they mean to, what...attack us?" he asks, incredulous, sparking a flame of understanding in Cariad's belly. He, of all cats, has reason to understand why a group of strangers might linger so close to PureClan, might have reason and motive. Sickened, he looks closer, until he can make out Britta's grey stripes; Nada's dark fur and vivid scars; Nur and Tui, who escaped the darkness of Tillman's; Meino, who taught him to fight.

The Clan stirs uneasily at the tabby's words. No one has dared attack them in recent memory, or perhaps such a thing has never happened before. Moreover, they are left without a point to rally behind, with their esteemed and vicious leader vanished into thin air.

"They won't say anything," Dawnshadow replies contemptuously, lashing her tail. "We gave them reason to." As his heartbeat pounds in his throat, Cariad sees she means what she says; the rebels bear copious wounds, patches of missing fur and the signs of an obvious thrashing. "I thought Morningstar would know what to do."

The tabby is shaking his head. "Put them in the cave, wait for her to get back. She won't be long." More cats are rising, and the texture of the air in clearing has gone thick and warm, as though a storm has brewed and is ready to break.

"Why should we?" another cat asks; it's the brilliant white queen, Meadowmist, still polished and resplendent despite her recent, public demotion. "These wretches are an immediate threat to PureClan. Who knows what they could come up with if we shove them somewhere safe and sheltered and give them time to plot? You may be her pair, Thornstreak, but you can't speak for her."

"We shouldn't wait around to be plucked from the water like fish," another warrior adds, levelling a black-eyed stare at the rebels, who have pressed themselves into a tight, defensive formation. None of these doctrine-spouting idiots have any clue who they've really captured, Cariad realises. And even that won't save them. He should stand up, speak for them, agree with the old tabby who seems to be the only erring on the side of caution. And likely die, he supposes, as an immediate result. Morningstar has promised that he would die if he crossed the line, but that constraint has never been defined by her, and exists only in her mind; he sees no line here, only his compatriots, the very souls he breathed and lived with, and one day ought to die with. To fall with, side by side, on that legendary, long-awaited battlefield.

"We shy away from nothing," agrees a lanky black tom, who's appraised by a chorus of hearty, chilling endorsements.

"Least of all a band of rag-tag, cowering Tainted," Dawnshadows says, turning inwards. "We ought to kill every one on sight."

A deadly cold settles over Cariad: on his limbs, in his veins, a caustic burn in his lungs. He looks from Sunfeather to Strongclaw, an unlikely pair of saviours, but neither moves. The lives of mere strangers, the inferior and obsolete, are not worth so much to them. They haven't gotten this far in life by standing up for every downtrodden Tainted their Clan has ever picked on. The chill in his blood deepens. The vultures were sworn away from him, but his old companions won't get so lucky.

"It's our given right," Dawnshadow continues, as her pair slips to her side with predatory calm. "It's our duty, in fact."

Strongclaw turns to give him a weighted, knowing look; the horror of it all is probably painted on his face, as if anyone needed another reason to know he didn't belong, and never would. "You can't do anything, son. Don't even try."

"I know them," he whispers. "I know them." Nameless rogues were one matter- one that bit and tore at him nonetheless. This was another, and he is poorly equipped to handle it.

"Their lives are already forfeit," Strongclaw says, eyes blank and voice low. "Yours doesn't have to be."

"Why not? Haven't you ever believed in anything?" Cariad snaps back, knowing that whatever that faint and murky line was, he has crossed it. He's said too much, revealed his hand, but his friends don't seem to notice.

Strongclaw's lips draw back, as though he's angry; something Cariad's never seen before, and could scarcely imagine.

Sunfeather rises into a crouch before the situation can escaculate. "Come with me now, Cariad. This is Clan business, not yours." Her tail brushes his leg, softly, as though he's malleable, something to be coaxed. He resents it immensely. As she attempts to lull him, soothe him like a kit, the circling warriors grow tired of their dance and move in, aiming for the kill like the weapons they are; Dawnshadow shrieks in victory and thirst, and her voice is joined by others in symphony. A grosser medley of horror has not yet graced Cariad's ears.

