Post by Egotistic on Jun 7, 2022 8:21:27 GMT -6
Rowanflame
RedwoodClan
a large, thick-furred red bicolor w/ piercing yellow eyes.
warrior
male | tom
55 moons
Appearance
His father’s son in all but face, in build Rowanflame inherited the father’s gargantuan proportions and long, well-muscled limbs. Even the coat speaks of his sire’s influence. A sea of white broken by patches of vibrant red fur, the tall red tufts set upon the tip of each ear, the heavy thick ruff and long plume—all such things sings of the father. Yet in the face, the mother peers through and the father’s ruggedness recedes. There the face is angular and fine, oddly effeminate in a wild framing of fur. His eyes are a rich yellow, slanted and piercing, too-bright in a pale face.
Personality
Positives
| Negatives
|
Disillusioned, apathetic, and relentless, Rowanflame does not often waste time in the bartering of words but instead prefers to resort to threats and violence and approaches all conflict with an unnerving eagerness—an aloofness bordering on cruel. Yet, in the same breath, he is led by a moral code of his own. He will not fight a battle in which the odds are not fair, and, similarly, he does not believe in violence for violence's sake but that it should be cold, necessary, and enacted without feeling.
Yet it is not always with cruelness he carries himself. Beyond the battlefield, Rowanflame leans more into the use of glib insults and quick-witted remarks. He is overtly disdainful, increasingly arrogant, and takes very little seriously—abstaining from his Clans judgement only through use of his with his disarming wit... and his father's legacy.
In this way, he has garnered an immunity, and while Rowanflame is aware he is a 'bad cat' and also aware of his poor behavior, he never fails in justifying it, as he justifies everything, be it right or wrong.
History
00 Moons
55 Moons Ago, the Red Flush… With great urgency did their coupling begin, and by the first touches of green-leaf did their partnering yield fruit.
Two sons were born in the hush of night, towards the end of new-leaf and its fickle showers. Two sons, mothered by one of RedwoodClan’s most renowned huntresses, who in the cold and treacherous winter sacrificed her wellbeing to bring prey to her Clan, and Timberstrike, a warrior of renown, as well-known and respected as he was feared.
Yet they did not come into the world as equals.
Where one was hardy and drank with great vigor, the other was somehow stunted—his limbs were too short, his face mashed in as if crushed by a stone. Where the stronger drank and pushed and shoved for his mother’s milk, the stunted one rejected it and gargled and spat it up as though it were tainted. And where the stronger grew, the other waned, and Doeleap’s own troubles grew at the waning strength of her son.
She coddled him and bid him live, for during such times, utterances of war were too common, and amid news of dead deputies and Heatherstar’s own adamance towards peace—amid her own mate’s growing restlessness and efforts to rally like minds in support of the war, she could not afford a son who could not fight. So she coddled him and gave him suck for longer than the stronger son. She nestled him in the warmest nooks of her belly and cleaned him more fervently than the other. With feverish zeal did she maintain that son’s life, prepared him for the father who, at the height of the fighting, could not attend even their own birth, so that he might be proud of them both, their sons—Rowankit and Reedkit.
03-05 Moons
52-50 Moons Ago, the Great Stir… “Timberstrike, you mustn’t- They are only kits. They-“
“They are warriors.” Rowankit remembered how his voice would rumble with the purpose of his words. “And they are my sons. I will not have them come into their training as weaklings… not now, when deputies drop like flies and Heatherstar can hardly hold our borders. You’ve coddled them for long enough.”
And so they spent those next moons, away from the warm comforts of their mother’s belly and her regaling tales of heroism into the paws of the father who ruled with an iron paw. His way was not as the mothers was. He was hardened and battle-torn. Every inch of him sang with scars, and every word held that restlessness in it that anticipated the next battle. And he trained with a similar and feverish insistency. He urged his son’s bodies into the aching crouches and drilled them in the switching of blows. Even when they begged for rest, he kept them on their paws, and it was with deaf ears he turned towards the pleading of his mate.
Yet where Reedkit crumbled beneath his father’s pressures, Rowankit thrived and grew over-fond of the affirmation it yielded for him. He was stronger, more willful and in his sparring, he always trumped his short-limbed brother. And so he never minded his father’s wrath or the many nights he returned to his mother’s side bruised and aching.
It was nothing compared to what his brother got.
