Something cloudy and vaguely dire looms over camp. The sky is dark and the leaves shiver, just tremble together, while Embershade wonders what they know. Wonders what omnipresence is here, knowing, and afraid.

Embershade has collated it all; her knowings, her discoveries, and her best laid plans. Set to watch the sun sink and something new dawn in its place… but would it be any brighter than the old thing, strong enough to survive the supernova, eclipse it, even? Because Embershade thinks she might now be wrong.

It's everything to do with that boldly handsome city tom. She curses herself for it - even as she relives the memory, smiles about it, and clutches at something new and brittle with reaching claws. Thaddeus. No, she doesn't regret it. Him. She just knows he's a harbinger of something else, and she let her eyes turn away from oncoming doom for a moment too long. Embershade thinks, maybe, she's been acting in haste. The city is coming for them, Embershade just knows it, and she's set the Clan on the edge of a precipice just in time. A push, a gently persistent breeze… anything could topple them.

But not just anything.

Dawnshadow sharpens her claws on the dead tree; the centrepiece of camp, now, a little stage of foreboding they stare at everyday. She is dragging veritable talons down the bark with bright, angry sounds; dry now, deadening, the wood just shreds under her touch. She seems to like that. Her Twigs, her nasty little gang, sit. Not still. They twitch like the nervous leaves above. Still, Embershade is concerned with them. Cloudstrike sits apart and keeps his eyes on her. She'd curl her lip at him, sneer a little, if she wasn't so sure it would send him running to Morningstar. She imagines the utter perfection of being outed as a traitor by PureClan's dear leader; a different beast to the thing she'd always been, hollowed out and filled up again all at once. It might be amusing to her, Embershade thinks, right until the moment she dies.

She trusts it won't happen like that. Morningstar is too volatile to respect old adages; things like not shooting the messenger, and all that. Embershade happens to know her pair values his skin, and likes keeping it all in one piece. It's a resort he won't want to touch until she gives him no choice. And she gives him plenty, now; would he like this mouse for lunch? Should she groom that infernal piece of fluff behind his ear, the one he never quite tames, or should she leave him the hell alone? She always gives him that choice and he takes it readily. Seems to sate him. That's all she needs him to be.

He's suspicious, though. There are things she knows and he wants in her head, to prise it open and pick her secrets out one by one, rifling through the way one searches for bloodripe ticks.

That doesn't stop her from reworking her plans; taking the bones, breaking them into new shapes. Cloudstrike can't know this, and it's nothing that can be spilled from her. Embershade would die before she voices this. She'll never say such things out loud, where half-vacant Morningstar may or may not listen, or care, but she'll touch the board with careful guidance, move pieces that won't notice the ground as they slide over it.

She's confident in this. Not prideful, any more. But she wears the guise of something else now.

The field must be re-shaped, she sees that well-enough now. Whatever Morningstar may be (whatever she hides, just barely, and whatever else has leaked from her these past strange moons) she is still deadly. Still a beast that knows the kill and loves it. The city is bringing a militia for their heads and Morningstar is their best defense, their only one, because StarClan only knows how the Clan will crumble without their ruinous figurehead to lead them. So Embershade must prove to them one thing. For now, they need her. For now, it's best to leave her, swaying and unbalanced, on the pyramidal hierarchy. Alive if not well. Murderous if nothing else at all.

Embershade glances up to the sun, counts to five, and when she looks down again, confident in her precision, the leader appears. Somewhat mistily. Nothing very imposing seems to accompany her, today. Morningstar steps out of her den, a little sluggish, blinking blind and wide at the sudden light of day. Unused to it, like an underground creature. Some kind of mole, maybe, only ten times more likely to kill you.

Now she is ready.

Just that morning, Embershade had taken her old littermate Mossfall out for a walk. Gathering moss for their nests. Gossiping - as Mossfall sees it. Embershade calls it prying. Guiding, even.

"Firestorm doesn't seem very interested in you," Embershade offered. It wasn't a black, dark secret. The whole camp would notice if they opened their eyes. In fact, she had seen him make conscious efforts to ignore his pair.

