tw / descriptions of corpses , blood , gore

"Deep underwater, there is a cavern made from bone, held together by sinew.

"I have seen it.

"I have smelled the rotting walls made of meat.

"In my hunger, I have picked meat off bone,

"Chewed on the rot,

"And forced the withered flesh down my congealed throat."

Chapter 2:: The Valley of Death

There is a single path, seldom used, that runs from the Gatheringplace to the bottom of the mountains. And at the bottom: the shore of the Floodlands.

Now, twelve cats walked in ones and twos down the path - twelve was a lot for one patrol, Shadepaw thought - and those that had something to say talked quietly.

Shadepaw walked next to Sharpfang, trying to match his step. But Sharpfang was bigger than him, and had a self-assuredness that Shadepaw lacked.

"Excuse me-" From behind them, Wolfpaw squeezed past. Shadepaw pressed into Sharpfang as Wolfpaw caught up to Sunfleck. He watched them greet each other, and wondered what they were saying.

"I didn't know that medicine cats could be warriors," Shadepaw remarked.

"It's not often talked about," Sharpfang answered dryly. Swept under the rug, as Shadepaw's mother would say. "But yes. Before you were apprenticed, Sunfleck was a medicine cat."

"What happened?"

Sharpfang twitched his whiskers. "That's not for me to say. Whatever happened between Sunfleck and StarClan is between them."

Some things should not be spoken of.

Shadepaw swallowed, and he looked at the sky. The last stars were fading into the dawn, now, swallowed by the sun.

"But," Sharpfang said quietly, catching Shadepaw's attention again, "a medicine cat's vows are for life."

Shadepaw looked at Sunfleck again. "Is that why he's here?" he asked before he could stop himself.

Sharpfang stopped walking suddenly. Shadepaw stopped, too, looking up at him. But Sharpfang did not look back. He stood still, letting the cats behind him through, and only when they had all passed did he speak.

"Shadepaw-"

"What?" If Shadepaw had any sense, he'd have swallowed his combative tone. If it were anyone but Sharpfang, he wouldn't have spoken at all. "Everyone knows this a death sentence."

The apprentices were all talking about it before the announcement, whispering-

"I wonder who will be chosen."

"None of us, I'm sure."

And then Shadepaw and Jackalpaw were chosen, and-

"I wonder if they'll come back."

"Jackalpaw will."

"Jackalpaw's the first one getting himself killed."

Then Cloudpaw looked at Shadepaw, eyes full of guilt, and they stared at each other, and Shadepaw felt the resentment at first but then it settled and they stared and stared and Shadepaw knew that when news of his death reached FalconClan, Cloudpaw would stand over an unmarked grave and cry and cry, "It should have been me," before he went on living for the rest of his life and never looked back again, never thanked him even once for dying in his place.

Sharpfang sighed - a sharp, frustrated noise that made Shadepaw's eyes snap back to him. He felt that they shared the same expression now, a pouted snarl at each other that was not directed towards each other but may well have been, for all they could not direct it at those who deserved it.

"Shadepaw, why do you think you and I are here instead of Cloudpaw and Sliverstreak?" Sharpfang asked finally.

Shadepaw ticked his tail and said nothing. They both knew the reason - Silverstreak was Sharpfang's brother - charismatic and brightly-colored, and Cloudpaw was his promising apprentice. Meanwhile Shadepaw, as he had come to understand, was given to Sharpfang in his kithood for a reason.

Sharpfang acknowledged his silence with a nod. "I will not lie to you. This quest…" he looked over the wastelands, "is in bad faith." His gaze turned to the cats still walking in front of them. "And all of the twelve us are here for a reason."

Answering his gaze, Irisfern at the back of the patrol looked back at them. She first looked at Sharpfang, and then Shadepaw, and it was as if a chill suddenly set in his bones. The deep blue gaze was unsettling for a reason he didn't know, and it froze him in place until she looked away.

Sharpfang started walking again, and Shadepaw hurried to match his step.

"If anything happens," he murmured, "you go to Irisfern if you can't come to me."

Surprised, Shadepaw looked up at him. He glanced down at Shadepaw, and Shadepaw could tell that he was trying to be comforting.

"Trust me," he said.

Shadepaw looked away, and then nodded.

Sharpfang was the only one that he trusted.

.o0O0o.

As he descended, Shadepaw began to notice that the dried lands were somehow textured, not the unmarred wasteland that they had seen from the summit of the mountains. But it didn't occur to him to wonder why; in fact, he didn't let his gaze linger on the ground for a long enough time to wonder at all.

It hit him after he rounded a particularly large rock, right behind Sharpfang, a jolt making his paws stand in place when he saw them-

Corpses.

Corpses among corpses among corpses among corpses stretched as far as anyone could see into the dawn, laid out across the dry weeds and hollow tree trunks, laid on top of each other without any ceremony of sentiment.

A sick feeling started in Shadepaw's throat. It spread down into his heart, and to his gut, and to his frozen paws whose claws dug into the ground. An ugly realization stung him then, and stung him so hard that he sharply gasped as he tried to catch his breath.

For all the years of hoping that there was life in the water -

salvation in the water -

there lay only corpse among corpse,

embedded in the ground.

Desperately and by instinct, Shadepaw looked to Sharpfang for comfort. There was none. He was also staring out at the bodies with wide eyes, afraid but better at hiding the fear than Shadepaw.

Shadepaw fixed his expression to be more like Sharpfang's, and then he looked at the other cats of the patrol. They all, too, were recovering from the realization. Shadowhisker from HeatherClan was the first to move, flitting quickly between cats to say something in Irisfern's ear. She perked as Shadepaw watched, warily, and said something back to him just as quickly. Just as secretively.

