Chapter 5
There was a journey over the sunrise, but what they found will never be learned.
The ground was wet, the sky was clear.
The storm had come to pass, despite Aspenpaw's fears that it may last forever.
There was a howling harmony of monsters from the near to the distance, like they were in pain.
The city seemed at a standstill, yet Aspenpaw continued on.
He had walked for so long that he'd forgotten how long it really had been.
The ground was murky, like the bottom of a river, bits of crowfood in the current of rushing water, up halfway of his legs as he waded through.
Aspenpaw was in a demention of his habitat, disgusting slime and gunge sweeping across his fur and skin with every movement.
He paused for a moment.
He thought he heard somebody singing.
His brother.
It was just the swash of the water banging against the buildings, echoing up, up, up to the slipping clouds, they drifted like sap down the sides of the world in a comatose existence.
That's where he wanted to be, alone and afraid, but unharmed.
He wished to be free of consciousness, but he feared death like any form of life does.
He didn't want to live, and he didn't want to die.
There were faces before, like hot stones, claw marks embedded in them as cats tried to attach a grip.
Aspenpaw didn't believe they were real, until one of them, one of two, spoke,
"How long d'ya want to live, little tom? 'Cause if it's anythin' longer thanna minute, you had better turn that misshapen face o' yours and run as fast as those weak little legs'll take ya!" Aspenpaw snapped back to reality at the threat, taking a moment to come up with his response,
"I'm just passing by, if you wouldn't mind," There was an edge to his voice which he hadn't wanted to be there,
"Oh, well then why don' ya just come right this way!" The same tom in front of him taunted, standing still and waiting for Aspenpaw to make a move.
The other cat there was a young she-cat, though Aspenpaw was having a hard time discerning scents right now with the muck still flowing under him.
She didn't look very threatening, standing behind the tom,
"I'm just passing through, if you wouldn't mind," Aspenpaw emphasized, the same tone caught in his throat, a bit harsher this time.
The tom lowered himself and growled.
Aspenpaw suddenly swung a paw at the tom.
He struck him right across the cheek with a sheathed paw, just trying to scare the tom off.
The tom was caught entirely off guard, as if he didn't even know how to defend himself, and hit his head against the wall of the structure they were standing beside.
Aspenpaw was immediately horrified by his actions.
The she-cat rushed to her partner's side.
He looked like he would be okay, but the blood protruding from his head didn't give Aspenpaw any pleasant thoughts.
He took off running in the direction which he had intended to go the whole time, not even minding the flood water anymore.
He was scared, more than he ever had been, as if he were running for his life, and yet nobody was following.
He was completely alone.
The sides of the walls were slowly closing in.
The flood was over, and the sun shone meekly through the hazy clouds ahead.
Aspenpaw was lost inside his mind.
He hadn't been aware of his movements since the altercation earlier.
In his head he kept seeing his paw bolt out and strike the territorial tom.
He had been hostile to Aspenpaw, but to assault him in such a way was a terrible act.
He felt like a lowly creature of the night, making enemies of everybody and everything he came across, either that, or pushing them away.
Aspenpaw had always been an angry tom, and he had never had good control over his emotions.
He snapped at his clanmates, even at his brother, yet always felt justified for it.
It wasn't until he was completely alone with his emotions that he realized how terrible he had been to so many cats, even when they treated him so well.
But he had never struck anybody before, never been violent beyond his words when he was upset.
Except for once.
It felt like such a long time ago.
He was only a kit then, still more than three moons away from apprenticeship.
It was a cold morning, just during the beginning of leaf-bare.
There was frost, but not yet snow, and the surrounding river around camp still ran as expected.
He had woken up with his brother by his side, but nobody else.
Their mother wasn't there, and there were no other queens in the den, as Birdnose was confined to the Medicine Cat Den, never being able to leave again.
The nest was as cold as rainfall, and Aspenpaw remembered a crackle in his front leg bones as he stretched, waking his brother.