"No," Mossfall had admitted. "If I could only do something, make him notice me…"

"Notice you?" She had laughed. "Cloudstrike gives me an evil look every time I so much as talk to Morningstar. Can't stand the favour I carry with her, I guess."

She lets that pause, to seep in.

"You do a lot for Morningstar, don't you?" Mossfall asked. Anxiety turned her brown eyes hard, like clay baked in the sun.

"Oh, sure. She likes her information. Makes her notice me. And everyone else too, I suppose. Bunch of gossipers." She was sure to say it fondly. Casually. Mossfall would sense she was being led if she wasn't careful.

"You know a lot?"

"Course." Said blandly. Said with a little smile that knows many things.

"Anything you haven't told her yet?" Now Mossfall was the one leading. Embershade just fell into step - what a good puppet she had always been, how easily did she dance when her strings were held.

Embershade pretended to stop and consider. "One thing. You know, this might catch her attention. And Firestorm's too."

Mossfall was eager. The anxiety was melting from her expression like clayslip. Embershade felt a little bad, truly. She was leading Mossfall somewhere dark. "Tell me," Mossfall said. "Maybe I can deliver it to Morningstar instead."

"Sure," said Embershade. Anything, her tone said, for a friend. And she'd imparted the message, the critical information, the delivery instructions. Mossfall lapped it up. She only wanted to be a player, of course, in the grander schemes of the Clan. Something she'd never been, would know only briefly, and touch not again.

But this is the only path she sees. How else to make Morningstar truly snap, without ousting her fully? This is the thing she holds closest, and to touch it is to brush up against your own deathwish. It's why she can't do it herself. Embershade is a player. And there's moves yet to make.

Blank now, not a hint of apprehension on her face, Embershade idly watches camp. She has sat herself apart from the Deadwood because she wants to see their reactions from afar; measure them just so, leave no room in her for doubt.

Unplanned for, an unwelcome little hitch in her morning's plans, something approaches her. Unbidden. A familiar shape - though one that grows lesser with time, as her memory fogs and fades. She knew him very well once. Someone else is in tow. She risks rolling her eyes.

"Good morning," says Strongclaw.

She looks up, glances at his companion. Gives them a curt greeting. She has no room in her head to map conversations.

Strongclaw is fidgeting. He's looking well now, she notices; groomed, tidy, a hint of muscle tone under his long fur. Strange. Beside her, Voletooth looks the same as ever: hulking and unsure. She'd had to laugh when Sunfeather moved to the nursery. Funny that a city cat was about to be more successful than any of her peers at repopulating the Clan.

"Can I help you?" she asks. Strongclaw looks like he's working up to something. Odd, in itself, because he normally requires no invitation to start speaking.

"Yes," he says. "Perhaps we could move somewhere more… private?"

"No, I'm fine here." He can't know why she cannot do that, but the imperative refusal is clear in her voice. Let him drop it. Let him just drop it.

"I think… the two of you should know more about your… origins."

She risks a sharp glance at him. What is he saying? But Mossfall is walking into camp, as though she's taken a suitably long walk, and the main event is about to kick off.

Strongclaw is going on - hushed, as though he'd rather no one hears. No one but her and this random adopted rogue. "Both being born in the city, you know, having more in common than you might realise... in relation…I happened to know Voletooth's aunt, and even his mother too."

She has to hush him. Voletooth is making sounds of questioning, but Mossfall is stalking straight up to Morningstar with a rigid determination in her step. Bless her. She had been the right choice for this job.

But Morningstar does not notice her approach. Mossfall may as well be her own shadow as she stands there, wavering. The leader stares deep into the forest, her ears twitching, as if there's something to be gleaned from the deep. There is nothing to see, but it doesn't stop her looking, from scouring the trees and even the canopy above. She is wearing concentration, a look Embershade had forgotten in its lengthy absence.

Voletooth is still making some noise, but Strongclaw has fallen silent too, staring at the spectacle about to unfold. Perhaps he sees the same spark of something in his mother, the growth of some living thing resurrected.