06-07 Moons
49-48 Moons Ago, the Bloody Maw… A cold winter blew, and with the harsh snows fell. In the slackening of prey, a lull persisted in the battle efforts, and in the fickle peace, Heatherstar agreed to Timberstrike’s demands that his sons receive their names. So they were dubbed, and Rowanpaw was entrusted to a warrior whose achievements on the battlefield were great and many—a young upstart who had garnered the affections and good opinions of the father.
So promising an upstart—who better, then, was there to offer his prized heir to?
Yet Rowanpaw soon grew bored of that. He had survived his father’s training and proven his worth—what then was there left to prove, having achieved already all that he had in so few moons? Soon Woodfrost was forced to realize that the son was nothing like the father, having been served such easy and undeserved praise at so young an age. It was only when Woodfrost posed a threat that things began to change, though at first, the words fell on deaf ears.
On the night, he was fallen upon by a fox; however, their insistence rang with some truth. Caught in the jaws of a fearsome fox, it was with poorly aimed blows he beat back his aggressor, finding in the landing of them the result of his neglect in honing them further.
By rights, he should have died—and perhaps he would have, had Woodfrost not saved him, tearing into his adversary and sending it off with only a single scar to speak for the excursion. In the wake of that battle, their breath blustering in the wind, Rowanpaw, for the first time, viewed his mentor with something in the way of fondness and respect.
From then on, he fell more diligently into his training.
10 Moons
45 Moons Ago, the Boy King… Tensions grew at the start of spring. LichenClan forces grew more frequent at their borders, and with each day, the whispers of war sang on the lips of even the most passive of their ranks as a new claim for the Mooncave was professed.
By then, such news eagerly pricked Rowanpaw’s own ears. For moons, he had been patiently training, honing body and mind to fulfill that unspoken purpose, to succeed the legacy of the father in all his lofty expectations. And here lay whisper of a battle—a glorious battle for a holy site. He could think of no better opportunity to prove himself, and as he found his efforts wasted against his fellow denmates—for none then could best him in the training pits—he quietly anticipated the opportunity to law claws into the enemy.
He never suspected that the stars would heed his prayers so soon.
On his tenth moon, the stench of the enemy bore over their borders, thick and with threat, and it was Rowanpaw who first scented them and Rowanpaw who ran to camp to rally RedwoodClan warriors to stifle the advance. Amongst their ranks, he fought valiantly and in the throes of war, spared his mentor a fatal blow, an act that was deemed so courageous he was granted his warrior name before the blood had yet dried in his furs.
15 Moons
40 Moons Ago, the Crippled One… “Your brother has grown inept. I will not have it said I brought so slothful a son into this Clan.” Rowanflame sat, and he listened, watching the veritable warrior he called his father pace incessantly before him, chuffing through his nostrils, his tail lashing in his wake.
It was the brother who riled him so. Reedpaw was fifteen moons—fifteen, and yet he had not yet earned his name. He’d grown less focused, more distractable, and with the passage of each day, harder and harder to track. Hardly anyone knew the nature of his coming and going, only that he returned in the hushes of night and did not speak upon his return. No scars lined him, no hardness shaped his muscles; no sign that it was training which drove him to solitude, only a bitter moroseness that did not stomach company.
Yet, in the wake of their father’s wrath, Rowanflame forced his own upon his brother. The two rekindle an old bond, and a brotherly love stirs between them, and in the development of such dormant affections, Rowanflame gives him the lessons his mentor had taught him. By the time the moon was over, his brother’s newfound strengths were recognized, and he was dubbed Reedwhisker.
Yet, no sooner had Reedwhisker elevated in rank than he was again forgotten. The matter then resolved, the slight relieved, Rowanflame again garnered the full of his attention.
Skirmishes were growing in their alacrity, and the Clan was poorly numbered, having lost so many of their most skilled and senior warriors. It was time for his son to consider bringing more heirs into the world, strong warriors to lend to the war effort, and so in the way his father arranged for him his mentor, he none too subtly thrust upon him all manner of promising she-cats. Yet none sparked any feeling in him, and as his father continued in his search and Rowanflame entertained his wants, he kindled a secret affection for a young upstart by the name of Gorseflame, a warrior whose own achievements near mirrored his own. In secrecy did the two delve into the others company, relishing in the shy and inexperienced touches and loving words.
It was Rowanflame’s most precious secret, one not even his father or Woodfrost need know of.
18 Moons
37 Moons Ago, the Council… “You have proven your strength well enough, but I mean to make use of your mind…” It was in the flush of the day that Heatherstar approached him, bearing words of kindness, swaddling him in her praise that he had never thought to hear.
