{$title} tw for details of death, gore, visions and intense fear/distress
Shadows overtook the edges of sight already shaken and tunneled from the adrenaline as blood rushed forward. What started as a searing, heated pain had now dulled into a thudding pulse that gradually slowed while the pool beneath him grew. It was all Sablestar could scent, all he could taste, as the towering figure of his deputy grew less and less clear. He did not fight the invasion of pain digging into his flesh at first. The shred of pride and ego he sting clung told him to take as he asked, to die quietly, with dignity.
How little that lasted. Blood frothed at his throat and slowly choked him, driving the tuxedo into the ground and writhing in the red. It stuck to his fur like the acrid waste that dripped from Fleecefur's body. It clogged every sense in his body and as he laid there, waiting, blinking slowly into the growing darkness, wondering when it would come. When would it swallow him completely and take him away?
Something primal, feral, rapidly drummed within his body like fleeing mice fit between his bones.
This is it. It answered. The heat of blood against his fur cooled, his slowing heart stilled, and the darkness gleefully consumed.
"You're a sickened beast!" Thunder crackled somewhere above. When Sablestar opened his eyes again, he's face to face with Her, looming over him.
FLEECEFUR! His mind screamed, but his maw does not move. Not for his words, at least. Something else is in control, holding his vision to take in the sight of his spirit guardian cloaked in blood- new and old. Her teeth reveal in a twisted smile, the only pristine part of her muzzle caked in gore.
"You'll be put down like a lame rat, Fleecefur." Sablestar's lips move in heavy-breathed desperation as the molly raised her paw. The tuxedo looked down to see this body was not his own. It was smaller, dark tabby stripes hugging a white belly that's been torn open. His eyes grow wide in shock- Wolfpack hadn't gone that far.
"That might sound more convincing if your guts weren't on the floor." The point jeered, wasting no more time as her claws descended once more-
"- EVERYTHING FOR US" His voice ripped raw from his throat, teeth flashing and all. His chest heaved, anger comfortably sank into his claws, warming his paws against the ice. His gaze rest on Juniperstar, her face is different from how he remembered. Thin, weighed down by those ThunderClan leeches. In between the ragged breaths, she began to change more intensely. Her eyes grew more round and jaded greens bled into faded plums and amethyst. "There is no choice anymore." He meowed gravely to Dreampaw, looking down as the forest opened up and dragged him down again.
More faces flickered behind his eyelids, moments lost in order as he floated through empty space. Cicadabuzz, tucked so closely to him he couldn't tell where he was beyond their scent. Magpiepaw winding herbs around plush tabby fur. The taste of frog and salt, the feeling of ice in his bones. Soundless mews stuttering in his face, eyes pointed down and away from him. Fear- he can smell it as thick as the fog.
New scars grow across his body in jagged points as the darkness clawed him down, further and further below. When Sablestar opened his eyes again he is face to face with The Wolf. It wore Fleecefur's eyes, it's face marred in the same way. Sablestar pushed forward, his pulse returning in faded beats against his paw pads. He rose to touch his nose to the wolf and his body exploded in countless blazing sparks and and crackles that glowed from beneath his pelt. It seared against every inch of his skin like fire, his jaws open to scream but no sound would come. Inky black fur is turned near white by the intense light inside, his heart beat growing stronger with it until he could feel it everywhere the light touched. Down his spine and through his tail, roaring in his eyes and thudding behind his eyes.
The wolf shifted, shrinking and conforming into a new skin before him until it was more catlike. The darkness pulled away from it, bones cracking and flesh forming until it metamorphosized into... Him.
A mirror of Sablestar stood in the shadows. Fear dressed the copy's eyes, but it did not move or speak. It hardly seemed alive other than the shallow breathing rising from it's sides.
The tom stepped back, away from the copy. The ground was warm- they were no longer in the endless space. He looked down at himself to see his fur matted in sticky red and black, and when he looked up again, he faced Wolfpack.
A few blinks, a long inhale, Sablestar recognized he was awake- alive- again. Night had sunk well into the skies, the moon already on it's way to descending again.
Wolfpack had kept up his end, now it was his turn.
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