"-and I hadn't been walking long when I caught the scent, very close to camp, a rogue Tainted male from what I could tell-" Mossfall is making her endeavour. Brave lass. Embershade feels a sense of pride, not misplaced. "But I saw him too. A big black tom. Scarred. From the city, I think."

Embershade waits, gut clenched, surely a ghost of her nervousness lingering on her face. Morningstar has no choice but to recognise this - and intimately, too. She will have to respond. Mossfall is fabricating this, but there's truth in it. Embershade has seen it herself. She only had to follow the clues.

"Your scent was there too, as if he had been following you-"

The leader is doing nothing. Just staring. The words wash right off her unruffled pelt.

Mossfall hesitates. It's not the nonresponse that's getting to her… she seems to be realizing something for herself.

"Or… or you had been meeting him…"

Embershade braces for the blow.

There is nothing. Morningstar is frozen, not even the breeze seems to touch her. Then, slowly, she moves her feet, quirks her head. Glides to the edge of the forest, which seems to reach back, stretching to her with long loving shadows.

Coolness convalesces in the pit of Embershade's stomach. Nothing is to plan here; she has certainly not proved her leader's ruthless efficiency intact. She's failed; and what's worse than that, than a design all of her own filled with flaws, is that everyone has seen it. Now everyone knows.

The strike does not come from Morningstar. Embershade barely sees it, her mind is racing, scrambling for substitutes and coming up hopelessly empty-handed.

The branches of the Deadwood creak.

Then Dawnshadow, an arrow-point, a hawk swooping down for the mouse it has spotted far, far below, is streaking across camp. She's not alone. With her comes Firestorm, Willowfang, Scarpelt, Burrwing, Cloudstrike… More than a match for one cat, and perhaps just enough to face the titan herself.

Morningstar turns very slowly. Awaking.

"Enough," Dawnshadow spits. "It's been long enough. Being ruled by incompetence and soft hands. You're a fossil, mother. You have no respect here. You have no power here anymore."

A pale light dawns in Morningstar's eyes, a gentle confusion. A blooming hardness.

"Wretch," she snarls. "I ought to have drowned you, insolent bitch."

Dawnshadow's smile is a blight on her face, crookedly fixed and corroded. "And you did not. Your mistake. You've made many more hence."

No, Embershade thinks. Too soon, too hasty. What have I done?

Morningstar has woken up, and the Clan is stirring too. She's never been challenged. Now something ugly and old is on her face, the hard mask reappeared, but it's rotten and slipping. She opens her mouth and fishes about for the words. It takes her a moment, as though the river has run dry.

"This is my Clan," Morningstar says. "PureClan! MY CLAN!" She screams it. But PureClan is only what she made it, and while some warriors, loyalists at black, shrunken heart, creep to her side, most seem planted in the earth, motionless as they watch.

Not one says a word.

Dawnshadow barrels forward into her mother - she just crumples, sinks into herself as though she is fragile. And she is. Only Embershade knows how truly, how deeply. She cannot fight here.

The other she-cat backs up, confused - she isn't bleeding, and how strange is that, that first blood has been refused - but she has no time to contemplate it. She will take the easy victory, the quick death. But there are old loyalists all around her and they fight. They make no concessions, there is no room for them. Tornear leaps in front of his leader, teeth bared, the picture of an avenging guardian.

Embershade waits for the bitter battle, the long bloodied fight to come. The whole Clan is watching too.

In a high, high arc, Dawnshadow's claws slash through the air. They come down quick. Embershade's not even sure the blow strikes home … until Tornear blinks, coughs blood, and his head slides from his neck. It falls with a thud to the ground, and his body seems to follow slowly. It only realises after a beat, a long moment of swaying. So does the Clan. Only after he falls, severed, come the long low sounds of horror.

If Morningstar is a master of violence, Dawnshadow must then be its lover. She places dripping claws, red now, back on the ground. A smile of contentment crosses her lips.