They had gone to the den entrance, afraid to leave on their own, instead at first just peering out into the view of camp.
Their mother was out there, her shining silver fur a perfect match to the bright, cloudy day.
Aspenpaw had rushed out into the clearing, afraid to be without her, but he stopped when she turned to see him.
There was a dull glint in her eyes, grief, but he didn't understand it at the time.
She started to pad towards the two kits, and Aspenpaw remembered feeling intensely afraid of her in this moment.
He knew that something was wrong, but he couldn't understand it, so the fear manifested as their mother.
But she didn't do anything to hurt him, she just laid down on the dirt and pulled her kits close against her body, and she whispered to them, "Daddy's gone. He's not coming back,"
She was hurting as she spoke to them, but he couldn't understand that.
He got angry.
He was afraid and upset.
He hit her, over and over again with his tiny paws, and she let him.
His brother was crying.
Their mother was sick.
She was dying.
It was one of Aspenpaw's worst memories, and whenever his brother wasn't on his mind, it was her who haunted him.
His paws were still moving somewhere in the city.
He was so lost at this point that he had no reason to even try to figure out where he was in relation to anything.
The sky was opening up, small beams of light across the scenery, illuminating the way in the dark underbelly of the city.
The whole place stunk of crowfood and bile, spilling out from large containers knocked down by the time-limited rivers.
He could hear shouting from nearby, some dispute between twolegs, rough voices, like their throats had been whittled down over time.
Aspenpaw got up against the wall, dragging his tail across it as he trudged on, dodging the muck and debris left in the wake of the storm.
The ground was bumpy, a million little lines creating the path that he walked along, like hardened gravel.
The world was gray as his own fur, though it shone a bit with the sun uncovering the washout that he experienced a small while prior.
A bird flew across the clouds and landed on a wire, where Aspenpaw noticed several of the same animals perched.
They were larger than most birds in the clans, and their feathers nearly made them blend in completely with the dark sky if it wasn't for their sporadic movements, searching for food in this barren land.
He looked back down, unsure of where he was going, but in his peripheral vision, he spotted a ray of color flash to his eyes.
Purple. A color so rarely seen in the clans that if Aspenpaw had been asked to describe it, he wouldn't be able to come up with a single word.
There were these small flowers that grew alongside the grass in Windclan, dull purple petals and yellow pistils.
He had spent only a small amount of time there in the last couple of moons due to the lack of space to hide, and the reputation of speed that the Windclan cats had.
But he had taken small refuge in the foliage, flowers, and grasses of the forest territories.
Now he padded up to the anomaly.
There was no grass for this flower to grow in, so he immediately thought that it must have been of twoleg possession and thrown away, but as he got closer, he was able to determine its species.
It was a peony, the kind of flower that Corrina had told him to watch for if he needed shelter and help from one of the hidden she-cat bases.
Looking closer, he saw that it had been placed carefully, with its stem stuck in between the wall and a stack of crates that had been knocked down.
It had presumably been hidden before the storm, but was now out in the open with its shelter lying broken against the ground.
The head of the flower pointed in the direction across from Aspenpaw, and he anxiously began moving towards it, not knowing if it was the right thing to do or not.
The jags in the ground scraped against his sluggish pads as he dragged his paws along the narrow-way.
He turned the corner and walked, keeping his eyes peeled for further hints as to where he should go and what he should do.
There was something right to do, and something wrong.
He thought again about the tom who he had hurt on his way here, how he was no different from clan cats, from the cats that Aspenpaw loved.
That must have been the wrong thing to do, was invading on one of these bases the right or wrong thing to do?
He didn't think he could really help them with such a monumental task, though he wouldn't admit to himself that he was afraid.
He didn't have anywhere else to go however, and even if he thought he would only be a hindrance, his selfishness won out and he kept walking.
There was another peony after a while.
It had been hidden in the air, hanging from a porch of the neighboring twoleg building.
