And the Smoke Has Eyes(closed)

Maybe this isn't a good idea. The faintest breath of a breeze stirred the leaves of the foliage around Sablepaw as she brushed through the undergrowth, bringing an acrid scent with it and failing to ease the heat simmering in every patch of sunlight that skittered down from above. All the other apprentices do it, though. She tried to straighten her tail out behind her, ears twitching at the distant crackle of leaves from a blackbird somewhere further away. Everyone talks about it so much. Mum and Dad wouldn't back down from going and taking a look.

The scent was growing stronger, cutting through the hot green of the forest as she carefully pushed past a bramble branch, wincing as a thorn caught at her pelt anyway, plucking a tuft of fur. Besides, there aren't any SkyClan cats anymore. We couldn't find them. Ahead, a tall pine broke through the leafier oaks and maples and other trees around her, her blue eyes reflecting its tall shape. But it wasn't like a usual pine - this one almost looked like its lower branches had died on one side mostly hidden by the rest of it. A few more pawsteps, and she came around a bush to a rocky outcropping, a glimpse of a strange misty wisp drifting in the distance over the top, the trees breaking away to pines, some of them half-clothed like the other one she'd spotted. Jumping up, she came to the top, looking over, and....

Caught her breath with something between a gasp and a startled mew, her ears twisting back. For a bit, the green stretched out, and then.... Desolation. Ashen grey, wisps of mist floated like ghosts in between scorched trunks, some of them stripped completely bare, some just stumps. All blackened. Here and there, maybe a hint of almost-green, but further in... it was like.... Like it's been eaten.

Wraith had seen fire before. He had seen the devastation it could cause and the many lives it was capable of taking in one go. The dark brown tom traversed the ashes, allowing the dust of thousands of dead souls to curl around his paws with each step. He didn't expect to find survivors here, but if he did, perhaps he would put them out of their misery if it looked like they were nearing their end anyway. His burnt orange eyes caught movement not far away, and they landed on a smaller, younger looking cat than himself. He stopped in his tracks and took in the appearance of the other cat.

Beautiful... The thought went through his head as he eyed the she-cat's interesting color patterns. Pale ivory tainted by marks of crimson... like blood in the snow. He watched her for a moment, feeling something akin to shame for what he would have to do to her. The Balance called to him, urging him to sharpen his skills lest they go dull. Sadly for the she-cat... she was the only thing around. The Order and the Balance must be obeyed, even if Wraith found it unpleasant at times.

The brown tom sighed silently, but then turned and lined his body with her's. Whether or not she would see him in time did not matter. He sensed that her ability to fight would most certainly pale in comparison to his. Sorry young miss... He thought to himself as he charged forward in total silence, ash dust whirling around him and giving him a ghostly appearance. The Balance demands blood just as much as it demands life... Wraith leaped with unsheathed claws and landed squarely on the back of the younger cat. Mercy would not be given. He was but a messenger and had no choice but to obey The Order.

Wraith used Leap and Hold, dealing 9 damage and -10SP

Wraith
45HP / 130SP (-10SP)

Sablepaw
Stunned for 1 turn
11HP / 80SP (-9HP)

The member 'Bloodstrike' has done the following action : Dices roll

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'Effect Dice' : 2

Shff.

Something felt wrong. Some sixth instinct made the hair along her spine rise to shiver in the barest of breezes, and blue eyes tore away from the devastation before her, a hint of movement at the edge of her vision. Ghost. A flash of orange through mist, a phantom of the smoke, its pelt the colour of the burnt trees. Frozen, coiled to flee, yet unable to, she watched in horror, almost detached as it came at her in almost complete silence. And then it leapt from the shroud of grey, light glinting on very real claws, and she finally found her paws moving, trying to duck to the side.

Too late.

The air burst from her lungs in an agonized oof as she collapsed under its weight, cruel pinpricks digging into her skin, the scent of a cat heavy in her nostrils, his pelt flavoured with smoke. Wha-? SkyClan? Why- are they - StarClan? Thoughts flickered through her mind too fast to get a grip on as she scrabbled desperately for some way to escape the tom's claws. They're mad because we didn't help?! Her pulse pounded in her ears, and she could taste the ash on her tongue, her jaw digging into the rocky ground.

