The Days of Gods and of Demons [C]

Bloodstrike led Wolfblossom away from the crowd and away from Falconmoon. The last thing he needed was for that monster to hear what he was saying. Did it seem like Falconmon was his own cat and not actually who he feared it was? Yes, actually, but for how long? Maybe Falconmoon wasn't at fault for these dreams. Maybe there was something else amiss. Still, Bloodstrike wouldn't have had a problem culling a potential threat whether it was Falconmoon's fault or not. What happened before did not need to happen again. As long as he was still breathing, it would not. Once they were at the edge of camp, Bloodstrike turned very seriously to Wolfblossom. His eyes were still intense from the very very recent events, but none of his emotion was directed at her.

"Wolfblossom, you need to listen to me very carefully and take everything I am saying to heart. I have lived long, but I have not lived well. That said, it has made me wiser than I let on. I'm not surprised Beechfang kept these stories from you, but they are ones you need to hear now." He glanced back at Falconmoon and eyed him for just a moment. His ears swiveled carefully around to make sure there were no others listening in. Once he was satisfied they were alone, he refocused his attention on the deputy.

"Back when I first became a warrior, I had my first litter of kits with my first mate, Smokefeather." It pained him to even say her name, but he held strong for now and continued. "Of that first litter, I had three daughters: Dustkit, Primrosekit, and Beechkit, your mother. I also had a son named Dawnkit. Your mother may not have ever mentioned my eldest son, and I will tell you why now that it has become relevant." He took a cautious glance again towards the crowd, making certain the others would not accidentally hear. "Dawnkit eventually grew into a warrior called Dawnhawk. I... must admit he was a true Skyclan prodigy. I had high hopes for his skill, his intelligence and his ability to lead as well as follow. Unfortunately he had other ideas. Dawnhawk betrayed Skyclan in the worst ways imaginable. He sided with an army of rogues called the Asylum and lead them to our camp... right over there." Bloodstrike nodded at the spot in camp where Dawnhawk had thrown down the pelt of the one-eared fox to trap Bloodstrike and the others for the invasion. His eyes darkened at the memory before he continued.

"The Asylum came and forced Skyclan to surrender. They entered every den and held claws to the throats and bellies of every member, except for me. I fought back. I'd rather die than live under a foreigner's paw. The reason I look like this," He turned the uglier side of his face to her as a gesture. "...is because of him and the Asylum that followed him. They tore me to pieces and tore off my tail. I am only alive because Dawnhawk ordered them to stop, saying that he would not have them make a martyr of me. I was imprisoned for an entire leaf-bare and I underwent torture and forced sedation by poppy seeds the entire time. It wasn't just Skyclan that fell under Asylum's rule. All of the clans submitted to their rule overnight.

By the time the clans got the courage to fight back, Dawnhawk had done serious damage in Skyclan in my absence. One of these incidents was the dream that Falconmoon described. Dawnhawk tried to convince Smokefeather to help him bring Skyclan entirely to heel, as she was very influential at the time. When she refused... whatever horrible words she threw at him... it caused him to snap and kill his own infant sister. He threw her against the nursery wall. Beechfang, Beechface then as she was a medicine cat, attacked him for it, but she had little battle training before she became a medicine cat apprentice. Dawnhawk beat her and threatened to skin her alive to terrorize Smokefeather further. From what Beechfang has told me, he killed a fellow Asylum member and blamed Featherkit's death and Beechface's injury on him. He told Smokefeather that if she didn't reciprocate the story, he was going to finish what he started with Beechface and then kill the last remaining kit and Smokefeather too. He didn't want the truth getting out, clearly. He even made it sound like he saved them all by killing his own guard. My mate... my daughters kept this secret for him while he paraded around like a savior."

Bloodstrike's eyes dropped to his claws that had buried deep into the earth beneath his paws.