Caraid stands, blindly, focused on the bloodbath that's only just beginning. He must step forward, though he doesn't recognise the movement, for suddenly there's teeth in the scruff of his neck, hauling him headlong into the forest, and Strongclaw rises up before him. He butts him roughly in the stomach and expels him from the clearing, forcing what little air there was from Cariad's lungs like a warrior, just one of the pack.

In the distance, as he goes, someone calls for help.


Sunfeather drags him a small way from camp before she releases him, though Cariad is suddenly void of the will to move. The spectacle replays before his eyes, and he wonders just who pleaded for mercy. Perhaps it was Tui. She was always soft and kind. Beside him, Sunfeather wipes black hairs from her mouth and rolls her jaw back into alignment.

"You're not exactly a warrior, Cariad, or completely one of our own, but you're not them anymore either. The other. They don't own you."

"But you do," Caraid says, sitting up, watching her from the corner of his eyes.

"Yes!" she spits, jumping in front of him. "You owe us your life, because you took one of ours. You don't have the right to be you anymore- selfless, brave, foolish- because you have to be someone else. This is your only option, and to do so, you have to let the Clan be the way they have always been."

"I'm not Voletooth. I never knew him. I can't be this tom you see in your head, this perfect, stoic killer who sees an outsider and thinks, great, my next victim!" Cariad's return is harsh, low, and she doesn't flinch. "I encompass everything you stand against, Clanner. I owe you nothing at all."

Sunfeather raises her chin. "Don't say that, Cariad. You can be a warrior, a great one, even, if you ignore where you come from. Everyone in the Clan is trying to do just that, and you owe it to us to do that too."

He breathes out, hot with the rage of failure, angry and relieved that he is not back in camp throwing his life away for a cause that arrived too early.

"I'm exactly what you're trying to wipe out. You all think you're so great, so powerful, like you can sniff out some disease underneath the common folks' skin. You can't, you failed!" Sunfeather bares her teeth at him, balking at his words. "I loved someone! I loved her! You took her from me, and every day is just another one she spends thinking I'm dead."

Cariad closes his eyes; he can't stand to see Sunfeather stand where Elettra should be, or breathe her scent, be placated by her words. Elettra's face has, in fact, become little more than a fuzzy and indistinct memory.

Sunfeather sighs in front of him, jarring him back to attention. He was not sure how she would react; if she would flee, or slice him open, as seems to only be customary. Yet she stands before him with an irritated twist to her muzzle, a kind of empathy in her eyes. "You and everyone else," she rumbles. Cariad can only blink at her, bemused, still mildly distressed and utterly thrown by her bald statement. She does not look forgiving, or even sorry, but the heat of their fight has dissipated.

"Your kind doesn't know what love is," he says, bitterly, for they have no right to talk about concept they know nothing of.

"Not as you know it," Sunfeather concedes. "Here, it's a secret, twisted thing, broken and wrong. That doesn't mean it doesn't exist."

Cariad understands that Sunfeather is not relaying an opinion, a personal and hidden theory. "Who do you love?" he asks, wondering who it could be, slowly dissecting the nuances of her words.

She smiles softly. "Unimportant. It could hundreds, it could be nobody."

Cariad says nothing; he is no longer singular, special, individual. He is merely the only one that cares about it.

"We are only what we appear to be," Sunfeather says, stepping closer. "What we want you to see."

"What do you see, when you look at me?" he asks; this road does not yet feel like a dangerous one, but by its very definition, its nature, it's deadly.

"You're lost," Cariad, she breathes, her voice ruffling his whiskers and sending an unbidden shiver down his spine. He's more than lost; he's adrift, and all the landmarks he passes are alien things to him. "You don't know where to go, where to turn."

"Who to trust," he murmurs. Their whiskers are touching- the pain in his chest has dulled, turned to an unassuming ache. Blood has been spilled, and will spill again, but not here, in their secret grove in the woods. They are untouched.

Her eyes are a beautiful kind of amber in the shadows, bewitching in their warmth. She whispers, and he listens, and he obeys. "Start with me."


there's sooooo many mistakes and typos in this story, which i'm so sorry for- i have no beta reader, and i'm pretty much incapable of reading over what i've just written and a) actually liking it and, more importantly, b) picking out all of my copious errors. I really have no time or motivation to edit all of my chapters and pick them out, so i apologize for all the missed words, mis-types and general errors. thanks for putting up with them so far, and me by extension with my sporadic and untimely updates.