The war had grown in its alacrity. Timberstrike’s effort to rally more warriors to his ideologies threatened, and the push for war mounted. Still, Heatherstar did not sway to action. Yet she looked fondly on Rowanflame. Bearing him under her wing, she gifted him the highest honor of attending her in the discussion of war plans amidst the Clan’s own most honorable of warriors. For the first, he felt as though his efforts were finally recognized.
Here was his place—a place of command, a voice of reason among the Clan’s most vaunted warriors.
It was only later he would learn such closeness was bred only out of fear of his added support to his father’s cause, and so did the honor sour in his eyes. It had been nothing, in truth. In all the words he offered to that fictitious council, very little was upheld in her own actions. A mere distraction to keep the more restless of their rank idle, to stroke their egos with feigned purpose.
So did the disillusionment settle, and the veil slid from his eyes. His father’s convictions no longer sang so sweetly in his ears, and when he thrust himself into battle, it was not for his Clans honor he fought, but his own selfish pleasure.
20-25 Moons
35-30 Moons Ago, the Great Ache… There could have been no predicting LichenClan’s savagery the night they poured into their camp, bearing down upon their sentries and wreaking havoc on their home, shearing dens and cats alike, filling that quiet night with the fearsome wails of battle.
Amongst the clutter of seething bodies, Rowanflame fights bravely alongside his mentor, yet in the throes of battle, he fails to notice the warriors who breached the nursery in the heat of the fighting. It was only later, as they came across the destroyed den, that he took note of his mother, fatally wounded, wounded in her effort to defend their queens. She was taken to the medicine den to heal, yet no herbs could have quelled the bleeding.
At the announcement of her death, his father launched a counterattack against his leader’s will. It was the last time he ever saw him alive; on his return, he was so badly savaged one could only recognize him by the brightness of his furs.
It was a silent vigil he held for them both—the father he always feared but never loved and the mother he loved but partially. His grief was silent, and he spoke little of it, yet it showed in him a shadow over all he did. In time he would lose more than they; soon after, even Gorseflame, no longer finding pleasure in his company, looked or spoke in his direction.
In their absence, he found other ways to pad the heart. He turned to more primitive pleasures, indulging wherever he could.
31-39 Moons
24-16 Moons Ago, the Price of Kindness… Redfox pushes for the clan’s more senior warriors to uphold the training of the younger generation. Finding a distraction in the work. Rowanflame lends himself to the task and finds a fleeting purpose. In his rounds about the border he lays eyes on a lone tom from ThistleClan by name of Eggpelt. Morose and sullen-faced, the two, in a rare moments kindness and curiosity, spend a day in the others company, speaking away the days warmth. Together they spent many passionate nights together beneath the stars, his return to camp slovenly and weary-eyed.
He is granted an apprentice, but of this individual he remembers very little but the trouble they caused him, yet he still feels a certain guilt and remembers the shame he felt as they fell behind their fellow apprentices. It was of no consequence, though. He had Eggpelt, and that somehow made such things of little consequence.
40-50 Moons
15-5 Moons Ago, the Loss… Still, he remembers how she dogged his heels. Her voice was reedy, whining. He hated how it sounded; in that instance, he hated everything about her.
“Wait! I thought the news might please you…”
“Please me? For stars sake- Do you have any idea what this means?”
It was one of the few times her eyes hardened against him. “New heirs. Fighters—just what the Clan wants, what your father wanted. Your legacy will live on in them.”
“They have no right to my legacy. They are not mine.” He’d spat the words, yet it was with fear he lashed upon her. Fear of the ties that rested in such small lives who bore his likeness. He did not want them as he did not want her. And he knew he could offer them little of what they needed.
He was no father, and perhaps he would never be.
Moons later, she carried his young to term, sickly and weak though she became. It was the grief, he thought, that tainted her womb, and when he heard news of the three stillborn and the one living son, he felt well in him a deep regret, one that bit all the more when he found out later of her passing.
When the kit was approaching his fifth moon, he visited him, yet in a bumbling entrance and a brief contact, he sees on the she-cat whose heart he broke all those moons ago. Unable to stomach the sight of him, he does not venture to entertain such sentiments again.
51-55 Moons
4-0 Moons Ago, the Vengeance… Tensions grow as LichenClan refugees occupy their camp. News of rogues in LichenClan spread, and Finchstar and Icesong voice a new interest in offensive measures. Training grows in intensity, and soon, one a night swathed in darkness, they launched an attack of their own, Rowanflame and Reedwhisker with them. The two were charged with raiding the camp, and so they did, breaking into the cave entrance and locking in vicious battle. The two are separated in the thick of the fighting, and it is only at the call for retreat that he stumbles upon his brother’s corpse and a tom, bloody-pawed, standing over him.
