His mouth feels dry and strange. Like bone, perhaps. He imagines he is tasting bone, underneath it blood; tries not to hate it, thinks what it will mean. Perhaps he'll only die with the fake thing on his tongue, the sour and nervous thing, and the real one he'll never know. Perhaps he'll die early.

Thaddeus isn't planning, though, for an early death.

He'll fight and murder. He'll learn the taste of death soon enough – long as he's lucky and picks the fight that doesn't kill him first.

Long before Fray reappears in the meadow (miraculously unharmed, a divine thing likely to be exceedingly, excessively temporary), they are heard. Howling. Jeering. Rage that cannot form words; rage that does, violently. It all echoes through the woods – strange thing, he notices, all those trees in one place, growing up dark and tall like teeth - and Thad listens to the choral hatred rebound off branches, under shadows, growing ever louder. Screaming closer one obscenity at a time, death-threats leap-frogging promises of pain. Some number of the army must feel smug, some appropriation of ironic; here comes the Clan, screaming for death, only they don't know how much or for who. Well, it will be for all of them. Thad's smart enough to realise most of them, all of them, will by dead by dark.

It is a trade, after all. Death doesn't work in any other way.

Thad looks at his little brother. Not all of them, he vows. Not this one. "Ready?" he asks.

Gideon would never go if he thought he was being sent away. He's not a coward, seems to always be trying to prove it. But his mission means more to him than pride and courage. His own life, maybe. Gideon will never stop trying to find Khia – even if she's dead, pale and vague and no longer of this earth. He'll look beyond, then. But Gideon seems to think she lives still, and this will be his best chance to look; supervising officers locked in battle, or dead, because that works too, and Clan beasts engaged in combat too futile to refuse.

His tail twitches; sharp to the right, once, twice, once more, as though trying to finally excise the kink from the bone. It's hopeless, maybe as much as the rest of them.

But he just says, "Ready," and stares ahead, grimly standing by. Can't go til the Clan is in the meadow. Can't leave until they're otherwise occupied, murdering again, so he will not be murdered in turn. Must be hell on the nerves and the patience, too. Just as much as waiting to die.

"Could be anywhere," Thad makes sure to say. The screaming and howling is close now, and he forgets to speak up; he's just one note amongst the many. But Gideon hears him, because his ear twitches back and he nods. "Check as far as you can."

Anything to keep him away from the battleground, for just a little while. For as long as it takes.

Maybe if he finds her he won't even come back. Couldn't bring Khia to a place like this. He hopes, anyway, that's how it will go. That, even after sunset, Gideon will have someone to stand beside.

Thad glances at his other companions – no chance they'll be leaving, voluntarily. Brava is wide-eyed, excited even. Elettra looks sadly hopeful, because Oakpaw has told them, despite it all, Cariad's alive and probably even well. His eyes cross to the wayward Clanner. Thad can't even begin to decipher the looks on his face – the flickering, uncertain slideshow of them, flipping too fast through fear and hate and hope. Those are the ones he can name, but there's more, far more, and Thad guesses they're only symptomatic flashes of whatever lies within. Thad's not afraid to call Oakpaw a complicated mess, but he does so privately, because that mess has a PureClan mandate and sharp claws.

As he watches, the unsubtle theatre on Oakpaw's face comes to a slow stop. Something is drowning it out from within; rapture eats away the fear and sorrow and burrowing anger, as he gazes to the forest's edge. To the thing standing on the forest's edge – the many things, and their snake-head.

The bone-dry ache of his mouth creeps down Thad's throat. The golden figure at the front – so large, beastly even, she shadows those that stand next to her, can only be one cat. Already she's bloody.

Morningstar.

Thad bites his tongue. Reality seems displaced, wrong, even, until the blood washes clean his senses. How did he get here, really? Has he gone along with this for so long, ignoring every reason to run, for some traitor's cause. The blood's enough to quiet the disturbance in him. While he's here, Gideon will run. While he's here, there's a chance he sees the old dynasty toppled.

While he's here, maybe… slim chance, that maybe, he'll see her.

Thaddeus blinks away the sentiments clouding his eyes. The Clan has arrived and if they won't indulge such things, neither will he.

But he can't help looking. If he knows where she is, he'll go the other way. Not that he entertains the idea he could kill her… but perhaps, if Sable never makes that choice, she'll be saved in some small way.

But she's not here, or else she wears the shadows too well. Thad is drawn again to the hulking leader of the Clan, who has paused on the rim of the forest. He'd expected an immediate chargedown, for the crusade to begin in earnest without the risk of forethought. The army has taken this as a good sign; they hustle to the prisoners, withdrawing Peppermask. Ice and Emory stalk past the guards, pushing the Clan tom ahead of them like a shield.

The Clan begins to mutter and it carries across the meadow; the touchings of leaves borne across a breeze, the rustle of grasses in green voices. The mumblings of uncertainty, Thad thinks.

They weren't expecting one of their own on the other side.

Peppermask is talking and he hears it faintly. The words are wry, his tone almost comical, and Thad himself becomes unsure. "Well," the warrior is saying, "if Morningstar were here I'd be dead already." And then he checks his paws, his throat, as if to make sure. He laughs.

A current runs over Thad's body. If the golden figure at the edge of the forest is not Morningstar, who is it? Who else could have such a presence - be coated in so much blood?

And if Morningstar is not here… where is she?

Looking at Oakpaw, he searches for answers. He doesn't find any, only the trace of curiosity on his face. If Morningstar has been deposed, he's not mourning her loss.

Under the guise of peace - only in appearance, only disguised as the stillness and silence that has fallen over the arena - Ice presents Peppermask and calls for peace.

"We will return your lost members," Ice says. His voice is sonorous, though it does not have to be; no one stirs across the divide. He is too loud for comfort. "We return yours, you return ours. And then perhaps we can discuss matters."

Thad knows Ice will sue for peace on one condition; he would lead the Clan, have the power he's coveted for so long. He's never said it in so many words; it just shows.

PureClan seems to think as one entity. Perhaps they are relying on one to think for them.

Eventually one breaks from the fold, comes across the field of her own volition. Thad squints; for a moment she seems almost familiar, though he's certain he's never met this cat. She carries herself with stern composure; her dappled fawn back is rigidly straight, her eyes fixed and focused. As she draws near something slips from under her mask - her jaw shudders once, involuntary. And stills.

She reaches no-man's-land, equidistant from Clan and army. Waiting, she flicks her tail, and beckons Peppermask forward.

Ice and Emory draw him forward, and when they meet, Emory makes sure his voice carries.

"We would like to negotiate terms," he decrees, "but we will fight. First, the prisoners you keep. We'll exchange them for your runaway warrior. We have your apprentice too."

"Nettlecloud?" asks Ice.

She hasn't looked at them, but stares up at Peppermask. A rogue warrior, an unbound one; perhaps she'd never expected to see him again. Maybe they thought him dead.

"Do you accept?"

A thing has fallen completely over Peppermask. A calmness.

Nettlecloud does not accept. "I'm so pleased," she says, "that Morningstar never got the chance to kill you."

She moves like a breath of wind. In a stunning feat, in a move of supreme elegance, Nettlecloud hooks her claws under his chin, wrenches it up, and scores a line from jaw to tail. He is fallen, bleeding, dead before Thad realises he has witnessed his first death, in the act.

After that, there is no more silence. The stillness has broken and, like fire alighting, death spreads.