It pointed him ahead, and Aspenpaw listened to the going-ons of life in the city to dull his mind from finishing the thoughts in his head.
It was all incomprehensible, which was exactly what Aspenpaw wanted.
If he couldn't make sense of anything, he wouldn't be able to relate it back to anything that troubled him.
So his paws moved independently, coasting by past rubbish and debris left in the turbulence caused by the storm.
Every setting was the same, just a maze of open-air corridors, sometimes hiding a peony, egging him on to continue, until he reached a standstill.
A dead end.
The trail just ended with no obvious place to go from here.
Aspenpaw began to look around, trying to find something that he missed, but his reliance on his eyes had misguided him, as he hadn't heard when he was surrounded.
There were four cats behind him when he turned around, all she-cats.
Aspenpaw recoiled and backed nearly against the wall.
He was entirely cornered, "You're comin' with us, don't try an' fight," The second one from the right spoke, a calico behind her muddy fur,
"Corrina sent me!" Aspenpaw growled, though there was a bit of desperation in his voice staring down the odds against him.
When they didn't react, he recalled the pseudonym which Corrina had given him,
"The Setter!" He elaborated.
Expressions turned from cat to cat, though there was never a moment when one pair of eyes weren't on him.
The same she-cat spoke in a hiss, "If that be someone real and respectable, then I'll apologize, but we ain't takin' chances with a mite like you,"
Aspenpaw had been betrayed.
He had been led into a trap laid for his death.
He would have to fight his way out.
Aspenpaw wordlessly took a step forward, curling his lip and unsheathing his claws.
Immediately he was matched by the patrol, as the two cats on the outer sides stepped ahead, creating a semicircle to entrap Aspenpaw further.
Aspenpaw stepped back to counter this, but soon started running out of space.
He swiped out a couple of times, trying to ward them off from coming closer without success.
They were so close that Aspenpaw had to make his stand if he was to get away.
The furthest she-cat to the left made the mistake of tripping over a piece of debris, prompting Aspenpaw to take the chance and launch himself at her, aiming at her legs.
She toppled as he landed on her, but in an instant, moving far faster than him, the rest of the patrol was on him.
Aspenpaw felt a sensation burn through his entire body, and he backed away, right back to where he had been before.
The adrenaline that was pumping more and more blood into his veins caused him to not even realize that he had been hurt at first.
The she-cat regained her grounding and growled, reforming with the rest of the group as they continued to slowly close in.
Aspenpaw tried to hiss, but his throat was caught, and he hacked involuntarily instead.
The patrol stopped in their movements.
Something came up into his mouth, a dirty liquid, and he spat it out onto the deep gray jags of the path beneath him.
For a moment he didn't look down, too entirely involved in the fight to pay attention to anything else, but stillness filled the air, and there was a small change in the she-cats' eyes, Aspenpaw chanced a glance at the ground.
Blood.
There was a massive gash in his chest pouring the stuff out like a stream.
He couldn't even see his flesh behind the swampy discoloring.
It flowed from his chest to his legs, creating a puddle slowly running down the narrow-way.
Aspenpaw was completely frozen. He had never been hurt in a battle before.
He had never watched this much blood spill out from his own body.
His senses only picked up the drainage in his body.
He couldn't bring his eyes back up to meet with the faces of his enemies.
He could only fear the drops hitting the ground, and the remaining blood in his body pounding in his ears.
His smell and taste was overwhelmed by the salt and dirt and bitterness, his mouth filling and being emptied back into the lake he was creating at his paws.
The adrenaline began to fade, and Aspenpaw could suddenly feel the searing.
It was all he knew in that moment.
His paws slipped as they tried to move, and Aspenpaw stumbled backwards, banging against the wall and slinking into the corner, trying to escape from the blood.
But it followed where he went, step in step, his paws leaving perfect reflections in red every time he lifted and placed them down.
