Breezepelt was hungry.
It had been about four days since he had arrived in the tunnels and argued with Hollyleaf, though it was so dark it was hard to tell exactly how many suns had risen. After he had left her, he had replayed the interaction in his mind. She had been injured, he had realized. Maybe badly so. For a bit, he had felt guilty about leaving her alone. Would she be able to survive on her own without him helping her? But then he had remembered her stunt at the Gathering, and what she had done to his family, and the guilt was gone.
Now, days later, any concern for anyone other than himself had vanished from his mind. He was hungry. Ravenously, gut-tearingly hungry. It felt like a badger was sitting in his stomach, ripping it apart from the inside. Like his stomach was rebelling against him for not feeding it, and had decided to just eat him.
Breezepelt remembered the last time he had felt truly hungry. On the quest to the mountains, to save the Tribe of Rushing Water, there had come a time just after meeting that old kittypet mangepelt where they hadn't been able to hunt all day. Even though they could smell mice in an abandoned Twoleg nest nearby, the mangepelt had told them not to hunt there because there were dogs, and Brambleclaw had agreed with him.
So he had taken matters into his own paws. Along with Lionblaze and Hollyleaf, he recalled, his guilt over leaving Hollyleaf returning briefly before he banished it again. The three of them had snuck off to hunt, and had caught some decent prey, but before they had gotten a chance to eat they had been attacked by dogs and barely escaped with their lives.
The kittypet had helped fight off the dogs, and Breezepelt's father had thanked him. Though Breezepelt had argued that they would have been fine on their own, even he knew his bleeding tail suggested otherwise.
They had then gotten the joy of receiving a lecture from both Brambleclaw and Crowfeather at the same time. He remembered noticing the difference between the two fathers, even then. Brambleclaw scolded his kits, and he got angry, but it was always with a tone that suggested the real reason he was upset was because he was scared of something happening to them. On the other hand, his own father always seemed to be mad at him simply for being an inconvenience. Like Crowfeather would have rather not rescued him at all, and had one less problem to deal with.
During the lecture, in an attempt to defend himself and the other apprentices, Breezepelt had tried to cast the blame back on the older cats for failing to do their duty of taking care of their children.
"If you hadn't let us get so hungry-" he had started to meow mutinously, before being cut off by a furious glare from his father.
"None of you has ever known what it means to be truly hungry," Crowfeather had spat, eyes glistening. Breezepelt had backed off, but rolled his eyes internally. All of the old cats were always talking about how hard their lives had been before the Great Journey, and about how young cats these days had never truly suffered. He thought it was all a load of mouse dung. His life was just as hard as anyone's had been. Of course he knew what it meant to be truly hungry- every cat did.
But now, alone in the tunnels, Breezepelt was finally forced to admit to himself that his father had been right- not that he would ever say it to his face. Any hunger he had ever felt before paled in comparison to the hunger he felt now. Before, hunger had been a discomfort. Now, it was a killer.
At least he had found water. On his second day in the tunnels, he had come across a trickling stream, and gulped it down gratefully, even though seeing the water underground did give him pause as he remembered how he had almost drowned the last time he was down here. With no idea how to get out, all he could do was hope that it didn't rain.
But after four days, he had begun to wonder which would be worse- a quick death by drowning, or this slow, torturous wasting away.
He kept walking, slower every day as his energy faded, making sure to always keep close to the stream. Surely he would find a way out eventually, right? There was at least one other exit to the tunnels aside from the one he had come in through- even if it would lead to ThunderClan territory.
Just when he thought he couldn't bear to walk any further, he smelled something. It wasn't fresh-kill, not quite, but it was some other creature. Pausing, he sniffed the air, and his blood ran cold. Fox. He was resigning himself to being eaten, as he knew he couldn't outrun a fox in his current state, when another smell hit him. The stench of death. The fox he was smelling was dead.
Sure enough, padding towards the source of the smell, he found a dead fox tod. It was massive. Breezepelt sniffed it cautiously. It smelled like it had been dead for a couple of days, but it hadn't started to decay yet. He had been warned about eating crowfood, and that it could lead to sickness, but what choice did he have? This could feed him for days. And it would give him enough energy to find a better source of prey or, better yet, a way out.
Not that I even know where I would go if I did get out, he thought. The idea of going back to WindClan, where no cat would even miss him save for maybe his mother, wasn't exactly appealing.
Hesitating only a moment longer, Breezepelt leaned down and took a small bite from the fox's flank. As soon as the taste hit his tongue, he had to force down a gag. Cats weren't meant to eat fox under the best of circumstances, and this one wasn't even fresh. But it was food. It would keep him alive. So he forced himself to eat a few more bites until his stomach was full. There was still quite a bit of fox left; foxes were many times bigger than mice or rabbits, and even bigger than cats.
