Chapter 96: Conspiring
It was about time I got caught back up with Tigerstar. Somehow much and also little had changed. I guess it only mattered in a sense of perspective. Either way, I found Tigerstar decidedly quick. He was chatting with his suck up son. You'd think after he fell to his father's hubris, he'd be a bit less trusting of him, but here he was following in his father's paw steps hoping to be more than a shadow. Sad thing about that was that he'd never amount to being more.
I was actually surprised by Tigerstar's news. He hadn't been messing with the living lately, more intent on building his forces in the Dark Forest first. When I queried as to why, he responded that he needed more stable minded cats. He proceeded to elaborate that he was building some kind of Dark Forest training group founded off zealous loyalty. The members of the living would be recruited as Dark Forest cats taught them means to better fight, skills that were difficult to teach, lost to time, or required the stakes of life and death to learn. While they were here, their trainers would try to sway the living cats to their way of thinking. It was a surprisingly clever scheme. I had to give him credit. Though, it did leave one flaw I planned to exploit.
These trainees were to be swayed to a method of thinking instead of convincing them to join us. It was overall a hit or miss plan. Tigerstar was not coming at this from an angle of persuasion. He wasn't trying to convince them he wasn't the bad guy. He wanted them to want to be the bad guy. That's where his largest flaw lay. No one ever really wants to be the bad guy. Often, if they commit an act of evil, they try to have some level of justification. My personal plan was to strip that away. He'd have far less supporters on the day of his attack if I did this right. Only the most truly depraved of mind shatteringly deluded would follow Tigerstar in the end.
Tigerstar 'recruited' me as one of his future mentors. I'd be given the cats with parental issues to try and corrupt. How strangely fitting. It wouldn't be long now until Tigerstar made his move. I think he only held back due to being entertained by the ongoing chaos surrounding the living due to the so-called prophet Sol. My other guess was that he didn't want Sol's ongoing involvement to interfere with our plan. I think at some basic level Tigerstar understood the Dark Forest and its cats were given power by belief. Our future attack could not occur without the clans below having their full attention directed at us. We needed to invade when we were the only singular threat.
Tigerstar left me to look through his recruited cats. I personally took that as a challenge. It was the perfect time to create some moles and traitors. The things I was looking for was unintentionally manifested powers and a sense of guilt. I found one with powers and one without. I waited for an opportunity to single them out without making it noticeable. The one with powers was easy because it seemed they somewhat feared interacting with others. Ironic because their power manifested very similarly to Darkstripe's. Their willpower, instead of being an infectious worship, seemed to be this indominable thought that she had some level of sway over others. I'd never considered how powers factor in to how one persuades another until this point. I'd have to keep my powers under check lest I manage to accidently mind control some more cats into blindly worshiping me. I didn't even do anything to Ravenwing, and he had made a dedicated cult to me.
I decided to take the tactical approach when addressing this cat. She had her emotions guarded like she feared what would happen if they were let out. It was largely suppressed but I could still sense the guilt that lay within. It was the kind when you killed something more than you intended.
"I've been wanting to speak with you. You're different than the others. Whether that is good or bad, I have not decided yet." I mewed setting the tone.
She turned quickly, not realizing I had approached. To be fair to her, the Dark Forest seems to have somewhat of a will of its own, and since my ascendance, it has become more aligned with me. With the barest of intents, it leaps to fulfil my desires. I hadn't even noticed my own desire to go unnoticed.
"Who are you? What do you want?" She hissed.
"Oh, feisty. Listen. I am not here to play games. I'm not here to fight. I know things. I know far more about you than you'd wish I did. Every moment I'm here, I'm learning more. Let's see, a mother same as I. What a tragedy, the loss of your kits, but you got your revenge, except… It wasn't all what you wanted it to be. Your enemy, the one who you blamed for your kits' death… She was pregnant, mere days from giving birth herself, and you killed her. I can feel the guilt you foster. It wasn't for your intended victim that you feel guilt. It was the kits. You hadn't known until it was too late. Now, instead of having avenged one life, you'd stolen four kits'." I stated like it was taking time and effort to read.
"You! How dare you look into my past! You don't know what it's like! You could never know!" She spit.
"That's where you're wrong. I was once a mother myself. My kits may have been born of an interclan affair, but they deserved full lives none the less. The medicine cat found out and alerted the clan leader. They had assumed the kits were the offspring of the leader's deceased son despite me never confirming it. It is a queen's right to never admit parentage. Regardless, they set up a farce of a trial and exiled my kits and I in the middle of a storm. We had nowhere else to go. I tried to get them to their other parent's clan, but a flood took them away. One of my former friends had just watched as they drowned. The mate I had hoped to move them to rejected me to save his own pelt. I killed all three in revenge, the medicine cat, the former friend, and the cowardly former mate. Do you know where that got me? Here. I cannot raise my kits in Starclan. What Tigerstar wants, it won't work, nor is it right. I've got my own group of cats who want to earn redemption here in the forest, but we can't fully operate with Tigerstar's army. We need insiders, and I want you to be one of them. Are you willing to seek redemption? Do you really desire to right what you did wrong?" I mewed passionately.
The she-cat hesitated for a while before giving her answer. "Yes. I want to see my kits again. I want to apologize to those kits I killed."
"Then welcome to the Unseen Stars. My name is Mapleshade, otherwise known as The Mother." I answered.
"Fallendawn." She mewed as she nodded at me. I could already tell she'd be an interesting friend to keep and the perfect cat to make sure Tigerstar's plan falls apart at the perfect moment.