His eyes started to wile between puddles, engendering Aspenpaw's petrifying fear to the point where his body nearly gave out.
He sank into the sharp corner of the twoleg buildings, spitting and turning his head in to embrace blackness.
None of the she-cats had moved, and at this point, Aspenpaw didn't care anymore, he just wanted to be left alone, from them and from the red streams colliding over washing over his paws.
His mind started to go, and the last thing that Aspenpaw remembered before his body shut down, was the image in his head of Acornpaw in his final moments, spitting out the same blood waves that he now did.
"Nobody said that that was all there was to it!" Acornpaw shouted jokingly at Flypaw,
"You just did, Ac!" She was laughing. So was he,
"I'm going to wake up As and make him eat with me, do you want to come with us? 'Hind the Medicine Den?"
"No, Otterfern's takin' me 'cross, or, 'longside, Thunderclan's border," Aspenpaw blinked his eyes open.
Acornpaw was standing right there in front of him.
Aspenpaw jumped and nearly fell out of his skin.
Acornpaw's pelt looked nearly a replicant of his own, and the blue of his eyes blended so seamlessly with the surrounding sky that he hardly noticed they were there.
Even the extended tendrils of fur that blew over his dark ears, it was all perfect, "Come on, As, green-leaf's nearly here! You slept new-leaf away!"
Aspenpaw's eyes dilated, so entranced by his brother talking to him.
He was back in Riverclan.
Aspenpaw could see his brother again.
But it was too late.
It didn't change a thing.
Acornpaw was still dead, and Aspenpaw, still his killer.
Aspenpaw was dreaming, further insinuated by the fact that he hadn't woken up in the apprentices' den.
He was out in the clearing, sleeping under the open air.
He couldn't remember what had led him to this point, but he knew that none of it was real.
Acornpaw was looking down at his resting form, obviously having expected an answer that Aspenpaw hadn't given him, "Are you okay, As? Bad dream?"
"You're d-dead. I've seen your face, in ev-in every place that I go," Aspenpaw was already starting to tear up.
Acornpaw looked confused, and nervously laughed, as if he was trying to convince himself of the words he was about to say,
"I'm not dead," Aspenpaw didn't want to live out this dream, not how it was supposed to be,
"Ye-Yes you are, and I, I-I killed you!" Acornpaw looked devastated and he whispered out a single word,
"Why?" Aspenpaw started crying, but his voice was so choked that it was painful, and no tears ended up leaving his warped vision.
There seemed to be no other cats in camp.
It was just the two of them now.
Acornpaw was crying alongside his brother, or at least, the visage of him was, and when Aspenpaw didn't answer his question, the blue-eyed tom started to argue, "But, we're here, we're right here in Riverclan, As!"
His voice cracked under the pressure of his tears, "We, we're, nobody's going to hurt us! We're home!" It stung more than any wound that Aspenpaw had ever acquired.
He had to turn away, looking over at the empty camp, all only slightly off.
It was all too shiny, and it slipped in his vision, as if he were walking.
He had to suck up his tears, if just for Acornpaw.
Even if he wasn't real, Aspenpaw wouldn't let himself cry in front of his brother.
It had an agreement of theirs, though neither had ever put it into words, to never cry in front of each other, instead both being avoidant in either situation that it appeared.
It was the one thing that the dream got wrong about him, "I'm sorry," Acornpaw suddenly spoke, but he sounded so far away,
"Don't say that to me, Ac. This is my dream, you know what I did," Aspenpaw steadied his voice, but kept his head turned away, unable to look into his eyes again.
Acornpaw didn't respond, and Aspenpaw realized that he couldn't hear his sniffling anymore, and sure enough, Acornpaw had vanished.
Aspenpaw wished he could believe that he was really in Riverclan again, but here, the dens were spaced too far apart, the blue sky was too bright, the dirt on the ground felt no different than stone.
None of it was real, and Aspenpaw shut his eyes again, willing himself to wake up from this nightmare.
