Silent Shadows: Book One - Echoes of the Flame

XVI

The world slept uneasy back at the campsite. Night shrouded all in a deep shadow, swaying the colourless woods beneath chilling air. Everything was painted black. Sunpaw felt her whiskers crackle like small flames as her face was filled with sweltering heat from the worry. She hadn't even time to stop it what had happened, Shimmerpaw had bounded ahead in just a second and her ghost was consumed by the night.

Silentpaw was staring ahead at where the apprentice had vanished, her eyes wide with deep uneasiness. "How foolish!" she hissed, pinning her ears back. "What possessed her to do something like that? After being kidnapped twice, would she not know better!?"

Sunpaw tried to shake away the crackling heat that clung to her pelt. "Hey!" she hissed. "It's not worth acting so serious! She'll be fine, I know it. It'll all be fine! Maybe she really could save us!"

Her best friend turned away, narrowing her eyes in pain. She didn't say a word. She simply sat there in the shadows, gritting her teeth from agonizing distress. Sunpaw couldn't do anything, she was helpless as she watched her begin to crack.

"I told you! Nothing will be wrong!!" she hissed. Silentpaw's eyes widened. They were glimmering like wide bodies of water, a sea of stars. A gleam circled her pupil as the smile Sunpaw had kept clinging to her face fell to pieces at her paws. "Just believe me! We're all gonna be okay, stupid!!"

"You're right," Silentpaw had finally shattered now. Her eyes overflowed with tears as her stilted mask shattered to show the ocean of maddened distress. "I was stupid! Stupid to believe anything could go right here!!!" She was yelling out now, gripped by a psychotic aura. "I know it. I know what'll happen. This war, this bloodshed, IT'LL JUST END US ALL! HOW COULD WE HAVE BELIEVED OTHERWISE? WE'LL JUST DIE, HOPELESS AND UNPREPARED BECAUSE WE STUPIDLY THOUGHT IT'D ALL GET BETTER!! WE WAITED FOR THAT SO LONG, AND IT WAS FOR NOTHING!!!"

Sunpaw sat frozen, her soul shackled by a quivering feeling of shock. It felt as if Silentpaw had spread her mania to infect her mind too. She'd never seen her best friend this loud, so open about the anguish swirling within her mind. She had always been the kind of person to simply cry sealed away in some dark den where she could weep in solitude. "Silentpaw..."

"It's just..." She'd been broken down now. She couldn't even scream out anymore, she should laid hunched over as she wept and shivered. The molly was shattered porcelain, she was dying moonlight. With tears streaming down her face she shakily dragged herself forward and buried her face in Sunpaw's chest.

"I'm just so afraid."

-

The clouds veiling the night sky had flown apart, the cloth falling to show an infinite garden of stars. The heat that crackled just inches away from her face did nothing to scare away the frosty winds that swooped down through the sleeping countryside, blowing through her pelt as she bounded across the fields towards where her companions were.

"That was clever of you, Joshua. You suggested Shimmerpaw got a branch and set the tip aflame by going to that campfire back there," Sirene spoke. At her paws sat a steep end, beyond that sheer edge was an endless abyss ready to swallow her whole. Shimmerpaw felt a feeling of dread turn through her stomach as she stared at the expanse of darkness, the anguished screams from bellow playing in her head. But the only thing she let her adrenaline do was pump energy into her veins, as she slowly stepped over the edge.

Shimmerpaw felt overwhelmed with relief when her paws only touched cold rock, and the golden blaze illuminated a vast spiral staircase. The steps were endless, a series of stones descending into a black abyss. It'd only get darker from here.

"Woahh!" Joshua scoffed as he stared down at the spiral. Finally, Shimmerpaw pushed herself forward until all four of her paws were rooted in the stone ground. Joshua broke a loud laugh of excitement out into the night. "It's so huge!"

"Now's not the time or being immature!" Sirene hissed, cutting the tom's excited babbling off. "I've told you a thousand times, this is a mission! How could you remember those screams we heard and just think about how big the staircase is?"

Joshua scoffed. "Alright, fine. We gotta be serious or something."

No words were spoken as they began their descent into the void. Blackness fell upon them like a heavy, suffocating cloak, with the flickering flame Shimmerpaw held being the only thing that was visible in the endless world of pitch black. She had to stand as stable as possible to keep herself from swaying and dropping into the infinite darkness bellow.

An animalistic moan rose from the abyss, deep with intense agony. Joshua gritted his teeth and winced in fright as the moaning faded into an eerie silence again. Shimmerpaw rolled her eyes, only to be stopped when she heard a squelching and a cold, slimy feeling grabbed her paw in its sluggish hands.

"Guh!" she hissed, unable to speak with the wood lodged in her jaws. Crimson slime was dripping from her paws, and with her stomach turning in deep nausea she forced herself to walk over the mass of dead slugs of flesh.

The stench of blood possessed the air more the deeper they went into the abyss. The coppery, rotting smell of decay bled into her lungs and filled her guts with dizzying sickness. She forced her aquiver paws to go onward, her heart violently shivering with fear. The scent was overwhelming now, and the last shred of light from the stars above had vanished. They were sealed deep under the earth now.

Sirene suddenly gasped. "The lantern!"

Shimmerpaw's ears perked when she heard the crackling fade, and she noticed that the golden flame was being drowned out. It dissolved into a dim red, which soon too disappeared. There was no light now. All that she could see was deep, endless darkness, holding her down in a suffocating blanket and refusing to let her breathe.

A loud scream suddenly exploded in her left ear, causing her to drop the stick that'd once been burning in shock. She felt Sirene's pelt brush against hers, before the next sound was the brushing of a paw against a wooden door. 

"Come on," she meowed. "We'll go in."

The three pushed forth into the room. There was, again, nothing to be seen. They were sealed too deep in the abyss to spot anything. But Shimmerpaw could catch the smell of one, no. Multiple cats. They're being held prisoner in here.

Her thoughts were interrupted by a loud slam behind her. It caused her to spin around as her heart dropped in panic. She quickly turned again, breath stolen from her lungs when a series of footsteps began thumping against the ground.

"We've got you, new prisoners," a voice spoke, sweet and toxic like poisoned honey.