"Dawnhawk's story is a long one, so I will tell you only what I feel that you need to know. Once power was restored in Skyclan and the truth got out, Wolfstar, my father, ordered Dawnhawk be executed on sight. My son never tried to return to Skyclan as a member, as far as I know. It didn't matter. Dawnhawk killed many, probably more than even I am aware of, in repeated hit and run attacks on Skyclan and even other clans. He was clever enough to hide in plain sight in Windclan for many moons despite our warnings to the other clans at gatherings, and even after we found out, he still slipped out of our grasp when we tried to invade Windclan to retrieve him. Eventually he became a living Dark Forest cat, brought the army of the Dark Forest to a gathering, and forced the clans under his claws once more.

That was when... he came to Skyclan and forced your mother to execute your grandmother like a common criminal. You can understand why Beechfang has spoken little of it. I didn't want to talk about him either, almost as if I say his name, it breathes life back into that monster. He is only not among us now because of Starclan warriors coming down from the stars to do battle against the Dark Forest. Smokefeather was one of those cats... but after she came down from the Stars she could not go back and she... she faded away into nonexistence. The love of my life is gone forever, and even when I draw my last breath, it will not be peaceful knowing I can never speak to her again.

Dawnhawk as he was being sent back to the Dark Forest mentioned that he would return, as he always had a way to escape impossible situations. My fear is that he is either using Falconmoon and giving him these nightmares... or he has returned but does not remember who he is. Yet."

Bloodstrike softened his gaze and took a big breath. Now this was the hard part.

"I know he is your son and you love him, but Falconmoon and Dawnhawk were nearly identical in appearance. Falconmoon has more stripes, but that's where the differences end. He even sounds like that monster. Wolfblossom... you need to think about what you will do if, Stars forbid, Falconmoon is not who he appears to be." Bloodstrike went quiet. Now he would allow her to speak, and he wouldn't be angry if she expressed her unhappiness at his words. She was well within her right.

Wolfblossom followed Bloodstrike in silence, casting a worried glance over her shoulder towards where her kits and sister were gathered. If Bloodstrike thought he knew something about this mess, she was more than willing to listen, though the only thing that had kept her paws moving away from the distressed Falconmoon was her trust in Birdstar. She should have been beside them, should've been there to comfort her son and try to make sense of this. But whatever Bloodstrike wanted to say was serious, she would have known that even without the intensity in his eyes. This wasn't a situation for lighthearted jokes, and her grandfather, as far as Wolfblossom knew, was not the type to make light of something like this.

Feeling like she would explode if she sat still, Wolfblossom paced back and forth in front of Bloodstrike, pale gaze watching the tom as he began to speak of his first litter of kits. Beechfang was the only cat she knew among their names. Dawnhawk's was one she had heard in passing, but never full details. A promising young warrior, he'd been, and that was so at odds with what little Wolfblossom had heard she found herself glancing at Bloodstrike in surprise. The old tom continued... And there came the bits and pieces, a story of a rogue group invading the clans, of Bloodstrike's own demise at their paws. Captured and kept contained. Plenty of his scars had the looks of being made by cat claws and fangs. To hear that it was his own son who had been a part...

"The poppy seeds... Mom never explained why she hated them, just cautioned us against using them unless they were absolutely necessary, and even then... That explains a few things." She muttered thoughtfully, shaking her head. She listened as Bloodstrike continued, heart sinking and anxiety only heightening as he spoke. What was said about Dawnhawk was enough to make her fur lift, as once more the story of killing a kit was recounted, thankfully in less vivid detail. It was no less horrifying, however, and Wolfblossom's claws dug furrows into the dirt. Dawnhawk had raided camp, led the dark forest in an invasion... Made Beechfang kill her own mother. Wolfblossom stared at Bloodstrike, ears flattening. "You said he was a promising warrior... What turned him into such a monster?" She wasn't sure she wanted to know the answer. Whatever his mother had said to make him kill a kit in cold blood... Wolfblossom shivered. "She kept quiet about the incident in the nursery?" Wolfblossom couldn't imagine her mother keeping quiet about anything, in truth. Sure, she kept quiet about her past but the battle-hardened she-cat was outspoken and irascible at the best of times. She confessed to murder in the middle of a gathering, for Starclan's sake. She had been threatened into it, Wolfblossom could not see her keeping quiet by any other way. And then Dawnhawk had escaped, hid under their noses... Killed more cats. Became a living dark forest creature who order Beechfang to kill their own mother. The list of horrors was like being thrown into the icy river.