The words that had been exchanged were already fading, and though he could remember them, he couldn't hear his brother's voice anymore.
They were just words in a dream, spoken by nothing but air and memory.
In his blackened sight, Aspenpaw could still see the camp, just outlined in the darkness, like the claw marks on the Great Rock at Fourtrees.
Once again he was brought back to the gathering place, and if he focused hard enough, he could see that too.
Aspenpaw's lamenting was met with complete silence of all the senses.
Nobody was around, and nothing changed when he blinked his eyes open.
Not even the clouds had moved. It was as if the dream had ended, but he was still trapped in it.
Everything that was supposed to happen, had, and everything else that could have happened, had, and now he was alone again.
He couldn't even get up off the ground anymore, and he didn't dare call out for company, too afraid of being met with the same visage, and with the same thoughts.
His eyes focused on the curves and edges of the fake clouds, following a line through them for minutes until they began to fade.
The whole world itself started ebbing away, but all that Aspenpaw did was close his eyes, and wait for the storm to be over.
An eye shot open, and then the other, like the instantaneous retreat of disturbed prey.
A grueling pain registered in Aspenpaw's brain before he could even realize that he was awake.
Breath caught in his throat before he could stop it and he started choking, forcing the gray tom to wake fully and sit up.
He was in a darkened room, sheets of string and water dragging down from the ceiling, though some were fallen on the ground, strewn about like they had been deliberately tossed out of the way from the central point of the dwelling.
Aspenpaw raised a paw to the pain in his chest, coming to with the memories of the previous day with a thud.
There was a wrap of some sort on the wound that he had received from yesterday, though, when he found a small pool of water in the corner, he noticed that it had been sloppily put together, as if by an apprentice.
Aspenpaw was upset, and wanted to tear off all the wraps, let it heal on its own if it would, but he knew he wouldn't do him any good.
It didn't seem like a deep cut, despite the amount of blood that had come from it, but Aspenpaw just surmised that up to the shock of the situation and the exhaustion he was feeling at that point.
He couldn't believe he had acted so helpless over such a small thing.
The water refracted against the wall and Aspenpaw looked over the other side of the room to see a small crevice letting in light, the only producer of such in this chamber.
He was in a prison, Aspenpaw presumed, having been knocked out and brought here by that patrol of she-cats.
There was a cracked piece of wall leaning against the rest of its relatives, and when Aspenpaw pushed it aside, he was privy to a murky tunnel of smooth stones and filthy water.
He also revealed two she-cats, standing on either side of the cylindrical passageway.
They turned to look, and Aspenpaw cautiously stepped forward, ready to unsheath his claws if he felt he had to,
"Whoa, twist'a! You can't be leav'en that this room 'til we got us an order to, or otherwise a good reason," The cat on Aspenpaw's right spoke, stepping in front of him and lightly pushing him back with her paw on his unharmed side,
"I don't want to be here!" Aspenpaw complained arrogantly,
"Welcome!" The other she-cat said, overacting with sarcasm,
"Don't you be worryin' too hard now, littlin, y'uv got yerself a meetin' soon enough. She should be comin' soon," The right one spoke again, stepping a little bit aside in her position as Aspenpaw had been receptive to her suggestion of stepping back,
"Who?" Aspenpaw asked,
"Names are a privilege you haven't got yet, littlin,"
"Don't call me that,"
"Good to know," She smiled cheekily, "Now go get yerself cleaned up and rehearse yer formalities. Yer first impression may be the diff'rence 'tween how many legs ya walk outta here with," The guard laughed to herself, though her partner just stared ahead, looking bored with her job.
Aspenpaw ducked back into the room without any more arguments, and the talkative she-cat came in as well to reset the cracked barrier back against the wall.
The pain in Aspenpaw's chest had tired him out despite the adrenaline of anger that he felt towards his captures, so he laid down in the tiny nest that he had woken up in, made of some prickly material that he couldn't even fathom.
