THE DARK MATTER | Book One: Stained Trails

PROLOGUE

     A FULL MOON LIT UP THE SKY AS IF IT WERE BARELY DUSK, stars aiding its brightening performance. It shone over the mountains like a crown atop their heads, leaving the high structures to stretch shadows over the valleys. It was a brilliant scene to the singing crickets and other creatures of the night that basked in its awakening, even though some flowers bowed sorrowfully at the loss of the sun. A cool breeze followed it, whisking over the moors and flitting with the tall grass. It was a night bound to full of promises - or perhaps even dread.

Approaching the mountains in the path of the full moon was four cats. Two looked likewise in appearance, mottled black and white in a similar pattern with differing eyes. One of the others was larger in comparison, muscles rippling under his dark gray coat and amber eyes luminous in the moonlight. The last one was the smallest and youngest of the bunch, her brown tabby pelt fluffed out against the breeze. They traveled with one of the black and white cats in the load, a focused stare directing him towards the range of the mountains and his sister not too far behind. The other two followed in their trail with a more ambling, confused glance to their surroundings as if they were looking for something noted to them before.

"Ibistide, are you sure this is where you saw him?" The larger tom questioned, his tail lashing in uncertainty.

Ibistide peered over his shoulder and nodded back to the tom. "Shrikefoot and I spotted him right here in the basin at the bottom of these mountains. I'm sure he's been taking shelter here."

The other tom's muzzle scrunched up and his faces twisted doubtfully. Loners weren't known to be on their territory, especially in the depths of it by the mountains. When Shrikefoot and Ibistide came to him for assistance he was hesitant, but then Ibistide's apprentice, Sparrowpaw, insisted that it was of importance if Ibistide said so. He trusted the Starlinked tom and his apprentice surely, but being so close to the stretch of the mountains at the height of the full moon had an ominous feel to the paranoid tom.

They approached the edge of the basin - a deep dip in the earth at the bottom of the mountains with a stream pooled in the middle of it. The little pool reflected the gleam of the moonlight, those of the stars captured as well and lining the pool perfectly in its form. It was a small, rather open basin, a quick scan of his gaze enough to cover it. There were no pawprints tracked into the edges or no bones scattered about to show any sign of another cat taking shelter in the basin. It was inhabitant unless it had been for a minor second, but even then he could pick up no scents there but their own as the wind fell back on them from the mountains. Ibistide and Shrikefoot must've seen a ghost. It wasn't be past them as since the loss of their brother they both had been indifferent and desolate through the sorrows of it, but there was also the chance that the ancestors were attempting to show Ibistide something as well. He was a Starlinked after all.

"And what did this loner look like?" He asked the siblings, glancing sideways back at the two as he stood at the edge of the basin.

"He was pretty big and tough-looking. Seeing him probably would've reminded you of yourself, Hollowshade," Shrikefoot answered with a snicker.

Hollowshade passed her an unamused stare then looked to Ibistide instead. "What did he look like?" He repeated in a more serious, husk tone.

"Shrikefoot wasn't entirely wrong. He was large and brown, just like you," Ibistide meowed. The tom then stepped to Hollowshade's side, both of their gazes dropping back down to the bottom of the basin. The radiant, starlit pool was almost blinding, and Hollowshade could've sworn the basin echoed Ibistide's words back at him - ringing and clamorous. "Yet he lay at the bottom of the basin in shambles... just like you."

A panicked yowl erupted from the tom as Shrikefoot shoved into him, sending him tumbling down into the basin. Though the fall wasn't significant it was rocky and steep. He twisted in the air attempting to catch himself but instead he landed terribly wrong on one of his rear legs, pain searing through his leg and numbing the rest of his body as if he had laid out in blankets of snow and frost. He landed with a thud and ripple of shock froze him on the ground for a moment, his body now half-submersed in the pool of water in the basin. The water lapped at his fur and crawled into his panic-parted jaws for a moment until the tom snapped back into reality, groaning and swiveling his head weakly to gaze back up at the others.