Yes, this explained several things about the cagey, aggressive, conflicted to the bone ex-Skyclanner she called mother. Wolfblossom merely nodded as Bloodstrike mentioned her silence on the subject. "It's hard enough to talk about her exile and dad... No wonder she never spoke about the past. I'd want that buried, too."

Bloodstrike's suggestion that Falconmoon wasn't what he appeared, or was being used... Her fur lifted, and she struggled to smooth it back down. You are foxing insane. This is a load of foxdung if I've ever seen one. Wolfblossom wanted to yowl in frustration. But this was information... And some of this information was adding up in ways that the deputy did not appreciate. Why her son? Why an innocent?

"You tried to warn mom about something when she returned from fourtrees with our patrol... It was Falconmoon, then, wasn't it?" She asked, fluffy tail whisking back and forth as she eyed her grandfather. "I noticed her reaction, then Trufflesnap pulled her attention away." Trufflesnap, who was a different problem entirely, one that Wolfblossom had tried to address and gotten nowhere. Her sister was not the concern right now however, Falconmoon was.

"My son has had nightmares since he was a kit. Since before he can even remember, probably. Nothing has ever worked to give him peaceful sleep for long. Herbs, schedule changes, nothing. He's exhausted more often than not. He's spent more nights waking up in fright than I can count." She'd spent more nights than she could count trying to comfort him, wishing that there was some way to just let him have a peaceful rest. Her tail lashed in frustration, though her voice remained quiet. "He started remembering bits and pieces of them as an apprentice. Said he saw Shrikestar and recognized him at the gathering, even though he should have had no way to recognize him. He was confused and didn't understand why or how." Wolfblossom hadn't, either. She still didn't. If Bloodstrike proved to be correct, though... Blue eyes turned toward where she had left Falconmoon and Birdstar, worry and anger making her chest feel tight. "He's so young... He doesn't deserve whatever foxdung this is." Blue eyes turned back to Bloodstrike, searching. For the love of Starclan, you cannot be serious about this.

"You are seeing the dark forest in my son. Because he looks like your nightmare and has dreams he shouldn't." Her tone wasn't accusatory, but it was far from pleased. "Has anything in how you've seen Falconmoon act supported this?"

"He's the kind, empathetic warrior I raised him to be. If he wasn't, I think his reaction to these dreams would be very different. That's not a reaction anyone can fake." She pressed, she wanted desperately for this to not be true. For this to just be the ramblings of the half-senile old tom. Please, please don't tell me you've seen something I haven't with him.

"This has disrupted his life plenty, and none of us know how to fix it." Another frustrated breath escaped her. "Being told he's that monster because of these dreams definitely isn't going to help the matter." She didn't want to believe that Falconmoon was actually a monster. "There's no way that these dreams are truly his own and aren't being sent to him somehow, right?" She didn't want to believe it was the latter option either... But she refused to believe that Falconmoon was anything other than the bright young warrior she had raised.

Her questions came fast and furious and Bloodstrike didn't blame her. He kept listening, patient and waiting for her to finally reach a stopping point before he spoke. This was hard for her, he knew it would be. It had been hard for him when he was first discovering all of this with Dawnhawk when the treachery was laid out clearly before his eyes. At the question of how he turned into a monster, Bloodstrike looked away. How backwards things were from back then. He foudn it hard to speak ill of Dawnhawk at first, now he didn't want to speak ill of Smokefeather. It wasn't right and he didn't want to remember her potential fault in this.