It is a slight he cannot stomach and vengeance taints his heart.
In the coming moons, LichenClan launches a counterattack of their own. Pressing in on their camp, they succeed in ripping a life from Finchstar’s very throat through their ill-fated rogues. But another life is claimed that night. In the heat of battle, Rowanflame is afforded his vengeance. He tears the life from his brother’s killers in a fell blow and watches in silence as the life seeps from him.
Yet as the tom’s clanmates move to his aid and surround him to avenge their own, that cat, sprawled and dying, bids them spare him.
It was an act of kindness that would haunt him for many moons. Never before had revenge left so bitter a taste in one's mouth.
55 Moons Ago, the Red Flush… With great urgency did their coupling begin, and by the first touches of green-leaf did their partnering yield fruit.
Two sons were born in the hush of night, towards the end of new-leaf and its fickle showers. Two sons, mothered by one of RedwoodClan’s most renowned huntresses, who in the cold and treacherous winter sacrificed her wellbeing to bring prey to her Clan, and Timberstrike, a warrior of renown, as well-known and respected as he was feared.
Yet they did not come into the world as equals.
Where one was hardy and drank with great vigor, the other was somehow stunted—his limbs were too short, his face mashed in as if crushed by a stone. Where the stronger drank and pushed and shoved for his mother’s milk, the stunted one rejected it and gargled and spat it up as though it were tainted. And where the stronger grew, the other waned, and Doeleap’s own troubles grew at the waning strength of her son.
She coddled him and bid him live, for during such times, utterances of war were too common, and amid news of dead deputies and Heatherstar’s own adamance towards peace—amid her own mate’s growing restlessness and efforts to rally like minds in support of the war, she could not afford a son who could not fight. So she coddled him and gave him suck for longer than the stronger son. She nestled him in the warmest nooks of her belly and cleaned him more fervently than the other. With feverish zeal did she maintain that son’s life, prepared him for the father who, at the height of the fighting, could not attend even their own birth, so that he might be proud of them both, their sons—Rowankit and Reedkit.
03-05 Moons
52-50 Moons Ago, the Great Stir… “Timberstrike, you mustn’t- They are only kits. They-“
“They are warriors.” Rowankit remembered how his voice would rumble with the purpose of his words. “And they are my sons. I will not have them come into their training as weaklings… not now, when deputies drop like flies and Heatherstar can hardly hold our borders. You’ve coddled them for long enough.”
And so they spent those next moons, away from the warm comforts of their mother’s belly and her regaling tales of heroism into the paws of the father who ruled with an iron paw. His way was not as the mothers was. He was hardened and battle-torn. Every inch of him sang with scars, and every word held that restlessness in it that anticipated the next battle. And he trained with a similar and feverish insistency. He urged his son’s bodies into the aching crouches and drilled them in the switching of blows. Even when they begged for rest, he kept them on their paws, and it was with deaf ears he turned towards the pleading of his mate.
Yet where Reedkit crumbled beneath his father’s pressures, Rowankit thrived and grew over-fond of the affirmation it yielded for him. He was stronger, more willful and in his sparring, he always trumped his short-limbed brother. And so he never minded his father’s wrath or the many nights he returned to his mother’s side bruised and aching.
It was nothing compared to what his brother got.
06-07 Moons
49-48 Moons Ago, the Bloody Maw… A cold winter blew, and with the harsh snows fell. In the slackening of prey, a lull persisted in the battle efforts, and in the fickle peace, Heatherstar agreed to Timberstrike’s demands that his sons receive their names. So they were dubbed, and Rowanpaw was entrusted to a warrior whose achievements on the battlefield were great and many—a young upstart who had garnered the affections and good opinions of the father.
So promising an upstart—who better, then, was there to offer his prized heir to?
Yet Rowanpaw soon grew bored of that. He had survived his father’s training and proven his worth—what then was there left to prove, having achieved already all that he had in so few moons? Soon Woodfrost was forced to realize that the son was nothing like the father, having been served such easy and undeserved praise at so young an age. It was only when Woodfrost posed a threat that things began to change, though at first, the words fell on deaf ears.
On the night, he was fallen upon by a fox; however, their insistence rang with some truth. Caught in the jaws of a fearsome fox, it was with poorly aimed blows he beat back his aggressor, finding in the landing of them the result of his neglect in honing them further.