The rest of the cats were suddenly doing the same. They spoke in quick, panicked whispered between their own clans, huddled together in threes. Jackalpaw appeared next to Shadepaw, his long fur ruffled.

"Is this really our quest, Sharpfang?" he asked. "This is what we're supposed to do?" Shadepaw heard a bile in his voice that he was sure they shared.

"They are Drowned," Sharpfang said. "They must be." His voice was calmer.

"But there's so many."

"It's been hundreds of years."

But Shadepaw spoke. "They look new."

Sharpfang and Jackalpaw both looked at him. Sharpfang's face was stern, but Jackalpaw's was close to a sneer. Shadepaw thought it would have been a snarl if he didn't have respect for Sharpfang.

Eventually, Sharpfang conceded. "It is strange," he said. Nothing more than that.

When the whispers started to die down, Sharpfang walked forward, signaling to Shadepaw to stay put. He met Irisfern, Darkleaf and Breezetail in a group of their own, the four leaders of their patrols. They spoke together hushedly while everyone else watched and tried to look like they weren't watching, until Darkleaf stepped away.

"We'll go forward," she announced. There was a hiss in her words, and she shook her head as if shaking off a bee sting on her nose. "Or we'll lose the light."

So they went forward.

Shadepaw and Jackalpaw walked together, now, each of them pressed into opposite sides of Sharpfang's flank.

.o0O0o.

There is green in the mountains.

It is not often seen by FalconClan, who lives higher on the mountains than any other clan. It is in the small valley of the Gatheringplace, the spring in the DewClan camp, the westernmost HeatherClan border, the peppered bushes in the MistClan flatlands.

Shadepaw sometimes looks out over the edge of Deadheart Cliff at these patches of green, vaguely in the distance, and wonders how it feels to have soft dirt underpaw instead of sharp pebbles and hard stone. How does it feel to leap safely through the grass to catch a mouse, rather than through the air to catch an escaping bird? When he was younger, Shadepaw wished he had wings. Now, he wishes he could jump onto one of those birds, ride its wings to a place away from home where there was grass, clean water, no Silverstreak and not even any Sharpfang.

Some part of Shadepaw was selfishly hoping there would be someplace green and full of life below the mountains. In that case, even if he died on this quest, it would be after seeing something beautiful. After all, the birds still migrated every winter.

.o0O0o.

On the shore of corpses, there was hesitation only for a moment before Darkleaf and Irisfern ventured out first.

This close, underpaw, Shadepaw realized that they were not so much dumped on heaps of each other, but rather as if they had all fallen in battle. There was spattered blood, pulled claws and snarled teeth on many of the cats.

Shadepaw had been in one battle before, on the plateau between FalconClan and MistClan territory. It was a bloody battle, brutal and unforgiving even to apprentices. After it was over, no clear winner from either side, Shadepaw had staggered in the light of the red sunset, checking every fallen body until he found Sharpfang's.

This was different.

He wasn't injured and wasn't desperate, at least not in that way. He didn't feel that bloodsoaked horror like before, but a stale version of it, almost calm in the clear morning sun.

"What's that smell?" Jackalpaw asked suddenly from Shadepaw's left.

Shadepaw sniffed the air with some trepidation. Subconsciously, he had been expecting the horrific scent of death to have stagnated the air past what he could stomach. But instead, he was surprised to smell something sweet, flowery even. He sniffed again, but like Jackalpaw, he couldn't identify exactly what.

It was Irisfern who could. From Sharpfang's other side, she sniffed the air.

"Mums," she said. "Chrysanthemums. They used to grow in the place where I was born."

Shadepaw noticed Sharpfang's side eye, and then he remembered - Irisfern was the only clan cat who wasn't born in the mountains. From what Shadepaw knew from gossip, she was found as a kit floating in the water. Crying. Drowning. It was a HeatherClan cat that had saved her - Shadepaw didn't know which one, or what they had been doing down at the shore.

He was told that Irisfern remembered nothing about the place of her birth. But he also knew that memories came and went. Sometimes they were vivid, horrible things that overtook the mind completely. And sometimes they were just the scent of a flower that grew near a kithood den.

Again he thought of all the birds that flew somewhere for the cold season. If only they were migrating now - maybe they could have followed them. As it was, all they knew was that the birds flew south. And so south they went.

They got far without incident. It was midday, and by unspoken agreement the cats had spread out, mostly staying within their own clans.

It was Sunfleck and Wolfpaw who found them. Bodies torn apart.

Torn into by jaws and teeth much larger than a cats. Eaten with a hunger far more brutal than a bird.

Yet another realization settled into Shadepaw, thought it was less of a sting or a sickness, and more of a stone of pus and dread that set itself in his stomach.

"Well," said Shadowhisker from HeatherClan. "Only one thing to eat around here." Once that grim statement was acknowledged and digested by everyone, Sunfleck spoke.

"What ate it?"

Silence.

Even prey was given the courtesy of burial, and even then only after all the meat was eaten from their bones and acknowledgement of their lives was given

Shadepaw stared into the glassy eyes of one of the bodies..

So far, he had felt pity when he looked at these corpses, along with the horror of it. But now, staring into the eyes of a torn-apart corpse, he felt jealousy.

Because at least these cats had been dead when they were eaten.

Fun fact when I first wrote this when I was a kid, Shadepaw was the main character lol

I love him and Sharpfang very much (almost as much as Irisfern kljhugyihoug)