The five Warrior Clans are going extinct. Gatherings and Moonpool visits are inacessable, with leaders falling left and right. The lake territories are being wiped out to the brink of extinction by new, large predators that have migrated into their...
Paws crunched against dead leaves and snow as a hefty black tabby-and-white tom slammed his hindquarters against the earth, running and pouncing at the wolf's throat. His paws were flung out mercilessly, and his jaws found purchase against the soft part of the wolves neck, right below the chin with fangs planted among the jugular. His claws fastened just beside with expert placement- and although the wolf didn't fall, it twitched with pain and cringed away.
Crescentkit dropped to the ground as Everfrost, both a senior warrior and her father, paused from his spitting attack on the wolf.
"Get up that tree, quick!" His mew turned into a hard growl as he saw his daughter begin to advance once again, intending to help him.
The wolf lifted a front paw to swivel towards Eveningstar. The thick-furred she-cat had her claws sank into its back tendons. As the animal flung Everfrost away his black-and-white pelt skidded into a heap of nearby reeds.
Crescentkit, heart pounding but not with fear, stared after her father before moving.
She was aware that Drenchedleaf, Riverclan's last elder, was dying close by. The tabby she-cat's screams of bloody agony filled her ears. The she-kit turned to fight once again, until she was knocked into and then flanked by her revived father.
"Get into the tree."
"How many wolves are there tonight?" The kit glimpsed two still attacking the clan cats, and a third eating the bodies of those already fallen. Berrybright was among them, an impatient and outspoken warrior that Crescentkit had liked. But she couldn't bear to look at the tom's mangled heap for any longer.
Chaosclaw and Eveningstar were now fighting together, but the others were out of sight- hopefully up a tree or at least deep inside of their thorny dens.
Echofrost ignored her question, steering her towards the tree and mewing urgently in her ear while bending down to try and block her view. "You can't fight with us yet Crescentkit. Let the warriors take care of it."
Hot rebellion choked her throat until she almost rebuked against her father's words. Drenchedleaf gave a feeble wail. Everfrost turned away to assist the other cats abruptly. His black-and-white tail was spiked with nerves, despite how calm his voice had been.
Crescentkit impatiently climbed the tree and sat with her sisters and mother-cat, giving Rowankit a sour look. I wonder if I could get away with throwing her off in return.
It wasn't very much longer that she looked back down at the Riverclan camp below them, edged with tall reeds and river birches. Most of the shrubs had been trampled or torn out, so that the den wall was crushed or sagging in places. Snow sagged all of the sparse foliage down. Everything was encrusted with frost, even the tree-bark beneath her.
Drenchedleaf wasn't the last to die that night. One of the wolves lifted her body in its jaws and trotted back to its territory, with the second following soon after it finished eating Berrybright. Crescentkit didn't know how wolf clans worked, but she figured that one might've had a litter of wolf-kits back at camp and was going to feed Drenchedleaf to them. The fluffy she-kit wished the elder a quick passage to Starclan.
She could hear the last wolf still snarling and growling at the edge of the clearing, but its movements were confined by part of the warriors den. Her fur pricked with foreboding as her ears searched the churned-up earth for her father's sleek black-and-white shoulders. She first saw Eveningstar's fallen body, close to the skirmish between three remaining warriors and one wolf.
Their leader was losing a life. She saw the barbarity of the neck wound, then looked away to continue searching for her father, stomach churning. It was a moment before she saw his backside as the fighting warriors moved more into view. Everfrost dodged the wolf's snapping bite to his face, and his kin's responding gasps were distraught. Tinykit jumped up from leaning against her shoulder.
"Everfrost!" Crescentkit wailed as Vixeneye trembled behind them on the frozen tree-trunk. Her mother's sides shook harder, shaking the branch beneath their paws. As her eyes followed her kit's gaze to the sagging body that was still partly upright, her mouth fell slack with alarm.
The animal was standing over him, twice-doubling the warrior's height and then some. The tufted senior warrior spat blood onto the white earth, but held the wolf's gaze with a glare. Then, he turned, his paws faltering as he wobbled slightly; stumbling against the frozen earth. Everfrost seemed to be retreating, but his backend was immediately seized in the wolf's jaws before he was shaken agressively. More blood spewed from her father's mouth, until the wolf finished killing him and began trodding away.
The wolf didn't even care that he gave up. It also didn't react to the cats scratching and biting its hindquarters, yowling and chasing it out of camp. Crescentkit felt a dreadful hollowness in her throat, and her eyes stung with rage and sorrow. Her claws popped out and sunk deep into the bark, as Riverclan's icy stream-bordered camp blurred beneath her.
I will never allow this to happen to someone I love ever, ever again.
The remaining cats in the dim sliver of light were deafeningly silent for awhile. Riverclan cats clinging to adjacent tree branches were looking across at Vixeneye with sympathy; or not looking at all. Her mother gave wracking half-sobs behind her, ragged breaths the only thing giving her grief away.
______________________ Crescentkit
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