By rights, he should have died—and perhaps he would have, had Woodfrost not saved him, tearing into his adversary and sending it off with only a single scar to speak for the excursion. In the wake of that battle, their breath blustering in the wind, Rowanpaw, for the first time, viewed his mentor with something in the way of fondness and respect.
From then on, he fell more diligently into his training.
10 Moons
45 Moons Ago, the Boy King… Tensions grew at the start of spring. LichenClan forces grew more frequent at their borders, and with each day, the whispers of war sang on the lips of even the most passive of their ranks as a new claim for the Mooncave was professed.
By then, such news eagerly pricked Rowanpaw’s own ears. For moons, he had been patiently training, honing body and mind to fulfill that unspoken purpose, to succeed the legacy of the father in all his lofty expectations. And here lay whisper of a battle—a glorious battle for a holy site. He could think of no better opportunity to prove himself, and as he found his efforts wasted against his fellow denmates—for none then could best him in the training pits—he quietly anticipated the opportunity to law claws into the enemy.
He never suspected that the stars would heed his prayers so soon.
On his tenth moon, the stench of the enemy bore over their borders, thick and with threat, and it was Rowanpaw who first scented them and Rowanpaw who ran to camp to rally RedwoodClan warriors to stifle the advance. Amongst their ranks, he fought valiantly and in the throes of war, spared his mentor a fatal blow, an act that was deemed so courageous he was granted his warrior name before the blood had yet dried in his furs.
15 Moons
40 Moons Ago, the Crippled One… “Your brother has grown inept. I will not have it said I brought so slothful a son into this Clan.” Rowanflame sat, and he listened, watching the veritable warrior he called his father pace incessantly before him, chuffing through his nostrils, his tail lashing in his wake.
It was the brother who riled him so. Reedpaw was fifteen moons—fifteen, and yet he had not yet earned his name. He’d grown less focused, more distractable, and with the passage of each day, harder and harder to track. Hardly anyone knew the nature of his coming and going, only that he returned in the hushes of night and did not speak upon his return. No scars lined him, no hardness shaped his muscles; no sign that it was training which drove him to solitude, only a bitter moroseness that did not stomach company.
Yet, in the wake of their father’s wrath, Rowanflame forced his own upon his brother. The two rekindle an old bond, and a brotherly love stirs between them, and in the development of such dormant affections, Rowanflame gives him the lessons his mentor had taught him. By the time the moon was over, his brother’s newfound strengths were recognized, and he was dubbed Reedwhisker.
Yet, no sooner had Reedwhisker elevated in rank than he was again forgotten. The matter then resolved, the slight relieved, Rowanflame again garnered the full of his attention.
Skirmishes were growing in their alacrity, and the Clan was poorly numbered, having lost so many of their most skilled and senior warriors. It was time for his son to consider bringing more heirs into the world, strong warriors to lend to the war effort, and so in the way his father arranged for him his mentor, he none too subtly thrust upon him all manner of promising she-cats. Yet none sparked any feeling in him, and as his father continued in his search and Rowanflame entertained his wants, he kindled a secret affection for a young upstart by the name of Gorseflame, a warrior whose own achievements near mirrored his own. In secrecy did the two delve into the others company, relishing in the shy and inexperienced touches and loving words.
It was Rowanflame’s most precious secret, one not even his father or Woodfrost need know of.
18 Moons
37 Moons Ago, the Council… “You have proven your strength well enough, but I mean to make use of your mind…” It was in the flush of the day that Heatherstar approached him, bearing words of kindness, swaddling him in her praise that he had never thought to hear.
The war had grown in its alacrity. Timberstrike’s effort to rally more warriors to his ideologies threatened, and the push for war mounted. Still, Heatherstar did not sway to action. Yet she looked fondly on Rowanflame. Bearing him under her wing, she gifted him the highest honor of attending her in the discussion of war plans amidst the Clan’s own most honorable of warriors. For the first, he felt as though his efforts were finally recognized.
Here was his place—a place of command, a voice of reason among the Clan’s most vaunted warriors.
It was only later he would learn such closeness was bred only out of fear of his added support to his father’s cause, and so did the honor sour in his eyes. It had been nothing, in truth. In all the words he offered to that fictitious council, very little was upheld in her own actions. A mere distraction to keep the more restless of their rank idle, to stroke their egos with feigned purpose.
So did the disillusionment settle, and the veil slid from his eyes. His father’s convictions no longer sang so sweetly in his ears, and when he thrust himself into battle, it was not for his Clans honor he fought, but his own selfish pleasure.
