Clan of Ashes

PROLOGUE

The lights flickered out, and the cats inside the concrete structure were engulfed in darkness.

A light grey she-cat looked up curiously from her slumped position in her cage. She forced herself to her feet, long-cramped muscles groaning as she used them again for the first time in a while. She padded towards her cage-neighbor and poked the sleeping tom through the bars of the cage with her tail. "Nut? What's going on?"

The brown tom blinked his eyes open, squinting at her as his eyes quickly adjusted. "Flint? Where are the lights?"

Flint sighed. "That was my question."

Nut flicked his tail. "How am I to know?" Flint opened her mouth to comment on his seniority, but before she could say anything, he called, "Fang?"

A gruff voice answered from somewhere above and to her left. "Yeah?"

"What's with the lights?"

Fang grunted. "It's happened before. Storm, probably."

Nut turned to Flint. "There you go."

The light grey she-cat tilted her head. But there have been storms when I was here, and the rain is so loud it's impossible to think. She sat back, listening. No rain.

A sudden thrill of foreboding tingled down her spine. Flint felt her fur stand on end. There was a sudden noise-- twoleg pawsteps, she realized, dread sinking through her, and she shrank back in her cage as the entrance of the den swung open and a twoleg walked in, cupping a light in her paws.

"Watch out!" called Nut. "Twoleg! Without food!"

There was a collective shuffling as all of the cats in the structure shrank back. Twolegs that weren't there to feed them were always bad news.

The Twoleg (female, Flint noticed) approached the cages carefully. She was holding some sort of strange contraption in one hand that looked rather painful. Flint shrank back further as the Twoleg approached her cage and shone the light inside. To her surprise, the twoleg looked...sad? The female showed her teeth, but for some reason Flint felt that this wasn't a sign of aggression.

The Twoleg moved the odd contraption towards the front of Flint's cage, towards something that the she-cat couldn't see. There was a deafening snap, and the Twoleg moved to the next cage.

Snap. Snap. Snap. Snap.

Finally, the Twoleg had reached all of the cages, and she returned to Flint's cage. She gently grabbed the front of the she-cat's cage, and...pulled it open?

The lights suddenly flickered on, and the high-pitched shrieks of Twolegs filled the air. The female looked around, suddenly looking terrified, dropped the contraption, and ran out of the room. The shrieks got louder, then faded as the other Twolegs presumably chased the female.

Flint carefully padded towards the front of her cage. She looked from side to side, flicking her tail, and, with a sudden movement, leaped out onto the cold floor. With a flash, she understood what the Twoleg had done. "Guys!" she called. "She broke the cages! We're free!"

There were suddenly so, so many thumps as all of the cats burst out of their cages and leapt gracefully to the ground. Flint looked around at all of them, all of them with gazes that were filled with shock and awe as they saw their long-time companions for the first time.

Fang suddenly thudded drown, the massive tom shaking out his fur and eyes filled with a life that Flint doubted he had felt in a long time. "What are we waiting for?" he grunted. "Let's run!"