Feeling quite a bit better now that his belly was full, he decided it was time to sleep so he could wake up fed and well-rested and ready to find the way out. Moving far enough away from the fox to get away from the stench but not so far he couldn't find it again when he woke up, Breezepelt curled up around himself and fell asleep.
When he awoke, Breezepelt felt a bit lightheaded, but the feeling was immediately forgotten when he realized that for the first time in days, he wasn't starving. Padding over to the fox again, he choked down a few more bites before setting off walking.
He had to be much more careful now, not only to make sure he could always hear the stream but also to make sure he knew how to get back to his fox. Still, he was able to cover much more ground that day than any of the days before.
Unfortunately, by the end of the day, he felt he was no closer to a way out than he had been before. And the next two days were no better. Every day, he set off in a different direction, memorizing his turns so he could make it back to his fox by the end of the day. He had begun to think of the fox as kind of like his camp. FoxClan, he thought, before promptly realizing how childish the idea was.
In the days since finding the fox, he hadn't had to worry about hunger anymore, though he did worry about what would happen when the fox was all gone. However, it had become increasingly difficult to keep his bearings in the tunnels. The walls seemed to bend and move on their own, as if they were waiting for him to turn his back so they could rearrange themselves, cutting him off from his only source of food forever. So he moved slowly, turning his head constantly to make sure the tunnels hadn't changed their paths.
It was near the start of the fourth day after his discovery that he heard a noise. He froze, trying to make out exactly what he was hearing. It was a voice, that of a young she-cat from the sound of it. Hollyleaf? he wondered. But it didn't sound like her.
Another voice answered hers, a tom this time. They were too distant for him to make out what they were saying.
"Hello?" he called out. There was no response.
Breezepelt was beginning to despair that the other cats were gone forever when suddenly, a small light brown shape darted past him, laughing.
"Come on, Lionpaw," she purred. "You can't keep up?" A golden cat dashed after her.
"I let you win, Heatherpaw," boasted the golden tom.
"Yeah, right!" exclaimed the she-cat with an indignant mrrow.
Breezepelt stared at them. Heatherpaw and Lionpaw? They didn't seem to see him. And, even more strangely, why were they going by their apprentice names? Looking closer, he realized they were apprentices. Heathertail hadn't been that small and fluffy in moons, and Lionblaze now was probably twice the size of the tom in front of him.
"Who- who are you?" he stammered, not sure if the cats would even hear him. To his surprise, Heatherpaw turned to face him, an amused look in her eyes.
"I think the real question is, who are you?" she meowed.
"You know who I am!" he exclaimed. What was happening? How was he having a conversation with the past version of his Clanmate?
Heatherpaw looked at him thoughtfully. "I do know who you are," she meowed solemnly. "You're nobody."
"What?" he asked. "I'm not nobody."
"Well, you're nobody who matters," scoffed Lionpaw. Breezepelt arched his back in a hiss, ready to tear the fur off of him, even if he was only an apprentice.
"I'll make crowfood of you," he growled. But Lionpaw and Heatherpaw just laughed.
"Hey, last one to the river is a rotten mouse!" meowed Lionpaw, before dashing off down the tunnel back the way they had come, Heatherpaw quick on his heels. Breezepelt stared after them for a moment before he got his wits about him, and raced after them.
"Hey, wait!" he yowled. But they had vanished.
Breezepelt stood frozen, shaking. What in StarClan was that? Was that really them? Have I been alone so long I've started hallucinating?
Miraculously, he found his way back to his makeshift camp and curled up to sleep, hoping it would turn out this had just been a strange dream.
When he awoke, he had a few bites of fox. Aside from the now ever-present spinning in his head, everything seemed normal. Maybe the events of the day before were just a strange dream.
But just then, he heard Lionpaw's voice again.
"Good one, Heatherpaw!" he meowed. Breezepelt spun around. The voice sounded as if it were coming from right beside him, but he could see no other cat.
"Thanks," purred Heatherpaw. "You were brilliant too. You're the bravest cat I've ever met." Breezepelt looked around hopelessly. Where are they?
Another voice came, a new one this time.
"It's been so much better in WindClan without you causing trouble all the time," meowed a she-cat. "You just don't know when to leave things alone." Whitetail? he wondered. It sounded like his mentor's voice, but what would she be doing down here? And why was she being so cruel?
Another voice came: "Don't you think you're better off alone?" meowed a she-cat gently. "I mean, no one here has even noticed you're gone." The voice belonged to his father's mother, Ashfoot.
Then the voices started to come all at once, overlapping each other.
"I can't believe you're trapped down there again," laughed Sedgepaw, one of the kits he had saved with the help of Heathertail and his half-siblings.
"You don't really think WindClan would welcome you back after you abandoned us, right?" meowed Onestar, concerned.
