Legacy (Book 1)

Chapter 38: Night Gone Wrong

Chapter 38: Night Gone Wrong

Damn. Rainstone didn't usually swear or cuss even, mostly because that's the kind of language she'd grown up in and she'd always hated it. But right now, to Rainstone, she felt free to think the word that fit her situation perfectly.

The cats had finally left her in peace for a while, and she had taken to opportunity to rest since she hadn't slept since the morning before she investigated the caves. She'd been in the caves four days now and she'd been keeling over in exhaustion as the cats jeered and scratched at her.

My eye hurts so much... She'd been given a well-marked scar over her eye, courtesy of Pinefur, said he liked marking his victims. The tom definitely lived up to her expectations; cruel, heartless, and had an odd fascination in the misery of others.

However, she wasn't one to waste an opportunity and had been memorizing the cats, their scents, their territory based on what they said, what they talked about to one another when they thought she wasn't listening. But I still have the problem of escaping...

She sighed, tonight was the full moon. She'd already attempted an escape... it hadn't ended well. It was between guards switching in the night, and she'd made a break for it, she'd almost, it'd been so close, but they'd caught her. She'd been injured and exhausted and her broken paw had hindered her, she simply hadn't been fast enough.

I knew that paw would cause me serious trouble one day! Growling to herself in misery, she felt despair, her last chance would be to escape when they took her out of the tunnels, she'd heard the plan relayed. They'd thought she couldn't hear, but she'd grown up in the mountains, her ears were sharper then the Clan cats.

I'll have to escape, somehow, Pinefur will no doubt have his six black cats guard me, and will I be able to escape them when they're going to be on their best guard? She also hadn't forgotten seeing Willowwater and Scampfur after her first day stuck in the moon cave, but she hadn't seen them since and wondered if they were planning a rescue for tonight.

Half of me hopes they will, half of me hopes they just stay out of it and allow me to take care of myself. Heck, how am I going to take care of this by myself? She ran several thoughts and plans through her mind, most of which had already crossed her mind. She really felt like she had played every possible scenario, from dying to triumphantly destroying Pinefur's cats. The latter was completely ridiculous even to her.

But there has to be some way, right? I can't just be stuck here, there's something I can do! So what is it? Growling, she scratched her claws on the stone floor, getting a quick glance from the cats around her before they continued on their way.

She looked at her fur, it was almost back to the normal dark gray tinted blue, mostly due to the cats dunking her in the underground river until they discovered she could swim and went to different methods of exhausting her. But, they know I'm in RiverClan... even if I do escape, what do I do when I get home? I'll just put more cats like Patchkit in danger...

Confusion and worry swept over her, Song told me to stay with the Clans, but how can I when I'm causing more problems than fixing them? She shook her head, the light told her it was sun-high, and she had a while until it was show-time.

I'll just have to go with instinct, I'll either live, or I'll die and be with Song, my kits, and Dusty again... that doesn't sound so bad. Then she slept and dreamed.

"Rainstone!" said she-cat jumped, looking around, confused when she saw she wasn't in the moon cave but on a tall hill that overlooked the Clans four territories.