sage | a warrior cats fanfiction

chapter thirty three

Immediately, the Clan seemed to collectively recoil, shock flitting through the crowd.

Lightning, as fast as it had been described in stories, flashed down from the sky, twisting and twirling as it zoomed through the air. It had been focused on one target, and as soon as it reached it, a bright flash of light lit the clearing like a forest fire that had been purposefully set.

Instantly, the apprentice seemed as though he was to convulse and scream, but before that could even happen, the lightning enveloped him, and as soon as it came it disappeared, leaving the tom's scorched corpse in the middle of camp. Leaving everyone to stare at it as if expecting that he would jump up and claim it a joke, leaving everyone to wonder what was happening.

The snow around the blazed apprentice had melted momentarily, allowing there to be a burnt spot in the camp; it was dark beneath his figure, almost as though the darkness from a night sky had swept down to pattern itself on the ground. Even the snow had some bits of black on it where it had been scorched by the lightning that'd jumped from the sky.

Particularly, the sky that waved happily above. No dark or stormy clouds were present; rather, it was the opposite, with the pale blue sky holding minimal puffy clouds and instead harboring wispy ones that darted easily across the sky. It seemed to watch the Clan with a serious gaze, though not one that was curious. One that was just watching.

Adderheart could sense the questions. They didn't need to be spoken aloud in order to be asked; it was in the eyes of the cats around him, in the features and the expressions of nearby cats. The inquiries popped up as cats shifted backward from the corpse, and they flooded the floor below. The ground was no longer the ground; now it was water, sloshing with questions.

And a cry ripped from a certain she-cat's throat, raw with horror and fear. Freckletuft — the apprentice's mentor — stumbled forward, but Cougarstar shook his figure harshly, narrowing his green gaze at the she-cat with his paw rising as if to warn her.

"Don't," he barked, "StarClan didn't agree, so he will not be a warrior of SageClan."

A tail whipped around Freckletuft's back paw, tightly gripping her paw, and it happened to be Fernfall's. Freckletuft stumbled, nearly tumbling to the ground as she was tugged back, but managed to gain her balance once more, and as if she had never even spoken or done anything, she simply slipped back into the crowd.

It seemed to be an ocean, sloshing and moving back and forth as to conceal the cats within it. Questions frothed at the surface, all bubbling and asking for an answer, begging for an explanation, but the sun simply shone down coldly. As certain parts of the sea moved forward, others splashed back to allow one part to move, and as soon as the first part moved back, it swallowed it all back up again, concealing the parts that had moved so harshly.

"Coalbelly, Twilightcloud, remove his body," Cougarstar ordered, a frown present on his features. It wasn't what appeared to be a normal one, though. It wasn't a sad one, nor was it one that showed he actually cared for the dead tom. It was almost disappointed, as if he wasn't pleased with the fact that Birchpaw was dead because he was just another number on his side regarding the rogues.

"Clearly, StarClan did not think that he was ready to be a warrior," Cougarstar spoke once more, voice sharp yet controlled. "Let this be a lesson. Do not get into any of the trouble that Birchpaw did."

Birchpaw got into trouble?

He had to have been lying, right? Birchpaw had barely even done that much, all considered. In the times that Adderheart had seen him, the apprentice hadn't done anything specifically wrong or bad. Cougarstar must've been lying to try to prove a point that was useless to prove. SageClan already cowered underneath him. Why did he need to keep pushing it?