AUTHOR'S NOTE: thank you Anonymous Guest for the review :) Sorry about the cliffhanger though; I'll try to avoid these in future chapters.
Also, this chapter is rather dark...
Chapter 91: The Forces of Evil.
"The leaves are still wet from the rain this morning, spread them out, and step on four of them, one for each paw, the dampness will stick the leaf to the soft pads on the bottom of your paws, and we can walk across the dirt [...] without leaving tracks."
-Dizzy the Freak, Elhrariah [sic] and the Leaves in the Dirt
Heather's paw couldn't feel the ground underneath, causing her to lose her balance again. A few days before, Moss had finally managed to confess his love to her, and she had agreed to become his mate. She was now pregnant with his kittens. She was starting to have second thoughts, however. They were all travelling in the wilderness, with no clear destination in mind; it might have been better to wait until they had found a new home.
As she got back up, she realized that there was a small depression in the soil, and its shape was rather worrying. She sniffed, and could clearly pick up the scent of another creature that was not a rabbit. What this other creature was, though, she did not know.
-"Hey Moss, take a look at this!"
The captain approached the doe, and immediately noticed the pawprint on the ground. It was plain from the look on his face that this wasn't good.
-"What is it?" she asked.
-"Weasel. Fresh scent too. It must still be close. Let's get away from here."
-"I've never seen a weasel before," another of the rabbits, known as Charlock, said.
-"And if you had, you would wish you hadn't. Nasty creatures. Get a move on, all of you!"
The group of rabbits continued their journey. The trip continued uneventfully, and most of them soon forgot about the weasel scent until suddenly, a squeal was heard. Moss, who was at the front of the group, turned around. Everyone else seemed horrified at what they had just heard.
-"Which one of you squealed?" Leo asked.
This question was met with complete silence, until Avens spoke up:
-"Chervil is gone!"
Moss looked around him, and indeed, the buck was missing. He sniffed the air again: the smell of weasel was everywhere.
-"It must be the same weasel whose tracks we saw earlier. The sooner we're away from here, the better."
-"Eh, Moss..." Rake said softly, "...behind you..."
Moss turned around just in time to see a large weasel, standing on its hind legs, ready to pounce. He ducked just in time.
The weasel, however, was not going to give up this easily. It soon got back up, and spotted another rabbit, sitting in a tharn state in front of a tree. The perfect meal. It growled, and ran towards her.
-"Heather! Run!" Moss shouted.
With the weasel ready to snatch her up, the doe regained her senses and bolted out of the way. The weasel collided at full speed with the tree, and a sickening crack was heard as it fractured its skull. Moss approached it, and deeply bit its neck, making sure it really was dead.
-"That wasn't too hard to deal with," Bugloss said.
-"I don't know..." Heather stuttered, still recovering from her near-death experience. "It feels almost too simple..." She was interrupted by another squeal. Everyone turned around, and saw another weasel, carrying a rabbit in its mouth. He was desperately attempting to claw the weasel to get it to loosen its grip, to no avail. Moss ran after the weasel and bit its tail. The elil let go of the rabbit, causing it to fall to the ground. From a distance, Heather could recognize him as Thunder, but his neck was broken. The only one who could help him now was the Black Rabbit.
The weasel soon recovered from the pain and tackled Moss to the ground. As it was about to bite his neck, however, Moss gave a powerful kick of his hind legs into its left eye, allowing him to get away.
-"EVERYONE RUN!" he shouted, but he soon realized that this was not an option, as there was another weasel in front of him. He turned around, and noticed hrair others, coming from all directions, surrounding the rabbits. Anyone who would try to run would face certain death.
-"We had no other choice," Rake said. "We had to fight them. We knew that if we did that, some of us were going to die. Maybe even all of us. But what was a possibility if we fought them, was a certainty if we just tried to run."
-"That's...really dreadful," Hazel said. "How did it turn out?"
-"Terribly," Leo said. "A lot of us were killed..."
As the noise died down, Heather cautiously peaked out of her hiding place. Moss had shoved her in a cavity between the roots of a dead tree at the start of the battle, keeping her mostly safe. She felt rather ashamed at having stayed hidden for the entire battle, rather than helping the others. She knew that she most likely would not have been of much help had she participated, especially with her unborn kittens, but she still felt powerless.
The ground was littered with bodies of both rabbits and weasels. It was clear that neither side had truly won. While several rabbits were still alive, well over half of them had died in the battle. Judging by the low number of weasel corpses, it seemed that several of them had escaped alive, and might perhaps return later on.