He just wanted to explain himself and get out of here.
It had been wrong to try and gain help from these cats.
Aspenpaw closed his eyes and cushioned his head with his tail as he tried to get some more sleep, his chest pulsing with pain every time he breathed.
His dream came back to him, in fragments, shattered memories and pure fiction crossing over to fill in the gaps.
He remembered the empty space that had once been Riverclan camp, much more opened than he ever recalled it being, and he remembered the words that he had exchanged with his brother, but he couldn't see his face anymore.
All that had been there was just mist over the horizon now.
A greeting sounded from behind Aspenpaw's sleeping head, "Hello there, tom, is your chest still feeling those claws?"
Aspenpaw reluctantly raised his head and turned around, but didn't have the courtesy to greet her back, or even to rise from the nest, despite the warning that the guard had given him outside.
The words had come from, of course, a she-cat, black over most of her body, though with a few patches of white from her neck to her stomach and back, "I was told that you were sent by the Setter, is this true?" She got right into the point, which Aspenpaw appreciated,
"Yeah, Corrina. She said that if I needed help than I could find you,"
"And you need help?" She asked, her dignified voice catching Aspenpaw as very strange next to how he had heard the rest of the cats in the city talk,
"I've never been to the city before," Aspenpaw responded, an edge slipping into his voice at her interrogation. The she-cat, in turn, became accusatory,
"What did you expect us to do for you?" It was a fair question, seeing as Aspenpaw wasn't even sure of the answer,
"I've got nowhere else to go here, and I could help out," The she-cat widened an eye with suspicion,
"Forgive my expression, it's hard to gauge an outsider's intent, we get so few of them around here. I've sent somebody to meet with the Setter regarding the issue, so I must ask you to sit tight for a couple of days until she returns, that is, if you're telling the truth,"
"A couple of days?" Aspenpaw nearly shouted,
"I'll send somebody in later with herbs and prey. Don't stress yourself out too much, you might blow a vein," Aspenpaw was indeed fuming. He didn't want to be a prisoner anymore, "Is there anything else that you'll be needing, tom?"
"Fresh air,"
"Afraid not. I sincerely hope that you are telling the truth, or else you won't be getting that for quite a while," The words were obviously a test to check Aspenpaw's reaction, but they had no effect on him.
This must just be a misunderstanding, and Corrina would confirm that she had given him her blessing.
But what if she didn't?
The she-cat bid him farewell for now, and slipped through the wall, into the murky tunnel.
A worry chewed into Aspenpaw's neck and up into his brain.
His entire life seemed to ride on what information Corrina would give their messenger, and he had only known her for a single day.
With all of the talk about feuds between toms and she-cats, Aspenpaw was afraid that Corrina wouldn't vouch for him and condemn him to whatever punishments these cats had for him.
He started pacing, knowing that he could only wait now, except for one thing.
The light, the minuscule slit in the upper cornice of the right wall.
The mud and stone was soft enough for Aspenpaw to dig his claws in, and he started climbing up.
He didn't have much of any experience in climbing, but with more effort than it was worth, he stuck his paws into the embrasure, and started raking.
The crack was hardly large enough for his paws, much less fit for the average-sized tom, but the more he clung on, creating friction with his claws, the more the material on the wall began to rub off.
Aspenpaw had placed his hind legs on two large bubbles protruding from the surrounding enclosure, but one of them broke and sent him crashing to the ground.
Aspenpaw started feeling dejected, the pain in his chest swelling from the tumble, but looking at the progress he had made reinvigorated him.
It was nearly wide enough for him to slip his head through now.
Double-taking at the entrance to make sure that nobody would rush in after hearing him fall on the ground, Aspenpaw scrambled back up quietly when it felt clear to.
He held on again and replaced his hind paws on a couple of hard bubbles, and he started scraping again, trying to push out as many remnants outside as he could as opposed to letting them fall to the ground and alert the guards.
