A Vision of Shadows #1: The Apprentice's Quest

Chapter 8

As the world crumbled away, Alderpaw glimpsed a flash of ginger fur and felt his heart stand still. No! his mind screamed. Not her!

And suddenly his paws were no longer placed on hard stone, but were reaching out for his sister as he flew through the air.

It happened too fast to think clearly. Alderpaw felt his fangs sink into someone and felt someone sink their fangs into him. There was a flash of pain and he shut his eyes tight, feeling fragments of rock bounce off his pelt.

Something was squirming in his grasp. Daring to crack his eyelids open, the young tom saw blood spattered across orange tabby fur, trickling from his teeth into wide green eyes. Sparkpaw.

Delight pulsed amidst the storm of fear in his head. For a moment, he stared at his littermate and felt the blood pound in his ears before everything lurched forward.

Wth another dizzying burst of terror, Alderpaw's head jerked up, Sparkpaw's weight increasing the pressure on his neck. There, muscles straining, stood Leafpool with her front paws set against the lip of the gorge. Her mouth was enclosed around his tail tip, which burned like fire.

In an instant, it made sense: Alderpaw had caught Sparkpaw, and Leafpool had caught him, and now they were all going to fall over together.

Panic seared in the apprentice's chest as he realized their combined weight was about to pitch the medicine cat over the edge. Leafpool was trembling with the effort of holding Alderpaw by the tail, but Hollytuft and Fernsong stood frozen behind her. Alderpaw wanted to tell her to let go, but his throat was clogged with fur that blocked his breath.

Suspended in mid-air, hanging over a dark abyss he could not see, the young cat felt a surreal feeling creep over his fur and render him strangely calm.

There was another bump as Leafpool was forced to duck her head. Is this it? Alderpaw wondered dimly. Is this the end?

Time seemed to stop, and all the feelings from the dream: of sadness and regret and peace, flooded through him. In one last desperate attempt to see the forest he had so dearly loved back in ThunderClan, the dark ginger tom cast his eyes upward and above.

He was not prepared to see the leaves rustling, and blurred shapes streak out of the trees like birds in flight. Surprise flickered through his pelt, and suddenly more sets of teeth were embedded into his tail. Alderpaw bit back a shriek of torture. Why couldn't they just give up? What in the name of StarClan was even going on?

Sparkpaw had tensed as if she knew something was happening, but she remained limp in petrification. Faint calls were coming from behind them.

"Hold on!"

"We'll get you up!"

Alderpaw tried to hold on to them, but they were sliding away like a slippery mouse. The pain in his tail made his sight swim. It intensified in a heartbeat, feeling as if the others were trying to yank it off. The young tom slammed into the rock wall, his haunches scraping against the rough surface, and this time he could not hold back a yowl of agony as the whole world went shooting up.

He was flying through air, and then thudding onto the ground like a stone dropping to earth. For a dizzying moment, he felt the firm impact and remained in a crumpled ball. Everything ached: his bones, his whiskers, his eyes. Hitting the earth had taken his breath away, and his skull felt like a badger had decided to use it for battle practice.

But he was on ground-- ground! The smell of it, fresh and earthy and damp, was the best smell he had ever known at that moment. The ragged breathing that tore from his throat was proof of his life, and that was enough for Alderpaw. He had thought for sure he was going to die.