The Sunlapse (A Light in the Mist AU/rewrite)

XI

Song of the Chapter:
Sunn 0))) - Hunting and Gathering (Cydonia)

Rootspring was trapped in solitude, his heart and soul forlorn. How much anguish had he left behind? How did Shadowsight feel right now? Tree? Bristlefrost? Violetshine? He bowed his head, pitiful at the thought of Shadowsight and Bristlefrost. What a fool he had been. Bristlefrost and Shadowsight had laid their lives upon their quest to that forest dread, and went at the risk of their own deaths to save him, and he'd gotten himself killed. They did everything they could and he died from his own folly.

When Rootspring's focus drifted at least the smallest distance away from the sickness taking over his mind, he was looking at the land around him. The sky above was a void, an infinite blackness with no light or stars. The winds were cold, bitter and stark as they drifted endlessly upon silent air. The ground was flat, nothing lying upon it but dry rock. It was sickening to think how alone he really was, in this abyssal wasteland.

Rootspring somehow felt empty. Fragile. Weak. He felt hollowed by starvation, but at the same time he never wanted to eat again. The dryness he felt within brought pain so mind-breaking he'd rather die than feel it any longer, but at the same time he never wanted to drink anything again. He was gasping in desperation for air, but at the same time he never wanted to breathe again. Was this it? Was eternal solitude his dole?

Rootspring walked and searched the wasteland. He could've walked for hours, days, weeks, years. Perhaps he was still in the Dark Forest, and there was still hope he could be saved. He hadn't seen the whole land, but maybe he was just in a dark region of the land he'd never seen, and there was still hope, and everything would be okay.

Dead trees littered the dry earth, their pale corpses laying broken in the dark. It was all dust, darkness and misery. No life had ever walked here, and no life ever would. Rootspring suddenly felt so small under the endless, murky black of the starless skies above. This wasn't just a dead forest, or a dead land. It was a dead world. He still heard nothing but silence, other than the whispers of the cold winds that tore through his fur. As dread overtook his heart, and his body became hollow from the black hopelessness, his mind was beginning to give away into fog he'd never even seen. As though the fevers of his heart had crept into the caverns of his mind.

After what felt like centuries of walking, Rootspring finally collapsed. Dread twisted a knot in his stomach, swimming like a worm in its boiling acid. There was nobody here. He'd collapsed at the edge of a gulf, and as he peered over he saw endless rock walls reaching down, never meeting a ground. All they reached for was the endless abyss. Now there was void above, and void below. He wanted nothing but to be freed from the fever of his terror, but he was stuck in this complete solitude which drowned him like an ocean.

As Rootspring stepped closer to peer over the edge, the ground holding him up from that wretched abyss shattered. Pure shock raced up his spine, electrifying his lungs as he plunged forward. His burned from the speed, paws falling away from the safety on top until only abyss flew beneath them.

Then something grabbed him by the scruff.

He became a swamp of mixed, confused emotions as he was hauled away from the edge of abyss and laid in a safe haven on the rocks. Though he was laid upon a flat ground of dirt and crooked stone, covered in dusty spikes that punctured his skin, it was a soft bed of delicate rose and heather after that eternal fall into murky abyss he'd just been at the edge of.

After his mind had adjusted to the foggy disorientation of the fall, he stared up at the cat who'd, with a mere touch, saved him from eternal oblivion. She was a band of sickened mist, wearing the mask of a ghost. Putrid light burned from her sickly brown fur, her face haggard and sullen.

"Why were you over by that cliff? You could've fallen in." Her voice was the lullabies you'd hear on the wind, no anger burning within them. Each word was a rhythmic sigh. If it weren't for the choking exhaustion marring her voice, it would be a mellifluous tune.

"Who are you?" Rootspring's voice was quiet, probably just as tired as hers. Even though she was a stranger, her presence was so warm it nearly chased the bitter winds of the abyss away with it's light.

"I'm...Leafpool," she whispered. "Who are you? I haven't seen you in StarClan before."

At that second-last word, a fire set his heart ablaze, his chest bursting. He was in StarClan? StarClan had been reduced to this?  The mad red flame planted in his ribcage burned away at his throat, he couldn't even speak. He was dead. The darkness of the thought was like black smoke, it choked him, even if he already knew of the grim fact. "This is...StarClan?" he finally gasped. "I was in the moonpool, just a while ago. I was swimming home. Then everything around me froze and it was all over."

"You just got here?!" Leafpool's voice was no longer a breeze. It was a hurricane, an emergency. "But we were blocked off, right!?"

"What happened?" He asked.

Before Leafpool could reply, a sudden darkness flooded Rootspring's mind. A sickness pounced upon him without warning and flooded through his veins until they burst, blackening his blood. He collapsed to the ground, a flurry of dark dreams taking him over, eating away at his thoughts until he was no more.

When Rootspring's eyes opened again, he was in that wretched forest. His heart became a falling stone, dropping from a gash of unbearable pain torn in his chest. Vile mist shrouded the gloom, choking the naked silhouettes of the black trees. He was in the Place of no Stars again.

An utter hopelessness consumed him, so powerful he couldn't even focus on the forest around him. While StarClan had been a pale wasteland, this was a bitter labyrinth, of dark trees and rotting earth, the ground itself a sea of mud. The mist of the coldest dusk would forever shroud this woods. His heart felt so heavy with this sorrow that his mind burned, too obscured to perceive all the horrible thoughts of this new reality.

But why had he awoken in StarClan? Why'd he come for a brief visit before awakening to the forest of dread and gloom itself, to join all the other lost souls?

Rootspring knew he had to find out.