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

XIV

Warning: Some violence, gore and death so I wouldn't recommend reading if you don't like that.

Tiny drops of water pierced Spotfur's skin with their coldness as rain poured from the dusky sky, the bleak shade of twilight painting the gnarled trees black and the snow blue, enwrapping the forest in a strange kind of gloom. The freezing taint of the air and the rain lashing at her made Spotfur shiver, but Bristlefrost shivered even more. However, unlike her, it wasn't from the cold.

"Sorry," Spotfur mewed, but Bristlefrost simply stood in frozen shock, not glancing away from her reflection in the pond for a single second. 

"What do we do now?" Mothwing mewed. "Should we just go?"

"We can't go!" Flipclaw protested as he rushed over to stand by Bristlefrost. "My sister is injured! She needs the proper rest!"

"Come on! StarClan disappearing matters more than one cat not wanting to walk because someone hurt her eye!" Bramblestar spat back.

"She didn't just hurt her eye!" Flipclaw spat. "Aren't you a leader? I'm surprised you haven't been kicked out by your whole Clan yet. She just needs a bit of rest and then-"

"I'll be fine," Bristlefrost spoke as she broke out of her silence and reanimated. "Let's just go."

Flipclaw huffed as they set out into the swirling storm of icy rain again, winding through the black trees. The branches swayed as the freezing rain turned Spotfur's pelt to a layer of ice, and Flipclaw never left Bristlefrost's side for a moment. He pressed himself against her, laying his tail on her back. Though the siblings had different pelt colours, in other every way they seemed similar. Their shapes, the length of their fur, they even acted similar.

Once they'd trekked out from the woods, the swirling parade of rainfall had finally come to an end, but judging by the bleak clouds veiling the sky it would likely come back. They continued trekking for the north. Soon, the skies fell into the blackness of a moonless night, and the bad weather did indeed come back. They walked for hours by a winding thunderpath through swirling snow, all simply being black silhouettes against a lightless, cloudy sky. 

The wind howled, as though wolves were crying out their agony unto the veiled moon as they came to a black pine forest. As they continued, they eventually came to a barn. Next to it was a sleeping monster, and peering inside, she saw a golden light bathing the place in illumination and warmth. There were blocks of hay, splattering out in piles of gold straw. With the frozen tempest outside, this seemed like the perfect shelter for rest, if it weren't for the sleeping monster.

"Okay...How about we just have one of us guard the barn, and if the monster wakes up or anything, that cat can just wake us all up and we'll escape?" Spotfur suggested. "The snowstorm's so bad that a bush or tree just won't work."

"I can guard," Flipclaw meowed. No cat seemed to protest, so he just walked over and sat at the barn's entrance. Spotfur didn't mind, really. Her bones were about to snap beneath her own weight at any moment, and her legs were burning with agony from all the movement. She just needed some rest. She stumbled over to one of the lumps of hay, her legs breaking beneath her as she collapsed in the nick of time. 

This place felt warm and protected, surrounded by a fiery compassion. The sound of the snowstorm outside swirled and howled, like a beast trying to get in, but it couldn't. It was like their personal sanctuary, full of golden light. A calmness bloated her as she shut her eyes, and Spotfur allowed herself to fall away as sleep took her over. 

***

A loud screech snatched her right out of the unconscious haven of rest she'd plunged right into. Her head shot up, pelt dripping with mud. The swirling winds of the snowstorm outside still howled in anguish, and the sky beyond their personal barn of light and warmth was still black. But the night wasn't what shocked Spotfur. When she turned, crimson slime was splattered on the floor. It was flesh and wet, as though it was spilling from a fresh wound. The others were crowding around a cat.

A dead cat.

Spotfur ran forward and pushed her way through, her blood turned to rapid water with panic. There was no way to describe her shock, there simply wasn't. She felt cold, thoughtless, this shock had completely become her. Staring down, she saw what'd happened. Bramblestar was laying on his side, completely still. His eyes bulged out from their bloody sockets, fading pupils staring at nothing. His jaw dropped open, and there were red marks at his throat, spreading all down his stomach. An open gash, exposing all the bright scarlet meat and nerves and veins. There was so much meaty red spilling out, so much blood and meat and gore that she could barely tell what the wound that killed him was meant to be. There were what looked like organs, or at least some kind of huge lumps, spilling out onto the ground.

That's...fucking disgusting, Spotfur was ready to vomit. Her chest hurt, her head hurt, she could barely breathe. Squirrelflight was laying her head on the shoulder of her murdered mate, screaming. Not high, painful screams, though.

"NO...NO...NO...CANT...WHY..." she could barely understand what she was saying, but the anguish was hauntingly clear. Squirrelflight's screaming alone was enough to make her cry. It didn't sound like a cat, it sounded...low, muffled. It was beyond description. Suddenly, all she wanted was to go home. The screams were heart-wrenching. Spotfur ran.

It wasn't the blood that horrified her the most, it was Squirrelflight's cries.

She yearned to run home, so badly. But they were in a mountain, she couldn't. As the night past and the sun rose, the group buried him beneath the paling of a leafbare sky. Bramblestar's remains would forever rest in a place that wasn't the Clans. He was born in the Clans, now he'd die in a foreign mountain. The attack had been brutal, a wound so large and bloody that it'd taken eight lives in one blow. He wasn't going to come back to life this time, nor would he be possessed. Bramblestar was dead. 

"So...who did this?" Bristlefrost meowed as they sat together around the grave where Bramblestar had been buried. The pale dawn light stretched across the sky onto the pines and meadows as she spoke.

"Why haven't you tried scenting him?" Mothwing asked.

"The cat who killed him used mud to hide their scent, I think," Spotfur replied. "When I scented his body, all I could smell was mud, no scent of any specific cat."

"Maybe it was one of the rogues," Flipclaw meowed shakily. Somehow, it sounded artificial, fake, and he was visibly tensing up as though he had something to hide. Suspicion crawled in Spotfur's chest. Something didn't add up. Just as she was ready to speak,  a realization hit, and she turned to Bristlefrost. She could only apologize silently.

"Flipclaw was guarding, right?" Spotfur meowed. Flipclaw turned, horror in his eyes as he stayed silent and seemed to tense even more. Bristlefrost narrowed her one good eye at her brother, beginning to bare her teeth in anger, and Squirrelflight stepped forward with disbelief in her eyes.

"You were at the entrance when Bramblestar died, you were the first to tell everyone that he was dead. If it had been rogues, you would've stopped him!" Bristlefrost hissed, bolting forward and arching her back, fur puffing out around her as Flipclaw crouched and cowered like a mouse beneath her. "You killed our Clan leader!"

"Why'd ya do that?" Squirrelflight spoke, faintly, almost silently.

Flipclaw stared around, his horror having clearly turned to shame as he dipped his head. "Yes...I did it," he spoke.

"Go," Squirrelflight mewed. Flipclaw didn't even try to protest, he simply turned and walked away, head hanging in shame.

Throughout that day, the group just gathered supplies. The warriors hunted and Mothwing gathered herbs. They tried to forget about what'd happened the night before, until Mothwing suddenly hissed out in terror, "Come quick! Now!"

The group rushed from the forest, the open air greeting them as they broke out. Mothwing was standing, staring down at Flipclaw's body.

He had the same wound. The same muddy scent. Like he was not the murderer, but just another victim.

It hadn't been Flipclaw.