Golden Antlers

The operation had been shockingly easy. The moon hadn't even sunk below the trees by the time the mottled dog strode into camp, being unduly careful with the ginger-and-white corpse it carried. As the creature dragged the body atop a smooth slab of stone, it let the corpse drop, continuing to move in towards a dark cove between two stones. The dog sat, amber eyes glinting as it stared at the dead cat and caught its breath from a short distance away. It was remarkable how quickly this "Finchstar" had gotten himself captured. Had the moor cats really thought they stood a chance, trying to use the tunnels for themselves?

The creature raised one paw to its mouth in a frighteningly cat-like fashion. A bristled tongue extended, gently licking blood-soaked claws and cleaning the paws before slowly beginning to draw it over their face. Only, it went under their face. Stroke by stroke, a delicate white-tipped brown paw began to clear away the mess, and the canine's face peeled back to reveal something almost worse.

A feline's head sat now, cleared of the head of the canine pelt which had been plastered onto it. The she-cat stood and stepped again into the moonlight, and now it was clear she could be no hound. The pelt she wore was stuffed to increase its apparent size, yet it was lumpy and misshapen, and it hung oddly off her petite frame. It sat as a cloak while she loomed over the body of the leader of the moor cats, waiting for her companions to return to begin the process of claiming a new pelt.

There was a crackling laugh as a black and white form slipped into the clearing, yellow eyes bright as they spotted both their leader cloaked in shadow but also the still form of the moor cat's own. "You should have seen their faces, the fools!" they - she - proclaimed as she drew up her paw, fidgeting with head until it slicked backwards, releasing her true pelt color. "Why, I think they actually thought I was their runt seeing how many times they called me...Eugh, 'Puddlepaw.' What kind of name is that?" she retorted, padding toward the slab with the still leader on it, shaking free of the pelt of the once-apprentice. Once the weight was free from her...It felt weird. They were rarely without a pelt, it truly felt like part of them but she could see that the small cat's pelt was already on its last claws. "Although the pelt barely held up..." she grumbled, poking at it with a paw. Claw marks could be seen scorn thought it - some actually having made it though and cutting her own but the wounds were minimal. "Tsk...They collapsed the tunnel behind me - an idiot threw me into the support before I could send it crashing on their heads. Not sure if any got caught but..." she shrugged, glancing toward the entrance of the outcropping. She didn't say anymore, waiting for the familiar pelts of the other two to arrive so they could decide their next course of action.

Out of breath, the tattered fox came into the encampment. Her eyes shone with fire, until they landed on the body of Finchstar. With a sigh, the fox stopped to catch it's breath, and slowly slid out of it's own skin. It was much easier than the other two. The pelt was so tattered. Scratches bled through her white calico pelt, mixing with the fox blood used to glue the pelt on. "Guess it's the end for this pelt." She murmured to nobody in particular, making her way to the tom. She laid next to the body, stretching out and arching around him as if he was her most long term mate. "I don't know why you had to kill him, Pahket." She whined, licking his orange and white pelt rhythmically. "He was so, so handsome. The only tom to match my beauty. It isn't fair, I loved him." Gingerly, she nuzzled the corpse, licking it's face.

"You are wholly obsessed, you know." Ovinnik meowed, only a few steps behind Dae as she entered their lair. He peeled his own pelt off, still holding up well. His white and black pelt was sullied with the blood and mud used to keep his disguised attached. He typically guarded their camp, and even in encounters with their flea-bitten enemies, he stuck around the back and took them by surprise. It was thrilling to watch the fear practically leak from their eyes as he caught them unaware, blood scattering around them as he struck... he pulled his attention back to the present. "Are we taking his pelt or not? I'd like to see their faces when we come back with their precious Finchstar as our puppet."

Shapes were only an ideal of the imagination. A figment of the mind, placing groups of similar colors or textures into one. They were subject to change as well, floating and shifting with the light as it disappeared from view. When all particles remained the same, there was only one shape. A dark, black void. Endless in its being. Did it have corners? Or was it round? Perfectly spherical as it sucked up all the light to ever exist? Shapes were not comforting, nor were they cold. They were simply nothing. And that was what life was as well. Nothing. Finchstar did not have a life, as he was dead. He was not a shape as everything that had defined him now ceased to exist. He did not feel sadness, nor fear, only nothing.

It wasn't as poetic as he'd hoped his deaths would be. That statement had been proven to him a few moons ago when he tumbled down the tunnels and spilled his blood on the earth below. This situation seemed somewhat similar, only WindClan was dying. It was selfish, to imagine that death would be grand in its happening. Finchstar had a boundless faith in life itself, but even he knew that sometimes the grass was just grass, and the rye was just rye. It was a hard fact to accept, but as he laid in the tunnel, curled up with Aspenheart all those moons ago, he knew he'd need to come to terms with it. As of now, though, Finchstar was lost. No pain came to meet him, but Brookclover didn't either. So he was dead. Only temporarily, of course. But dead. It was a quiet existence, humble in its manner as he contemplated the past events. A beast has overtaken him, plunging fangs into his throat like it was personal. But after that, nothing.