It was a slow and tiring process, but he could see outside, and as bleak as it looked, more narrow-ways and sky-reaching buildings, it was nearly paradise compared to where he was.
When the wall was completely exposed and Aspenpaw couldn't dig further, he turned his attention to the ceiling, ripping it apart with vigor.
His shoulder slipped in, painfully, but that was all he needed.
The scraps and bruises and dust fluttering over his pelt and into his eyes was nothing to the satisfaction and relief of being able to push himself through the hole.
He let go of the bubbles, and he was out, into the open air, the wide, cloudy sky.
Aspenpaw ran as soon as he was standing on his legs. He wasn't completely out yet, but he had a better fighting chance out here.
He wouldn't let himself get cornered again.
All of his senses were fully alert as he stumbled past dead end after dead end, slowly getting further and further away, keeping careful track of his trail.
There was nobody following him, and by the time that Aspenpaw saw a thunderpath down the way, with twolegs walking out in front of it, he knew that he had made it.
He was safe. Now the adrenaline was wearing down, Aspenpaw curled into himself in pain, his chest seizing from the excitement, and otherwise, his paws were all scraped up, his claws deformed.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw an overhang on the side of a building, with a consistent elevation up to the top.
Aspenpaw could only stare for a moment, this bizarre possibility making itself known to him.
A horn from a monster startled him into action.
There was no place left on the ground for him to go unless he wanted to drift through the crowds of twolegs, so he started up.
As he leapt to the metal cage, he was shocked at how sturdy it was, nearly like he was on solid ground if not for the conforming cracks of missing space, small enough for Aspenpaw's paw to span the length of three lines.
He moved carefully despite the safety of where he stood, disliking the feeling of his toes slipping beneath where the rest of him stood, even if the holes weren't large enough for him to get stuck in.
There seemed to be a thousand steps up, but the promise of what was up there sent Aspenpaw continuing on.
Every five steps there was a small platform, indistinguishable from the first that he had stepped on.
It felt like he was climbing over the same old ground, but when he reached his head over the edge, a brilliant picture bore to his eyes.
He was high above all life that he could imagine besides the soaring creatures of the sky.
Aspenpaw rushed up the next few flights, knowing that the view from the top of the building would entrance him, but the pain in his chest slowed him down.
He wasn't even worried about being followed anymore.
It was as if nothing could hurt him up here aside from the wounds he already had.
Another step, and another; Aspenpaw felt his tired body wane and slump like water running upside down, yet he kept going, only letting himself take short breaks to make sure he was still able to breathe.
He moved through shifting eyes, blurring between the mundanity of sight, the blackness of early sleep, and coming back to before his dreams could wring out his soul.
But as his eyes snapped open one more time, Aspenpaw swore that he had lost the battle to stay conscious.
The clouds were only hardly out of reach, and there was horizon in every direction.
A harsh wind blew like a hurricane, and Aspenpaw realized that he wasn't dreaming.
He had made it to the last platform, a walled-in plateau overlooking the entire city, or at least, as much of it as the eyes would allow to be seen.
Aspenpaw looked down, exhilarated, and he saw the twolegs for just what they were, creatures of life.
Though so unnatural in their creations, the bobbing heads waving through crowds, waiting for others to pass before they could, flooding in and out of structures.
The comradeship between some, and the paranoia between so many others, it was all the same as any other being.
Aspenpaw saw the relation of all creatures in the simple image of them passing alongside the thunderpaths, simply living.
Sleep still wrestled him, despite the whipping wind on his face, and Aspenpaw gave in, feeling fulfilled in his realization of the lives that the twolegs lived, but knowing that that understanding could later bring him pain.
Aspenpaw didn't dream.
It was still day when he awoke, though the clouds were unfamiliar now.
He was still where his eyes had left him, atop the grand pillar in the sky.
He was shocked that he had ever even been able to close his eyes with the shrieking volume of the city below, monsters still howling and birds occasionally chirping along.