Heather, Leo, Rake, and a few other survivors took their time to make sure everyone was accounted for, either dead or alive. The only rabbits they could not locate were Sainfoin and Moss. All scents were masked by that of weasel, making the search more difficult. That was until Heather noticed one of the dead weasels in an awkward position.
-"I don't know how many injuries it sustained," she told the others, "but that position is certainly not natural. Almost as if there was something underneath it."
-"That one had its spine cracked; I wouldn't worry too much," Groundsel said.
-"No, I think there's something underneath," Rake said. "Look at that thing sticking out from underneath it. That's certainly not part of its body."
The "thing" Rake had mentioned was small and white, and looked like a rabbit's tail. With the help of the others, he pushed the weasel out of the way, revealing a gruesome sight.
As Heather had suspected, Sainfoin and Moss had been lying underneath the weasel. Sainfoin was plainly dead; while Moss was still alive and conscious, he would not last much longer. His abdomen had been torn open, and a few organs were sticking out.
-"Moss!" Heather said. "You're hurt!"
-"Don't worry about me. I'm fine..."
-"You call that "fine"!?"
-"Heather, promise me something."
-"Anything!"
-"Could you wait until I make my request before promising?"
-"Sorry."
-"Don't worry about it. But promise me," he painfully raised his front paw to touch Heather's, "that you won't let our kittens grow up in a place like Efrafa. Find a safe place where they can lead a good life. A life of freedom."
-"I promise."
-"Thank you. I can now peacefully cease existing."
A faint smile appeared on Moss' face, as he closed his eyes. Heather placed her front paws on his lungs, being careful not to claw them open.
-"I think he's gone. I can't feel his breathing..."
-"My heart has joined the thousand," Rake said, "for my friend stopped running today..."
-"That was the saddest moment of the entire journey," Leo said. "We were all sure he was dead. But he wasn't."
-"He survived?" Hazel asked, struggling to understand how this was possible.
-"It's really weird. But later on, it seemed like this had never happened."
Most of the rabbits hopped away from Moss' body. Their leader was dead, there was nothing they could do about it. They would have to keep going without him; hopefully at least some of them would come out of this alive.
Heather and Leo, however, stayed close to the body. Moss' death seemed to have affected them even more strongly than the others. It was almost sunset when Rake approached them.
-"We have to get going," he said. "We have to find this place of freedom he talked about, and honour his sacrifice."
-"It'll never be the same without him," Leo said.
Heather scraped a bit of moss off a nearby tree, depositing it on Moss' body. Then, she slowly hopped over to the others, and resumed their journey. They had not gone very far when suddenly...
-"Hey, wait for me!"
The rabbits turned around, and there was Moss, running over to them, perfectly alive. His many wounds appeared to have healed completely, although he still had a scar on his chest.
-"Moss! You're alive!" Heather ran over to him and nuzzled him.
-"You can thank Campion for that. He touched me, which for some reason forced the Black Rabbit to send me back here."
-"Campion?" Hazel was extremely confused. "What does he have to do with anything?"
-"I don't know," Rake said "We asked him what happened several times over the next few days, but he always provided the same crazy answer."
-"As long as he's alive, however, I see no reason to question this too much," Leo said. "The rest of the trip also brought its share of trouble. We were all stinking of blood, and we kept attracting elil. Mostly foxes, and also the occasional cat: we lost Bugloss and Charlock this way. While we didn't encounter the surviving weasels, they may still come back. In fact, when your patrol found us, I was sure it was them again, ready to finish us off once and for all. But thankfully it wasn't. You know the rest."
-"You're fortunate to have stumbled upon our warren, after all your hardships," Hazel said. "You are welcome to live here."
-"You're allowing us here? Despite the fact that we were at war with you?" Rake asked in shock.
-"The war is over now, and we trust that you won't try to attack us."
-"Under what conditions may we live here?" Leo said.
-"Conditions?"
-"Yes, what are the rules of this warren?"
-"There aren't many rules here. You may go above ground and silflay whenever and wherever you wish. You can mate with anyone you want, as long as both rabbits involved approve. Don't insult or fight anyone else. You are free to leave the warren; nobody will try to stop you, although with that gang of weasels on the loose, I wouldn't recommend it."
-"...that's it? There really aren't many rules here."
-"We never saw the need for any other rules. It wouldn't make the warren safer, or the rabbits living here happier. You might find it strange at first, considering the strict rules back in Efrafa, but you'll get used to it over time. I hope you will all be happy here."
-"Thank you," Heather said, as she bowed again, before hopping out of the burrow, followed by Leo. Rake stayed a few moments longer, before he too bowed and left. This made Hazel sad; hopefully the former Efrafans would soon realize that such formalities weren't necessary anymore.