AUTHOR'S NOTE: thank you Anonymous Guest for the review :)

Chapter 126: The Reflections on the Past.

"The thrush sings and the robin calls, though cavernous halls; sing on the roof of bones and wires."

-comet7, Eliel's [sic] Lair

Long after Pipkin, Nyreem and Blueberry had retreated underground, just before sunrise, it was captain Holly's turn to go for an early silflay. He needed time to think.

Just over one set of seasons ago, his home warren, Sandleford, was destroyed. He was fortunate to survive the tragedy, and reunite with Hazel, Fiver and the others who had started a new, peaceful warren. But peace had been short lived, due to the discovery of the hostile Efrafan warren nearby, who wished to destroy Watership Down. A year had passed, and Watership Down still existed, with several new rabbits having joined over the seasons.

The war had abruptly ended a few days before, as General Woundwort was murdered, allegedly by the captain Vervain, although this was hard to believe. A few days later, the Efrafan warren caved in, and the survivors moved to Watership Down. But unfortunately, Woundwort had survived the attack and allied himself with Cowslip and his creeps, building a new owsla. They destroyed the warren of Marli-rah, the survivors of which, including pretty Hyzenthlay, had also moved to Watership Down. While Woundwort lost virtually his entire owsla in the assault, he found himself a new warren, Darkhaven, and built himself a new owsla of oversized rabbits with the goal to destroy the world. Two days before, the first major battle between the Watershippers and the Darkhaveners had occurred; while the Watershippers came out on top, the events, along with Hannah the mouse's recent obsession over magic, had reality-breaking consequences.

Watership Down did have an unexpected ally against Woundwort: Campion, Woundwort's most trusted captain, had been persuaded to work for them. But Campion seemed deeply troubled, claiming to have died several times in various unlikely ways, only for the Black Rabbit to repeatedly send him back to life along with his companion, Aspen. Campion was at the warren right now; it would be a good opportunity to evaluate his mental state.

So far, Holly felt like he hadn't done much to help with the war. He had been staying largely in the background, occasionally helping with training or patrolling, but his role remained limited. While he was perhaps the second oldest rabbit in the warren, after captain Broom, he still felt like he had a lot to offer. He would have to talk to Hazel later.

Blackberry was the second rabbit to wake up. It had been several days since the trip to Redstone she had taken with Primrose. She had initially undertaken the trip to impress Bigwig and, hopefully, earn a spot in the owsla, but in hindsight, this had been ill-advised. Redstone seemed to be struggling, and she had been unable to provide any significant help. To make things worse, she and Primrose got lost on the way back to Watership Down; Primrose was abducted by Darkhaveners and, while she had managed to escape, she was seriously injured in the process. Fortunately, after the kind doe Meadow from Buttercup's warren helped guide them back to Watership Down, Primrose recovered nicely. If Blackberry's predictions were correct, the leaves on her tail could go off permanently today.

She hopped out of her burrow, over to Hazel and Primrose's, and peaked inside. The two rabbits were still asleep; not wishing to disturb them, she went to silflay. While both she and Primrose had survived the trip, she no longer felt ready to join the owsla. She needed more experience first, and leaving the warren on an extended mission was not the right way to get some.

Meanwhile, at the warren of the shining wires, Acorn was also waking up, still very tired. The hard digging needed to keep the warren safe from the previous evening's flood had left him exhausted. However, the burrows were extremely stuffy, since all entrances had been filled in, preventing him from getting enough sleep. Additionally, he remained afraid that the warren would still flood, despite everyone's efforts.

Once he had realized that he had not drowned in his sleep, he went towards the nearest tunnel, hoping to open it again for fresh air. In the past, his life had been generally pleasant, apart from the constant threat of the snares. This all changed just a few days before, when an oversized rabbit called Woundwort arrived and took over the warren, training everyone to build an owsla. But the first battle ended disastrously, with one rabbit, Silver, joining the enemy, and nearly everyone else dying, including their former leader Cowslip. Following this, Acorn and the other survivors returned to the warren, hoping to go back to their old lives.

While Woundwort did not return, the rabbits had to deal with perhaps even worse problems. One of their own, Buckthorn, was brutally killed. Acorn found himself accused of the murder by big bully Toadflax, but then someone tried to kill Acorn himself, proving his innocence. Then, Toadflax was kidnapped by the rabbits of New Sandleford Warren, whose Chief Scabious seemed determined to annex the warren of the snares. While Toadflax escaped, Buckthorn's killer remained at large, Flesca seemed to become increasingly unstable, and the warren received a visit from two rabbits who claimed to be Prince Rainbow's messengers. The problems just kept piling up.

As he broke through the ground, Acorn was pleased to see that the water was entirely gone. While there were a few puddles and various debris across the field, it was no longer raining. To Acorn, this was perhaps the only good thing that had happened over the past few days.

Meanwhile in Darkhaven, Woundwort was also waking up. After he had been rescued from the waterfall, he retreated to his burrow to get some sleep. The Chief's burrow was quickly sealed shut, allowing the General to sleep through the worst of the storm.

He thought back at the previous days' events. Someone tried to kill him in his sleep in Efrafa. Vervain had claimed responsibility, but was obviously lying: it had to be the outsiders. But with the Efrafans burying him alive, he decided to build himself a new owsla to destroy the outsiders. The oversized rabbits at the that fool Cowslip's warren were his first attempt at this, only for nearly all of them to die at the first raid at Marli-rah. With the help of the mystic Silverweed, he returned to the warren where he was born, Stormhaven (although it had since been renamed Darkhaven). Alas, Silverweed soon proved to be a disappointment, betraying him for the outsiders, and escaping from his execution.

The rest of the rabbits at Darkhaven were equally disappointing. During their first encounter with the outsiders, they were defeated, and also failed to obtain any useful information on the warren's location. The previous day, he had sent two of his captains, Vervain and Orchis, out on patrol to try to find the warren again. As of the previous evening, they hadn't come back yet; maybe they had drowned, and would never come back at all.

Wandering around the chamber, he saw, much to his annoyance, that there was still no way out. The other rabbits had not dug him out of his burrow yet. He wasn't too worried: the chamber was the largest in Darkhaven, he still had enough air to last another day or so. Instead, he was annoyed: he could think of several reasons why the burrow was still sealed, and none of them were appealing. Perhaps everyone else had drowned; if they were as bad at swimming as they were at fighting, this could be very likely. If that was the case, all the hard work he had put into training them would be lost, and he would have to find himself another set of rabbits, the third one in only a few days...

Or perhaps the warren was still flooded, in which case he would be trapped in his burrow for a long time still. Maybe long enough for him to run out of air. In that case, he would have to dig himself out of his burrow and swim to the surface. But as long as the floodwater remained, the war would have to be put on hold; this would be a massive waste of time.

Or perhaps the others had betrayed him, and selected a new Chief in his absence. He could not stand the thought of being betrayed again; he would have to kill them, even if it meant losing his owsla again. If they had betrayed him so easily, they did not deserve to serve him.

The more Woundwort thought, the more it seemed to him that there was no positive explanation for the other rabbits' failure to release him from his burrow. No matter what had happened, he would soon face a major setback in his quest to destroy the outsiders.

The truth, however, was that all of Woundwort's theories were incorrect. Most of water had drained away, and the rabbits in the owsla wished to free Woundwort from his burrow. However, the flood had massively changed Darkhaven: familiar landmarks were moved or destroyed, several structures had collapsed or were severely weakened, and the soil was extremely muddy and hard to dig. To dig Woundwort out, they first had to rediscover the spot where he had been buried.