Aspenpaw felt somewhat miserable, despite the incredible view when he leaned on the parapet.
His breathing was uncontrollably rapid, and each time his lungs expanded, a sharp pain grew in his chest.
The wind was still so strong up here, shedding off excess fur from Aspenpaw's pelt and sending it away in the breeze to fall someplace far away, like the achenes of a dandelion, reinventing themselves a hundred times over in various dirts across the world.
The pain was growing, and the trivialness of twoleg life below only brought him more sadness.
He tore his gaze away from their daily strifes and began pacing the length of the rooftop, trying to forcibly limit his breathing.
It was a game between his lungs and his chest, each vying for space in his body, and each distressing Aspenpaw's nerves when they lost control for even a moment.
He tried to concentrate on something else, but he couldn't even imagine something at this moment, focusing instead on his paws as he moved slowly from wall to wall.
He told himself that this was just a passing moment caused by the overexertion that he had displayed climbing his way up to where he was.
This was just what it felt like after getting wounded.
As he neared a wall again, he stared anxiously and longingly at the upward path that had taken him here in the first place.
He told himself again that he had nowhere to go on the ground; he was intent to weather the pain out up here.
It felt like the claws were still lodged inside him.
Aspenpaw didn't know how to fill the time until the pain passed.
He couldn't think about anything else.
As he made one last round from side to side, Aspenpaw looked down and noticed that blood had begun seeping from behind the dry herbs and cobwebs that had been sloppily paced on his chest.
That same fear of his insides struck him, and he was finally forced to admit that something was very wrong.
He couldn't take the pain anymore, and dragged himself up and into the step-path, nearly falling down the first flight.
He started heading down mindlessly, guiding himself where he knew he needed to go but was unable to admit.
There was an infection in his chest, he knew the signs of it, and he needed help.
Though he hated it, he knew where he was going.
The cats in the she-cat base were the only ones who he knew how to find, and the only ones who could treat him.
It wasn't until now that Aspenpaw realized how foolish it had been to try and escape; he could hardly move at this point, he certainly wouldn't survive out here for long.
The steps appeared no longer as such, instead they were just incongruous shapes entirely separate from their whole.
Going down was far harder than going up, as though the pain was comparable, his senses were distorted from the onslaught of it that he had been experiencing since he started up this way.
On top of that, his vision was deteriorating as all of his energy was spent focusing on the pain in his chest and the fear of going back to the she-cat camp.
He was in the worst place he could be at this point.
If he didn't give up, he would simply die in this unfamiliar land, but going back, he didn't know what the punishment for running away would be, and if it would be any better than death.
As he neared the ordinary world once again, he resorted to simply sliding down the steps, trying to save his energy for the walk back, if he could even remember the way.
He knew he couldn't fall asleep, or else he may never wake back up, and, although the thoughts that plagued his mind and the past actions that he had performed, Aspenpaw didn't want to die.
He was too afraid.
He was on the final layer, just a leap away from the ground.
Falling more than jumping, Aspenpaw found himself feeling the artificial hard earth on his pelt, relief spilling over him.
Pushing himself to his paws proved to be more difficult here than it ever had been before, but looking up and seeing drops of blood sprinkling down from the rafters gave him the strength of fear to pull himself together.
One step, and then another, and Aspenpaw was on his way, trying his hardest to recall which turns he had taken, searching through his blurry vision for markers that he had passed before.
His nose was of almost no use here in the city, clogged with fumes and the scent of disposables.
He wondered if cats were out looking for him, or at least, he certainly hoped that there were.
Passing a familiar colorful wall, full of tens of images laid atop each other, Aspenpaw suddenly remembered exactly where to go from here.
Up and over a small incline, he was met with the sight of his escape location, rubble drifting out from the sides of a break in the ground.
Aspenpaw swallowed hard, causing more pain to coarse through his tired body, and prepared to face the punishment of his actions.