The fear started to surface again, along with the muffled sounds of voices, like he had cotton in his ears. A pelt pressed up against his, and for a moment Finchstar wanted to lie back and sleep, comfortable in the presence that could only be Brookclover. However a hunger for oxygen was beginning to eat at his lungs, and his eyes grew dry with the urge to see, to observe. Finchstar's chest heaved as he sucked in a large panicked gasp, immediately finding his feet, and subsequently falling back to the ground. The stench around him was putrid, air dark, and musty. Four sets of eyes seemed to stare at his frame, and as Finchstar's gaze adjusted to the darkness, he observed the frames of cats, or at least something like it.

Blood coated their pelts, and haphazard coats hung from their shoulders, as if their very own fur was peeling away from the skin. Their ears were tattered, muzzles crimson, and eyes as bright as the moon. "Who are you?" Finchstar demanded, a trickle of blood oozing from his neck wound. The leader's fur stood straight up and several shivers racked his frame. "Where have you taken me?" No answer, and the panic only grew. The tom started pacing now, spinning around as he tried to meet all the feline's eyes at once. His mind threatened to explode. "Speak!" He barked when no response came. As the silence grew, so did his terror. And Finchstar now resided in the den of the beasts.

Pakhet was satisfied with the kill. It was far from the first leaderly and bold creature that had fallen beneath her. Now, was time to rest and prepare for falling the rest of the group. And when they were weak enough, the Windclan cats would be merely another of their numbers. As Dae spoke, her whiskers merely twitched. The vain she-cat had proven to excel on the battlefield and it was for this reason that the leader Nightstriker found herself able to deal with these cats. All that mattered was their ability to execute their goals. To believe there was a further attachment between the squad, something beyond the feral predator mentality that drove them in their tasks, would be foolish. Before a word could leave her maw, a voice, that of a non-Asylum cat, piped up in a panic matter.

At once, claws were unsheathed and she whipped around. He... was alive. But how? Pakhet had felt that life drain out. There was no way. She quickly closed the distance between that pelt and herself, shoving Dae aside slightly in her pursuit. Had it been any other circumstance, and one of her fallen had not rise, she might have laughed at the fact another cat had dared to attempt to bark out orders. With the ginger splotched tom pinned underneath her, Pakhet struggled to find the words, a snarl building in her throat, "How are you not dead? You should be dead. I've killed cats twice your size! Tell me, moor rat, why you are speaking?"

There was a moment of excitement from Theron upon seeing Dae...But it turned to disappointment as the she-cat headed directly toward the slain leader. Blah, of course. She huffed, turning her gaze away as Dae cooed over the corpse. Let him rot of all she cared - he wasn't deserving of Dae's attention, not when he fell so quickly. He paused at the mention of turning him into a pelt, thinking it over...Only for another voice to speak up. She whirled, eyes wide as she realized that the slain leader was alive. "H-How?" she gasped, only for their leader to come storming up demanding answers. Her ears slicked back as she fell into a posed position, slinking forward and ready to attack if the strange tom who lived again tried anything rash against their beloved leader.

Speech echoed through the darkness, Finchstar's ears ringing with every nick of sound. His throat felt like a fire, hot liquid running down to his paws, but he didn't notice. The tone of shock was present in the air, the leader's fur standing on end as the atmosphere collapsed around him. His first instinct was to run, to separate himself from the horrifying beasts in the darkness. A strangled choke gurgled from his maw as he coughed up crimson, head swirling. Finchstar looked up from his trauma warily, catching the horrible eye of the beast as it barked commands at him. "My..." Another crimson cough. "My question first." The tom gazed at his attackers through shards of light, catching glimpses of whiskers and tall ears. If they were speaking, they had to be felines. However the carcass of Puddlepaw hanging from their shoulders was enough so send him wretching. If these beasts were cats, their morals had been wiped away long ago.

The leader would close his eyes every time they drifted to the gaping mouth of a fox pelt, of the frozen scream of his once-friend Puddlepaw. His vision wouldn't be much of use to him here anyway. The darkness was a mercy, saving him from sights that would haunt his dreams forever. Finchstar began to shake, wondering what else lay in glooms unseen. How many of these cats were there? Was WindClan doomed to fall? "You're cats. Twisted as you may be. You have ears..." The tom's gaze shifted onto one of the heaps of pelts, and he stifled a wretch. No bluff would save him, and panic was not something easily hidden. Tears streamed down his eyes both from the terror and the stench. "Sons of foxes..." He muttered to himself, wanting to curl up at Littlesong's belly as if he was a kit again. A deal was not humble, nor would it save him from oblivion, however he couldn't let himself die now. This was the glorious death he had wished for, one worthy of romantic stories and great galivants over the moor. Finchstar hissed to himself, regretting it as his throat seared once again. What's wrong with me?! Fear, real fear. He would rather face a thousand dogs than to be trapped in this graveyard for another minute. Swirling, down, down.

