The beginning of the end (c)

Alexander breathed in, puffing out his chest and then releasing as he peered at the lowly cats around him. The sun hung low in the sky, nearly eclipsing behind the trees and disappearing into the horizon. The sky painted with a palette of purples, pinks, oranges, reds, and blues smeared into the muted colors of the clouds, a sky too beautiful for what was becoming of the world below it. A sky untainted of the affects of the asylum, a force unknowing of anything but it's continuous and yet stagnant nature.

Alexander: Mud brown fur and an even darker mask, tail tip and paws, accented with fleeting dark stripes-- as if they too wanted to get away from the evil that came from all that he was. Amber eyes bellowed the lust for destruction that he had grown to know, that was in his blood and the foundation of his society. Some were good, Alexander saw a changing tide in the cats of the asylum every day. Before they knew it, they became sympathetic to the clans. Alexander scoffed, stretching out his paws, limbs, body. Muscular and robust, his only driving force was his physical and intellectual power. This, and his ambition to live for the asylum, everything he does is in the wake of the asylum, every step, every breath.

A cold gust of wind blew by, a gentle and seemingly insignificant earthly force that ruffled his fur and the fur of the badger mange on top of him. He wore it like he wore his pride, full-bore, adorned with the poisoned needles of a porcupine and the teeth and claws of various animals that fell to his. He was so similar to them and yet he felt leagues above them, and really it must be true, considering they now decorated his pelt and not the other way around. Using claws from the dead he fashioned to enhance his, Alexander raised one strong paw and struck the earth; dominating; herculean.

Same old same old, but today would mark the beginning of a force that could not be stopped, one that was out for blood. There he remained, sitting in the clearing, watching.

The noise of a cat slowly creeping up behind Alexander was kept hidden by reeds rustling in the wind. Brick, ever the fool, unknowingly toyed with her own fate this evening, choosing to play with the “overly serious” tomcat instead of literally any other cat in this waterlogged camp. With wide, kit-like eyes she watched his flicking tail, stalking slowly closer. She felt a giggle rise in her throat and pounced before it could reveal her position. A triumphant grin spread beneath her hare’s pelt as she stood on his tail. “I got you this time, Alexi!” Another unwarranted nickname; another knell. She prodded his shoulder with a paw, avoiding the thorns she could see. “Maybe you’ve gotten a little bit careless.” Though this was only wholesome teasing to her, she wasn’t the Asylum’s resident idiot for nothing. So many Nightstrikers got so serious, they needed to loosen up at least a bit! ‘Like Captain Theron!’

“Are you done for today, Alexi? I don’t know if I ever saw you leave.” Insinuating he had no responsibilities to attend to? Nah. She was simply, uh, “stationed” to stay within RiverClan’s camp to, as Captain Lyralei put it, “keep an eye on the fish-eaters”. Definitely not because she couldn’t be trusted to do much of anything. Not after... not after what happened to Mister Cool-Eyes, or "Snowflight" as the Clan cats called him, under her watch. And so she paid more attention to who left with who, for what, and for how long. Did Alexander just slip past her today? Or was he just doing the same thing she was, hanging out with nothing else to do? Quite odd, as far as she knew him he was always out doing something. Going out on a mission, training, hunting... Wait, was he hurt? Was that why she didn’t see him go out today?

A frown crossed her usually blissful face. She got even more in his personal space, hooking his paw up to where she could look at it. “Did you hurt yourself?”