The Moonlapse [ABANDONED]

V

Darkness swirled around Bristlefrost. She could feel herself plunging into the ocean of oblivion, falling deeper and deeper into the abyss. The sight of the cave, the sounds of the birds, the feel of the sun and the grass, the smell of the soil, they were dragged into a curse of bleakness and suffocated forevermore. The ground beneath her paws, the world itself, they were gone. And so was she. 

Bristlefrost felt her paws kiss solid ground for a second, before she lost grip again and everything turned. Was her eye open or closed? It was impossible to tell. All she saw ahead was an infinite, all-encompassing, black. She stumbled like a newborn horse again, a feeling of balance finally catching her as she collapsed flat on a cold, black floor. 

"Agh..." she groaned as she rolled over onto her stomach, forcing all her power into her bones to push herself up. Never-ending darkness stretched on around her, so black that the only way she could tell her eyelids weren't bound shut was by looking down at her paws. Of course, the endless silence was back to torture her again, causing every heartbeat, every ringing of blood in her ears to echo throughout the caverns of her body and whisper eternally to her mind.

Panic was beginning to swirl in her head, terror surging up her spine like electricity and her lungs clogging with fear. Was she being possessed again? Bristlefrost whipped around, gaze darting through this black hole. But there was nothing. No images of the possesser.

She was alone, drifting in this dark place of eternity. 

Bristlefrost stood still, her mind wandering alone in an immeasurable amount of time. She would have guessed it to be a few hours, but time always ran past slower in the void. There was no way to tell. For all she knew, it could have been thirty seconds. For all she knew, it could have been a century.

Then, something appeared in the nihil. She turned to stare as a gray smudge painted itself into the distance, barely visible until a familiar pelt formed itself and Shadowsight's crimson eyes turned to stare at her, like flaming, scarlet stars. Bristlefrost did not know fully to trust this sight. When she was in the abyss, the sheer darkness of the void often played tricks on her eye, bringing her false visions. It was like her mind knew it was supposed to be seeing something, but there was nothing to confirm it, and so it stirred up these images as a show for itself.

"Shadowsight?" her voice impaled the dead universe, an echo drifting out into the nothing. She could only pray he was really here, but her heart was drained of warmth. It was drained of hope. Shadowsight stepped back, staring blankly at her with the gaze of an empty soul, before he sank back into the nihil. She was right. He wasn't here.

Bristlefrost felt like a speck in the dark. But this vacant realm was endless, she simply did not even make a mark. If she ran all eternity, it would change nothing. Everything was becoming distorted. She saw colours in the dark, but she knew they were simply artworks of her mind. She saw faces in the abyss, but she knew that no matter what she thought was happening, she was alone.

There was no exit here. It'd been hours, maybe days. It could have been eons, even, but she had no idea how long she'd been here. Mapleshade was back. And she didn't know how to escape her possession this time. 

Something soft tickled the air. Bristlefrost looked up, not hearing any footsteps, but noticing a change. She no longer was drowning in solitude, a presence was haunting her and creeping along her backbone. She could sense she was not alone. 

When Bristlefrost turned, she saw a cat. But it wasn't Mapleshade, nor Ashfur, nor Rootspring. It was a black she-cat with green eyes, her form made of a dark mist. She looked more like a spirit. "Who are you?"