"A deal." Finchstar demanded, surprising even himself with the force of his voice. Rather, this would be a deal with his own terror than the beasts before him. "My clan, my friends, you are not to touch them. If another one of your murderous claws even grazes their fur I will slay each and every one you." Finchstar choked once more as his mind slipped, grasping wildly to back up his claim. "I cannot die, yes you may kill me once, but I will rise, again and again until all your kin are crowfood under this starforsaken moor. I am immortal. A gift from the great ones above." Finchstar closed his eyes and pleaded with the fates, he dug his claws into the beast on top of him and swallowed his terror. "In return for my clanmate's safety, I will give you this power. A chance to redeem yourselves once more."

Pakhet's eyes were trained on the tom, bore into him. She said nothing as he demanded answers. This moor cat did not need to know of who they were, nor why they came, at least not yet. But the tantalizing secret of breath in her lungs, it was something she craved, perhaps more than anything before. Fiercer than the itching of claws before a battle. Her mind briefly considered the idea that this might be something to report rather than snatch herself. And yet, to bring back some mangled half-truth would only reflect poorly on her and her faction. No, they had already discovered this forest and it's resources. The knowledge of bringing cats back from the dead would only further her own honor. And Pakhet was not known for failure, nor anything less than great victories.

As the ginger-patched tom spoke, her ears swiveled. From the ancestors. If she hadn't witnessed it herself, and known of the blood she had spilled from this tom, the she-cat wouldn't have believed it. Without moving off of him, the she-cat pondered his proposal. There was no way she would command her Nightstrikers in leaving any cat alive. But if a false promise was what it took, "Fine, moor cat. Your great ones will grant me this power. You will take me there. Theron, you will come with us. The rest will stay here. No one will attack his cats." As she turned away, backing off slightly, she knew of the complaints her team would likely have. Although, when her expression was no longer visible, there was a flash of a smile across her maw, directed at Dae and Ov. They would do as they pleased while this leader lead her to immortality. Was he stupid? Did he not see that once her own power was earned that his clan would fall?

Perhaps they were has stupid as she thought. Soon, power would be at Pakhet's paws, and the Nightstrikers would finish what they started.

There was a deep part of Theron that was begging the strange living tom to make the wrong move, to see if he could return again. She hissed as he revealed the source of his... Powers. Immorality given to him by the 'great ones above?' Blasphemy, the only true great ones were their ancestors, not whatever this tom was spouting off. Lies, she was eager to see if his words rung true - ready to leap at him at her leader's words...But it never came. Pakhet was accepting? She straighten up, staring at her leader with a startled look...But she wasn't one to speak up against her, certain that the she-cat knew what she was doing with this strange deal of power...She nodded her head at the command to follow, taking a step forward as she sank her teeth into the scrawny cat's scruff and yanked him to his paw, shoving him in the direction of the entrance. "Go on, oh great leader," she taunted, slinking past him with bright, narrowed eyes. "But don't think you can fool us - one wrong move or any attempt to escape and I'll take pleasure in seeing if you are truly immortal. And of course, our deal will be forfeit and your precious... Clan will no longer be spared from our might."

Dae jumped, her typically white and calico pelt bristling with the sudden leap of the beloved below her paws. She said nothing, simply staring in awe and admiration. Not only was this cat the most handsome cat she had ever seen in his life, but he was immortal. With a purr, Dae strode forward and forcefully rubbed her chin against his cheek. "Oh my love! My love my love. I am so happy you are alive. Did you like my gift? The finch? With the rabbits? It was so mean to poison me but it's okay- It's okay my love. Now that you know who I am, how beautiful I am! You can be mine." Dae had no shame as she groomed the orange and white tom's pelt.

Finchstar exhaled and stood slowly. He didn't know how much time had passed since his death, the darkness hid all. He had secured his clan's safety, or at least it seemed. And now his bluff would play out. On shaky legs and a hazy mind, Finchstar turned toward the she-cat which had him pinned. She gave him space to arise, and the musty cats scooted closer. One spoke of the finch, the dead finch that had caused Finchstar so many nightmares in the past. Her words caused his spine to tingle, and he choked, gazing at her with jaded yellow eyes. "I am betrothed to another." He spoke in a pained voice, tone gravely and rough. The tom, a larger tom teased his bluff and toyed with the idea of attacking WindClan. Finchstar turned and wished to lash out, but found his strength had faded. The moon rose above and the leader knew it was time.

They exited hastily, and the tom wished to wretch, to sear his eyes, anything to expel the stench from his maw. A journey, a lie, and a sacrifice.

The Other Side of Paradise