Sablepaw is stunned.

Wraith
HP: 45/45
SP: 130/130

Sablepaw
HP: 11/20
SP: 80/80

Wraith caught the expression of sheer terror on the young she-cat's face. It was met either neither insidious joy nor merciful pity. Wraith's own expression stayed unremarkably blank as his teeth casually wrapped around the jugular vein of the helpless apprentice. I will make it fast, little one. He thought, his last mental words of pity to the poor terrified soul beneath him. Just as he was about to apply lethal force...

A bird of solid white landed curiously close to the two cats. The rush of wind from its wings blew some ash aside to reveal a sprout, green, healthy and growing just beside Sablepaw's head. Wraith hesitated. The white bird fluttered away into the sky as if finally recovering its senses. Upon seeing new life growing among the sea of death and devastation, Wraith understood what he had just witnessed.

The brown tom released his death hold on the smaller cat and settled his burnt orange eyes on her blue ones.

"The Balance has called to me beneath the ruin of a thousand dead souls. You are to be spared, young she-cat. The Dynasty of Death relinquishes the claim on your life. If you wish to continue to fight, it will not end with your final breath." Wraith stepped off of the apprentice and waited. His expression remained as bare as the dead forest around them.

Wraith did not attack this turn

Wraith
45HP / 130SP

Sablepaw
11HP / 80SP

Sablepaw could feel his hot breath on her fur, the pressure of teeth on her neck freezing her cold. A shuddering heartbeat, a single moment, the light piercing through specks of grey dancing through the air, her breath shallow, beyond terrified shivering. This was death. Against her will, her eyes crept to the side of her sockets, catching a glimpse of the empty face of the cat who was about to kill her. This was what death looked like.

Something fluttered by her head, and she twitched, almost closing her eyes as her teeth clenched together, not daring to breathe, catching just a flash of white, and something green. A moment of hesitation.

The pressure eased.

Lirista felt her whole body fall limp, shuddering as she drew in a breath, almost choking on the ash and smoke. Her eyes came up, meeting the burnt orange of the one from the smoke, almost twitching away but unable to look aside. His voice vibrated through her body as he spoke, empty yet thrumming with... something. A heart underneath the cold emotionlessness, like a puddle lying undisturbed, barely a ripple stirring its surface. Her own maw was clamped shut, mute, muscles too tight to speak, tremors running beneath her pelt as he stepped away.

Prickles still ran through her pelt, fur raised as she stayed there for a moment, hardly daring to believe he would let her go, and then she cautiously sat up. A pounding still bounded through her ears, and she swallowed, easing her jaw a bit looser, a sound finally shuddering past her lips. "N-no." Her pelt still stung, the wounds from his claws splinters under her skin. "I-I d-don-n't want t' fight." She gritted her teeth, trying to stop them shivering, to stop her throat from closing up even further.

Wraith patiently waited for the younger cat to recover from her shock enough to move and respond. In time, she did, and his eyes bore into her's looking for any hint of deceit. Her terror had been genuine, something that Wraith himself would have been punished for if had he dared allow such emotions to be known to his own mentors. Her body trembled, no doubt struggling to hold onto the soul inside that it was so sure it had been about to lose. The brown tom blinked slowly once, eyelids sliding across the slick surface of orange orbs.

"Slow your breathing." He commanded calmly. "Take a deep breath slowly, hold it for four seconds, then exhale for another four seconds. Do that until you calm yourself. I know you're young and you could have died, but show some courage. I'm sure your colony would have wanted that." Your life is not in danger anymore either. He waited for her to try to calm down, but his expression remained steadfast to it's grim state. There was compassion beneath the facade of indifference, but he had never been allowed to show it. He wasn't about to do so now.

