Your heart races, hot breath escaping your clamped throat. Your tongue is dry as hot air heaves in and out of your lungs. You can’t carry on like this anymore. You look behind your bloody shoulder as you race along the riverbank, fear to set within your gaze now for a split second. You had to jump. It was life or death. But you couldn’t swim, your skid to a stop, stammering, your vision splitting though you glance back once more as you see the rogues tearing towards you. Their gazes were filled with bloodlust and disgusting joy, alas, you rip your gaze from theirs and leap into the aquatic abyss. Your head plunges under water and the rigid coldness creeps over your bones and grips your limbs as the current drags you down. Finally, your head breaks the chaotic surface. wounds stinging as you pump your limbs, blood pooling and streaming down the torment of foam and bubbles. You carry on, paws scraping the bottom for a moment as you pull yourself upon the opposing shore. Breath heaves from your maw as you collapse upon the bank. A form slithers through the reeds and your claws coil within the sand, preparing to face another attacker. A pink nose pushed through a screen of green reeds that tower along the water. It's an empress as she looks towards the rogues on the opposing bank who don’t dare place a paw within the water in fear of drowning. white incisors bare, she snarls for a moment before the woman’s gaze falls to your battered frame. Fear traces every organ within your body, pain ripping through your nerves with the savagery of a wildfire. Silence consumes the moment, preparing for her teeth to lunge within your throat but she doesn’t move, a crooked smirk hanging over her maw. “You’re no coward,” she says, calculating you, for she noted you fought. And she noted you lept within the currents without a second thought. “Welcome to Riverclan.”
