Chapter 32: Our New Purpose

Returning to camp was a silent affair. Too much was running through both our minds at the revelation that all that occurred was somewhat planned by Starclan since my birth. It may have been a prophecy, but all the times I'd received my own special omens and visions were suddenly called into question. It was both fortunate and unfortunate that Ravenwing had devolved into such a forthcoming, dare I say, cultist. The way he looked at me was the same way a new medicine cat looks at the Moonstone.

This cat I knew so well once was now something else. It reminds me of a cuckoo bird, those nest thieves that replace a bird's spawn. The nest that housed Ravenwing's mind had been hollowed and replaced by whatever that cat was. This new cat worshipped me for no other reason than a prophecy, and he made it abundantly clear he wasn't the only one.

I was somehow the harbinger of their Grand Prophecy and they seemed all too willing to ensure it came to pass. I faintly wondered if I'd ever been as attuned to Starclan as I once thought or if they just brute forced the connection because they didn't want their prophecy cat making a misstep. I hissed to myself. How much of my life had been dictated by them? What had I done on my own, and what did they trick me into believing I accomplished? My faith was wavering. Was I ever strong or did they fake that too? Was I just a sacrificial pawn? My kits flashed in my mind at the thought. No, I wasn't, but that didn't mean that I was free of their chosen sacrifices. My kits were just means to cause me distress. They wanted me here. They wanted me to be their monster, their villain to overcome. Undoubtably, they had their own hero lined up to slay me.

I felt Frecklewish lay her tail on me to calm the storm brewing in my mind. I gave her a soft look of appreciation before finding my resolve. They wanted a monster, but they made me too well. I'm clever and now knew how they pull the strings. I can play their game. I can work within their prophecy, but things won't end like they hope. I'm not going to be the slain beast. They gave me their prophecy, so I'm going to bend and twist it to my will. Like a viper, I'm going to slip and slither through all their barricades and end things my way. If I'd learned anything here in the Darkforest, it's that these prophecies seem to bring calamity as often as they just predict them. That day I break into Starclan, I'm going to remove the source of all prophecy. Maybe then cats will learn to live their own way. Sure things might get harder, but to prevent any cat from being a puppet like they were trying on me, I'd say the exchange was fair.

Frecklewish must have sensed my new resolve. "Mapleshade? You've got that face, the one where you set out on an impossible plan. What did you think of?"

I looked at Frecklewish with ambition now that I had an end goal to strive towards. "Starclan has made many mistakes. They exile cats for defying their prophecies. They puppet cats from their birth. But most of all, they're willing to sacrifice others to push their prophecies. I can think of only one answer for a place like that. Someday we are going to invade them and I'm going to rip the source of all their prophecies right out of the land. Without prophecy, they won't have reason to sacrifice the innocent. What happened to my kits won't happen again."

Frecklewish slowly nodded at the thought. As long as she remembered, prophecy had always been a thing of change for the clans, but within their own history, she'd heard of her fair share of prophecies leading to a cat's ruin. Maybe she'd been hanging around her new clanmates too much, but it seemed Starclan had touched each of them differently. Boragepelt had been outed by Starclan leading to the ruin of her recovering clan. Quietstep was cursed with extreme sound sensitivity apparently for a one-off prophecy where he'd hear enemies enter the territory before the battle, only for his super hearing to turn on him and drive him to madness. Those were just two examples. It seemed Starclan was far too willing to interfere with the living while somehow beding totally apathetic to what it meant to be alive. To them, it seemed death was just a statistic that meant they'd get new members.

Frecklewish already knew I was almost ready for a revenge plot, so she decided to distract me. "Hey. Now that you know Appledusk rejected you from fear and not malice, how are you feeling."

That certainly got me thinking. Something changed in me. I no longer felt that impenetrable barrier in my mind when I thought of romance. My growing emotions involving Frecklewish and Splitpelt no longer triggered painful hallucinations. I felt… liberated.

"I think I moved on. I don't feel afraid anymore, like trying again won't mean they'll stab me in the back."

I had been mainly voicing my answer to give credence to my thoughts without looking at Frecklewish. When I turned to face her, my voice caught up in my throat. What was happening? Why could I feel my ears burning, and when did it become so hard to look away from her? Frecklewish sensed my new feelings through that unspoken connection she and Splitpelt had somehow attached to me. Splitpelt sensed it too because he left the conversation he was in the middle of. I spotted him and somehow that unfiltered attraction intensified. Had I really been holding this back? It was like a wave busted through a dam. Everything I'd been too fearful to realize came surging up. I somehow felt both nauseous and vicious at this surge. I desperately wanted to sink my claws into something to ride off the rush. Splitpelt caught my new emotions given his own claws were flexed as well.

I barely managed to sputter out, "Let's go to the training hollow. There are some things I want to do now, and I want both of you."

Frecklewish perked at my statement. My lust and bloodlust were both skyrocketing. One could even call it bloody love. The three of us set out to the hollow, to both cure my vicious itch and my lustful itch.

Somehow it was everything I could ever dream of. The sore bruises made the rest all that more satisfying. Our battle fatigue somehow let us have more energy on the other side. I left two knicks in my ears, one from Frecklewish and one from Splitpelt. I could heal them away instantly, but I wanted to keep them as a marking that they were mine and I was theirs. We curled up there in a cuddly pile that stank of sweat and faintly iron. I never felt more complete.