If Morningstar… if Morningstar... but where is Morningstar? The patch of clearing behind Tornear, untouched by his blood, is empty. She is vanished. Heads swing, eyes scan the clearing… but the only regal golden head here is Dawnshadow, already coming to terms with her sweet, easy victory. Only Embershade seems to realise the scant drops of blood, flung on the very edge of the clearing where it borders the forest, have not come from Tornear.

Morningstar is gone.

"Well now," Dawnshadow says, over the body of her Clanmate. She laughs. "Any further complaints?"

Not a word.

The Deadwood clique stares hard at Morningstar's remaining supporters, violently frozen in the midst of their protests. They back meekly away.

Scarpelt takes up the cry of Dawnstar! Dawnstar! and it is echoed without enthusiasm. Embershade mumbles along. This is not what she wanted. Not what she planned.

Dawnshadow snarls and the noise dies away. "This Clan has grown corrupt," she announces, sweeping her dark little eyes around the warriors. "It's fallen far from glory. Not your fault, not your fault," she soothes. "Morningstar grew lax and made you all soft. But I'll fix it. I will fix us."

Embershade watches her roving eyes stop. Pinpoint on something, pupils dilating. The next hunt begins.

"I start," she begins, "with the most obvious offence."

Her eyes are very nearly fixated on Embershade, and she begins to panic, but Dawnshadow is zeroing on someone else. Someone more her own size. Voletooth. Still, her proximity to him is more than enough cause for alarm. Embershade sidles away as subtle as her fear will allow her.

Voletooth stands. The Deadwood doesn't move, only Dawnshadow, and if he takes her down maybe he stands a chance. But what can he do against a force that decapitates at will? Surely it's a trick he's never learned. If he wants to keep his head, all he can do is run. But he doesn't. As she comes closer, closer, closer still, he does not run.

Strongclaw is standing too - ready to throw himself in the hurricane's path, more than willing, as always, to die. But she can't stomach more death, more than this, so she snags her claws in his pelt and forces him to look at her. He stares back wildly for a moment, seeing someone else, reliving a faraway moment.

"No," she breathes. "Please."

She does not love him. But he's more a father than anyone else to her, and if he has to die something in her will be crushed.

He stares at her, and he doesn't move. He does what she wants, which is nothing at all.

Dawnshadow reaches Voletooth like a seething, violent tide. She is ready to wash the stain of him away. Perhaps she will not make it too bloody.

"Ready to die, Cariad?" A strange word - takes her a moment to realise it's his name, his real one, that she refuses to use the one Morningstar stole and gave to him. "As you should have done?"

"Are you?" he throws back.

"I'm only righting a past wrong," says she. "It's not person-"

Something ripples through the assembly and she pauses. They're all looking at something. A cat has appeared on the edge of the camp - Morningstar! she thinks - but it's a face none of them know. Automatically, then, an enemy. But they do not move.

"The city sends its regards," it begins, a tom, a little quiver in his voice, "and invites PureClan to a discussion of assets and terms in the meadow beyond the forest-"

Dawnshadow howls and leaps for him, across camp. Voletooth is forgotten. A reprieve, for him, but still he doesn't move. But the whole Clan is up now, running, chasing the city tom as he disappears into the woods. They sent a fast runner. Wise enough, on their part, for the whole Clan gives chase with Dawnshadow at their head. This is blood they know how to spill, and it will settle them some, bring a little peace and camaraderie sorely missed… So they stream headlong into the forest, a whole pack, and Embershade is caught up. She's not telling her feet to move; something else is propelling her, the pulsing PureClan hivemind. But what are they running to? What awaits? This is folly, this will be death, but she cannot stop running.

The tom is not caught. He makes it to the meadow and dashes across. The Clan begins to follow: muddled and confused, they come to a stop, a vision affronting their eyes, a thing never witnessed lying before them. They can hardly recognise resistance, even as it steps up and smiles boldly up at them.

For, of course, something awaits in the meadow. Many things, in fact - many claws, a thousand teeth, a domino battalion come to fight. And die. Most of all, of all the things, come to kill.


happy birthday lover