"You're not strong enough to be down there on your own!" wailed his mother. "You need me there to protect you!"
And then, the voice he always dreaded hearing. "I'm not surprised you ended up somewhere like this," his father told him coldly. "Just disappointed. As usual."
Breezepelt curled himself into a ball, pressing his paws over his ears to drown out the voices. It didn't help. They just kept coming.
One voice broke through the rest. "Hey! Hey, uh, hello?" A paw jabbed at his shoulder, and he opened his eyes. A ginger-and-white cat, not one he recognized, was standing over him.
"Get away from me," he hissed, jumping backwards. StarClan, they can touch me now, he thought desperately. The cat stared at him with wide eyes.
"Oh, hey," the cat meowed gently. The strange cat paused, looking around, and his eyes landed on Breezepelt's fox. "I just want to help you. If you want, I can show you-"
"Get away!" he yowled. He couldn't let this cat get to his fox. It was his only source of food. He couldn't let anyone take it from him. He couldn't go back to being that hungry. Not ever again.
The strange cat jumped back, alarmed. "I was just-" he began.
"Leave," he spat. His eyes going wide, the cat turned and ran off down the tunnel.
Breezepelt was exhausted. He didn't know what was real anymore. He couldn't trust anything he saw or heard. Couldn't trust anything at all. Except for his fox. His prey. His protector. His Clan.
Shivering and scared, Breezepelt curled up next to the fox and went back to sleep.
A couple days after encountering the strange cat, Breezepelt finally worked up the courage to walk a bit away from his fox. It wasn't by choice, but his food supply was dangerously low, and he knew he had to do anything he could to avoid starving again. So he ventured out in search of other prey, taking slow, shaky steps.
He was still hearing and seeing cats that weren't there, but at least none of the others had been able to touch him. Sometimes they ran right through him, not seeing him, and sometimes they spoke to him. When they spoke, it was usually to taunt him. For being a failure, for being unlikeable, for being so helpless.
Lionpaw and Heatherpaw were there practically all the time. They never spoke to him, but he could hear them playing and laughing as if he wasn't there. And not being acknowledged was almost worse than the taunting.
Suddenly, he heard a sharp noise. He ignored it at first- he was hearing noises all the time now. But soon, it was joined by a smell that was now very familiar to him. Fox. And living fox, at that.
His legs shook. Was this his fox, back to life to punish him for eating it? It was going to kill him. It wanted revenge. No. I will not lose to you, he thought determinedly. I'll kill you again. And then I'll eat for another quarter-moon.
He arched his back, ready to tear the fox apart when it came around the corner. But to his surprise, it wasn't a single tod, but instead what looked like a mother and a cub. No matter. I'll kill them both. He hissed, and immediately the cub yelped in terror and dashed past Breezepelt, deeper into the tunnel.
The mother turned her dark eyes on Breezepelt, and he wondered for a moment if he should run. But no. He was making his stand here, for better or for worse. And then, she attacked.
She swung one of her massive paws at Breezepelt's head. He ducked, but not quite quickly enough, and her blow threw him off balance. Trying to recover, he aimed a blow at her belly, but she blocked it easily with her front paw.
Before he could strike again, she roared, and raked a claw over his underbelly. He yelped as he felt it burn with pain, and he began to panic. If he was still in WindClan, Barkface could treat a wound like this. But down here, how would he be able to recover? He had no herbs, no cobwebs.
In a panic, he realized the fox was rearing up to strike again. Desperately, he braced for the blow, when suddenly, the fox let out a yelp. Blinking, Breezepelt saw a cat aiming a second blow at the fox's side. It was Hollyleaf. Is she really here? wondered Breezepelt. She certainly seemed more corporeal than the hallucinations he had been seeing for the past few days, but he didn't believe anything anymore.
Hollyleaf reared up on her hind paws and raked her claws down the fox's blood-spattered muzzle, and with a cry of pain, the fox turned on its heels and ran back the way it had come.
"And stay out!" yowled Hollyleaf. Breezepelt blinked. She certainly seemed real. How could he tell?
"Are you real?" he asked her blearily. She blinked at him, looking confused. "Like, are you really here or just in my head?" he clarified. She looked no less confused.
"Are you hurt?" she asked him curtly, cutting him off just as started to try to explain further what he meant. He opened his mouth to answer, when just then, a wave of pain surged up from his chest at the same moment as a wave of dizziness came down from his head, and darkness swam in his vision. Fighting it back, he forced himself to answer.
"My belly," he breathed.
"Okay," meowed Hollyleaf steadily. "Right, so I'm going to get some cobwebs, and then we can-"
If she continued talking, Breezepelt didn't hear, because at that moment, the darkness in his vision surged, and sleep claimed him.