But he knew Wolfblossom had a right to know. The look on Bloodstrike's face was one of physical pain, an expression that he didn't wear even when he had every reason to, like being torn apart by violent rogues.

"He... claimed that it began when Smokefeather..." He couldn't make himself finish it. "They had conflict. He blamed it on her." Still, it took him a moment to meet Wolfblossom's eyes.

As for the warning to gave to Beechfang, he nodded in confirmation. To the rest, he waited, letting a silence pass between them. He took a breath before he continued. This wasn't easy. None of it. "Falconmoon seems like a good tom. He's a little defiant now and then but he's young. I don't hold that against him. I don't really know what is happening to him, Wolfblossom, but I know he is dreaming of things that have actually happened from the perspective of a cat that truly lived. Unfortunately, that cat and these events were monstrous. I won't be the one to tell Falconmoon about this, but someone should. By someone I mean his parent. Birdstar should know too and a decision needs to be made.

Falconmoon may be entirely innocent and a victim of darker forces at work but we don't know that. The consequences of a mistake will be severe. Dawnhawk was a good liar, and apparently deceitful enough to hide in plain sight in Windclan. It wouldn't surprise me if he tried the same thing but closer to Skyclan, which had always been his main target. Falconmoon seems good, but Dawnhawk did too, until he wasn't. I will admit that your son seems to lack the anger that mine did, a habit he may have picked up from me," Bloodstrike's eyes looked off to the side and back to Wolfblossom. He'd neglected his kits during his time working to keep his clan fed after the fire as well as to pay back his debt to Riverclan, but his shame convinced him to hide the fact. "But the problem now is that he is afraid and confused, and that too can lead to anger."

He didn't know what to tell her. He could only hope that Wolfblossom and Birdstar would see sense and end the potential threat where it stood.

Bloodstrike's expression of pain was one she'd never seen on the old tom's face before, and Wolfblossom found her ears flicking back on instinct. His own mother had contributed somehow, or according to Dawnhawk's version of events that Bloodstrike seemed unwilling or unable to elaborate on. She wouldn't scratch at that particular wound unless it became necessary.

"Monstrous sounds like an understatement." She grumbled at her grandfather, tail continuing to twitch back and forth in agitation. "Whatever led him to that... I don't want to be a part of similar mistakes if I can help it. But he's not just dreaming this for the sake of dreaming it." Bloodstrike had confirmed them as real events, and that was as horrifying as the dreams themselves must have been to Falconmoon.

"Oh, I agree that I can't just not tell him. It's too late to shield him from it, as much as I'd like to. This information isn't what I wanted to hear but... It's something. Something I hope you are dead wrong about, but..." It seemed like it was very much connected, as much as Wolfblossom detested the idea of it. "How am I supposed to talk about this to him? Go about it wrong and it'll sound like an accusation, go about it right and it... Still sounds ridiculous. I think it's foxdung and you're confirming parts of it and making far more sense than I would like. I can't see how this doesn't just add to what's already on his shoulders. His nightmares are enough weight on his shoulders without... All of this. And how twisted they seem." The last thing Wolfblossom wanted to do was make this any harder on Falconmoon than it already was. Approaching this would require thought and care. They stood on a precarious branch and one wrong move would send them all plummeting, or so it felt like.

"I know she lurks around the border with twolegplace still... It's not like I'll be able to ask mom for insight on this either, I'm guessing." Wolfblossom saw her reaction that day, and Beechfang was mercurial and high-strung at the best of times. She was regretful of a lot of things, bur dredging up old wounds was unlikely to result in productive conversation. Wolfblossom was pretty sure Beechfang drowned the last cat who did, and for all that Beechfang's trauma was worn on her pelt, trying to coax answers out of the cagey and difficult was... going to be difficult at best. Still, the deputy would have given anything to have the advice of one of her parents right about now.