Taking Redshade for a nice schooling out at Jorvik. Two of my horses are currently turned out because rest is important, so Redshade is getting all the love!
The warrior felt a surge of power run through his claws as he hissed, the feeling traveling up his legs and into his chest, down back into the weight of his forepaws. With one movement of his powerful arm, he pinned a young house cat by the head and the chest, sinking his weight deep into the mud.
The left side of the young house cat's body was sunken into the grime, barely able to breathe out from one nostril, struggling to free himself under the heft of the wild cat.
The only part of their body that the dark-furred house cat was freely able to move was their eye, open wide and rapidly shifting in panic, fruitlessly pleading for help from another house cat who cowered near.
“I haven’t asked much from you, have I, Wolfie?” The warrior lifted one of his paws slightly for the dark-furred house cat to hear his word. “Or you, Margot?” He turned his glare to the other house cat, her calico fur spiked in terror, trembling close to the earth. “Why must you defile the very code you wish to swear your lives to?”
The warrior watched the calico flinch and dart her eyes toward the rabbit that lay dead in the marsh, sloppily caught with bites in its back legs and the top of its spine.
From what the warrior could gain from a mere glance at the prey, it must have struggled for quite a bit of time in the grasp of two cats who had no prior knowledge of any sort of hunting technique. They were lucky. But not quite lucky enough, since they will not partake in its spoils.
“Answer me,” the warrior spat.
“We-we thought–” Margot quickly spoke up, paws fidgeting in the muck. “Uh. We just wanted to practice hunting…” She glanced at the warrior for a moment, then her ears flattened to the back of her head. “And we thought that… Since we’ll be warriors sometime soon, it’ll be–”
“You will never be warriors if you break the very code LotusClan sacrifices everything for,” The tom snapped, leaning his weight further into Wolfie’s skull, digging his unsheathed claws into the side of the young cat's face, submerging them further with every accentuation, raking out blood that trickled over his open eye.
“Taking prey from another clan’s territory is taking life from that clan," he continued. "Prey is not meant to be used as fodder for house cats who want to play pretend, then return to their twolegs before sunset. Where for you, there is no question as to where your meal comes from, and cats much needier than you will go hungry. This rabbit will feed warriors who have given their lives to the clan, who will fight and hunt to their dying breaths to protect their kin, who have fought and survived at the mercy of the wild. The sworn duty of the cats born and brought to this clan is to give and protect it. The concept of hardship must be foreign to you, as you have no sense of right or wrong!”
At that last point, the warrior swiped the housecat he had pinned into the air, tearing and releasing his claws from the skin, with blood and scum splashing and falling back to the ground. Free from captivity, The tom house cat stumbled to his paws, wobbling to the side of the molly. Pressing their fur up against each others’ shoulders, the two trembled before the monstrous warrior cat.
The warrior calmed, ceasing his hissing. The ends of the fur on the back of his neck still bristled, and his chilling, bright eyes sunk deeper into the house cats’ eyes than his claws had in the tom cat’s face.
“I said you could find yourselves joining LotusClan if you were to find a black cat with one green eye and a stump tail in the twolegplace.”
The two house cats glanced at each other—a quick gesture of disbelief and anxiety.
“Is this cat…” They mewed in unison.
“Real?” said Margot.
“Dangerous?” said Wolfie.
The warrior was not amused by this.
“Find the cat,” he growled. “And return with them to LotusClan.”
Right as he tilted his head in dismissal, Wolfie and Margot immediately scampered back to their twoleg homes, leaping atop the old stone walls behind them and disappearing on the other side.
Finally alone with the rabbit, the large tom began to make his way home as well, back to the marshes of LotusClan.
The warrior’s name was Redshade.
A name given to him by his mother Rosecloud; he was born as Redkit, pelt dark russet and white. Redkit was promised the glory of the clans at a young age, aching for the call of battle and the yowls of triumph over their enemies. Training as Redpaw under the mentorship of a noble leader, he learned the code of the clans, and he found that his sole purpose on the soil he walked upon was to defend LotusClan, even at the cost of his life.
Redshade padded deeper into the territory with the rabbit dangling in his jaws. The gaps in the shadows of the trees were wide, many blown over in timbers with their stumps piercing into the sky.
Moving at a somewhat swift pace, Redshade leaped up to walk along the fallen logs, avoiding getting his paws too wet as they could quickly sink into the soft undergrowth. It rained quite heavily the night before, as it near always had in recent times.
He was careful to be far enough outside of LotusClan territory to not be easily spotted by his clanmates, but not too far to be harassed by twolegs or other nosy house cats. While the constant rain could deafen his conversations, a clear and sunny day like today couldn’t do much to help his mission be kept secret. However, he could always rely on the noise of the rivers that swept through the territory, for they were a hidden blessing in the floods.
Passing through a heap of rocks along the edge of a river that spilled into a pond, he stalked between some large mossy boulders that were unearthed from the base, exposing dirt to the sky.
The warrior questioned if he could truly put his trust in those two adolescent house cats—he knew he couldn’t, but other options at this point were slim to none. He knew that this mission would go so much smoother if his clanmates never gave up on finding this cat.
To the rest of LotusClan, the one-eyed, stump-tailed black cat was as good as dead out in the twolegplace, but it kept Redshade up at night, convinced they were still out there, planning to return one day. But for as much as he wished he could, he couldn’t spend every waking hour of his life hunting this cat down.
There was a gust of wind that picked up suddenly as he reached the hollowed-out entrance of LotusClan camp, blowing his and the rabbit’s scents behind him. A chill went through his ribs, clenching his jaws tight on the prey. He breathed out, and the warrior marched forward into the hollow.