"I'm Wraith. I'm not from this forest. Who are you and where do you come from?" Truthfully, Wraith would probably slash her again, but not lethally. Surely if she were to lose, she should wear some kind of marking so as not to bring dishonor to herself when she retreated back to her colony. He could smell the scents of multiple cats upon her pelt, even above her fear scent. She could make up whatever story she liked, even that she had chased the lone cat off. It made no difference to Wraith in the long run.

He spoke, his voice commanding like a mentor's, and Sablepaw found herself automatically obeying. Slowly, her pelt stopped shivering, the tightness in her throat easing up as her heartbeat began to slow down again.

Courage? Something in her head spun at the surreal strangeness of some cat who'd almost killed her giving her advice, a slightly confused look flickering in her eyes. But they would have. Mum and Dad and Beecloud would've wanted me to be brave. They would've been. Consciously, she tried to sit up straighter, still cautiously eyeing the tom in front of her, gaze flicking over his impassive face with its pelt that blended in with the burnt terrain around them.

As he spoke again, she felt her ears twist in surprised confusion, the fear fading further to a quickly growing curiosity, though caution still prickled at the fur along her spine. "I'm... Sablepaw. Or Lirista. I...." She paused, feeling her tail twitch. Would telling him where she came from be a bad thing? "Um, just back that way." She tilted her head in the general direction of where she'd walked from, feeling just a little foolish. If he really wanted to figure out where exactly she'd come from he could probably just track her trail back through the forest, but....

Shifting her paws slightly, she looked back into his face, trying to keep her own as calm as his and feeling even as she did so that she didn't reach the smallest branches compared to his expression of stone. "What about you? You're not... SkyClan." A hint of a question touched her statement, the thought that had popped into her head when he attacked her flicking back through her mind. She'd never seen a SkyClan cat except for Foxfire, after all. Though Wraith had said he didn't come from here, but- Maybe he was lying? Probably not. After all, he would've tried to seek out ThunderClan or one of the others in that case, right?

Wraith watched the cat... Sablepaw or Lirista..? Odd. Two names he could call her by. Sablepaw felt more like a title to him. Maybe he'd call her Lirista instead. Upon her questioning, Wraith shook his head.

"No... My colony is called The Order. We are split into two factions, two sub-colonies I suppose you could call them. One of them is called the Sodality of Life. The other is called the Dynasty of Death. I am from the latter, and that is why I attacked you. It is my job to hunt both prey and other cats. In order for the world to be in balance, there must be death as well as life." It might go over her head, but he thought  he'd give her a chance to understand what he was talking about. He knew not all colonies, in fact very few, knew about the Balance and were willing to follow it. Maybe Lirista was such a cat.

"Enlighten me, Lirista... Why do you have two names? Is the landscape of ashes where this so called Skyclan used to live? The fire seems fairly recent."

This tom was strange. Lirista decided that as she listened to him talk, a slight frown crinkling between her eyes. It kind of made sense though, if in a way that sent a cold sliver down her spine through the curiosity.

And then he started asking questions.

My name...? Wha-? Her thoughts paused for a second. Wait, I gave both of them. She mentally berated herself, feeling one ear twist slightly self-consciously. "My parents gave two to me." Waving her tail and feeling dusty ashes billow up at the movement, she added briefly, "They were a little like you before they joined my, uh, colony. No Soda- uhm, colonies like yours, though." Hopefully he wouldn't ask any more about that - her pelt itched at giving anything away, but a little hopefully wouldn't hurt.

She glanced at the ashes around them, burnt and desolate. "SkyClan used to live here, but a couple of sunrises ago...." Her paws shuffled slightly in the gritty grey underneath them. "The fire went through. I don't know what happened to them."

Another look back at him as she fell quiet for a moment, a burning question rising on her tongue, even as wariness crept back into the corners of her mind. But... he seemed willing to talk. "Your death-thing.... Why do you... need to kill cats?" She cocked her head slightly. "You said about balance, but... why cats? Isn't that murder?"

Maybe she shouldn't have mentioned that bit. I really hope I didn't just overstep it...