20-25 Moons
35-30 Moons Ago, the Great Ache… There could have been no predicting LichenClan’s savagery the night they poured into their camp, bearing down upon their sentries and wreaking havoc on their home, shearing dens and cats alike, filling that quiet night with the fearsome wails of battle.
Amongst the clutter of seething bodies, Rowanflame fights bravely alongside his mentor, yet in the throes of battle, he fails to notice the warriors who breached the nursery in the heat of the fighting. It was only later, as they came across the destroyed den, that he took note of his mother, fatally wounded, wounded in her effort to defend their queens. She was taken to the medicine den to heal, yet no herbs could have quelled the bleeding.
At the announcement of her death, his father launched a counterattack against his leader’s will. It was the last time he ever saw him alive; on his return, he was so badly savaged one could only recognize him by the brightness of his furs.
It was a silent vigil he held for them both—the father he always feared but never loved and the mother he loved but partially. His grief was silent, and he spoke little of it, yet it showed in him a shadow over all he did. In time he would lose more than they; soon after, even Gorseflame, no longer finding pleasure in his company, looked or spoke in his direction.
In their absence, he found other ways to pad the heart. He turned to more primitive pleasures, indulging wherever he could.
31-39 Moons
24-16 Moons Ago, the Price of Kindness… Redfox pushes for the clan’s more senior warriors to uphold the training of the younger generation. Finding a distraction in the work. Rowanflame lends himself to the task and finds a fleeting purpose. In his rounds about the border he lays eyes on a lone tom from ThistleClan by name of Eggpelt. Morose and sullen-faced, the two, in a rare moments kindness and curiosity, spend a day in the others company, speaking away the days warmth. Together they spent many passionate nights together beneath the stars, his return to camp slovenly and weary-eyed.
He is granted an apprentice, but of this individual he remembers very little but the trouble they caused him, yet he still feels a certain guilt and remembers the shame he felt as they fell behind their fellow apprentices. It was of no consequence, though. He had Eggpelt, and that somehow made such things of little consequence.
40-50 Moons
15-5 Moons Ago, the Loss… Still, he remembers how she dogged his heels. Her voice was reedy, whining. He hated how it sounded; in that instance, he hated everything about her.
“Wait! I thought the news might please you…”
“Please me? For stars sake- Do you have any idea what this means?”
It was one of the few times her eyes hardened against him. “New heirs. Fighters—just what the Clan wants, what your father wanted. Your legacy will live on in them.”
“They have no right to my legacy. They are not mine.” He’d spat the words, yet it was with fear he lashed upon her. Fear of the ties that rested in such small lives who bore his likeness. He did not want them as he did not want her. And he knew he could offer them little of what they needed.
He was no father, and perhaps he would never be.
Moons later, she carried his young to term, sickly and weak though she became. It was the grief, he thought, that tainted her womb, and when he heard news of the three stillborn and the one living son, he felt well in him a deep regret, one that bit all the more when he found out later of her passing.
When the kit was approaching his fifth moon, he visited him, yet in a bumbling entrance and a brief contact, he sees on the she-cat whose heart he broke all those moons ago. Unable to stomach the sight of him, he does not venture to entertain such sentiments again.
51-55 Moons
4-0 Moons Ago, the Vengeance… Tensions grow as LichenClan refugees occupy their camp. News of rogues in LichenClan spread, and Finchstar and Icesong voice a new interest in offensive measures. Training grows in intensity, and soon, one a night swathed in darkness, they launched an attack of their own, Rowanflame and Reedwhisker with them. The two were charged with raiding the camp, and so they did, breaking into the cave entrance and locking in vicious battle. The two are separated in the thick of the fighting, and it is only at the call for retreat that he stumbles upon his brother’s corpse and a tom, bloody-pawed, standing over him.
It is a slight he cannot stomach and vengeance taints his heart.
In the coming moons, LichenClan launches a counterattack of their own. Pressing in on their camp, they succeed in ripping a life from Finchstar’s very throat through their ill-fated rogues. But another life is claimed that night. In the heat of battle, Rowanflame is afforded his vengeance. He tears the life from his brother’s killers in a fell blow and watches in silence as the life seeps from him.
Yet as the tom’s clanmates move to his aid and surround him to avenge their own, that cat, sprawled and dying, bids them spare him.
It was an act of kindness that would haunt him for many moons. Never before had revenge left so bitter a taste in one's mouth.
