nc typically doesn’t have ceremonies but i wanted to try out the vibe <3 we’ll see if i ever do it again, but have this experiment <33 also if wendigo was meant to be promoted to warrior and not apprentice no he wasn’t and im forcibly deaging him sorry faePREAMBLE: The celebration of youth, the illusion — or the reality — that every young cat in NightClan was uniquely valued to almost worshipful lengths — that was Kier’s deepest fixation. They were the future: the warriors who had lived under the old order’s reign, the ones too stuck in their ways to ever be trustworthy, were good for nothing but manual labour, the ones who had escaped the mass executions of the early days of the new tyranny kept around to hunt for the ones half their age who deserved to gorge themselves, who deserves to parade around like young kings and the odd queen. But their time was quickly dying out. The first of his apprentices had been made warriors, violent and devoted and with egos so unfitting of their minor achievements; the first kits had been made apprentices; everything had become a well-oiled machine. It had something of the witch in her gingerbread house to it, fattening up the children for slaughter — all that praise, all that power, all that encouragement. They were Kier’s greatest pride, equal even to his own crown precisely because they meant the endurance of it. The Inferiors had more than one lord to fear now — they had a dozen snapping at their heels. The children were growing up.
The naming of new apprentices — more even than the naming of warriors to slowly reduce the old order to rot, this was his deepest pride. And it was made all the more personal for the inclusion of his own daughter. Important apprentices, apprentices who had distinguished or humiliated themselves, he liked to name without ceremony, in private or before a far more violent crowd. But kits into apprentices — for these he loved the showmanship of a ceremony. The bragging rights of it. The public, irrefutable boasting of his success —
their success. His future and theirs, moulded into one. On their laurels rested his. His was a bloody, parading theatricality at all other events; at ceremonies, at the hand-off from the nursemaids’ indoctrination of the kits to the beginning of his own, he was soothing. They were to be his favourites; they had to be treated specially.
SPEECH: “The naming of new apprentices is always a happy thing,” Kier announced to the crowd, perched up on his stone pillar and perfectly comfortable being there. His voice was cheery, upbeat, but his eyes roamed darkly over warriors, over mothers, lingering while he spoke like he was mocking them with the veiled meaning of his words. Apprentice ceremonies were often the first time mothers had seen their kits since they’d been born and taken to the nursemaids. Coincidentally, it was also one of the only times Kier revelled in the disruptive noise of a she-cat weeping, however quiet she tried to make herself off in the corner; at past ceremonies, the corner of his mouth had continuously twitched while he’d been trying to focus on his speech. Other times they were snapped at and silenced; at ceremonies, it was like a graduation of a different kind — seeing a kit not bat an eye at the crying of a mother he didn’t know, eyes trained hungrily up at Kier while she mourned his lost youth… Oh, it was nectar. For his own kit, though, he was the only one alive to feel proud of her. “Our future generations — what could be happier than that? Their potential, their eagerness to grow and to learn,” their eagerness to be moulded into perfect little puppets and pawns, “ — there are few things as inspiring.” He smiled, dazzling and warm.
PROMOTION: “Wendigokit,” he greeted, looking down at the kit with an uncharacteristically kindly smile. It was sinister to watching warriors, worried for the kits and for their own lives; it was pure endearment to apprentices who’d been looked at the same at their ceremonies and kits envious for their own turn. He remembered when Wendigokit had just been a little wide-eyed thing at the first trial. He’d always found him rather endearing. He was still too young, but in NightClan that was only a good thing — the younger a cat, the more fertile the mind. “You’ve always been a quiet thing, but quiet things are clever, mm?” He smiled again, though it hadn’t truly left. “NightClan has quite enough brute force,” the crowd laughed as if on cue, “it could do with a bit of brains. Once you’re in your lessons, you’ll come out of that shy little shell. Well earned,
Wendigopaw.” Still smiling, eyes locked with the newly named apprentice’s, he dipped his head. The congratulations felt far too grown-up, far too weighted, like there was an eternity of expectation and violence and a regrettably early grave lurking just behind it.
faeish PROMOTION: Slipping from the little black tom, his eyes picked his own kit from the crowd. His gaze bore into hers, hoping for clarity; he’d tried to impress the importance of the event on her — on the image she had to present as his blood in a Clan so built on nepotism — but whether she would obey or rebel was always a contentious, gambling thing. But it was almost irrelevant; even he —
most of all he — was surprised by the depth of his emotional pride. He hid it from them, but he loved his first litter. “And
King,” he greeted, voice surprisingly gentle. It always was when he spoke to his favourite prodigies, the youth carrying Kier’s throne on their backs and thanking him for the burden, but given how disappointing King had been, it was surprising. “Little King.” He tilted his head and smiled, looking more like a proud parent at graduation than a tyrant. It had been her nickname since birth; there was never any doubt what her warrior name would be, never any fun speculation other kits and apprentices were free to have. “You’ll be a fine apprentice. I’m…” The words died. Even now, he couldn’t say them.
I’m proud of you. Instead, he offered a more pinched smile and dipped his head in a rare show of genuine deference. “Very fine indeed.”
woof PROMOTION: “And
Sparklepaw,” he grinned down at the far-too-old apprentice, and he suddenly seemed more genuine, less leader and more friend, the ceramic breaking for just a second to show someone else underneath. “About damned time. Try to do a little better as Sparklesprite. Mess a few less things up, mm?” The grin hadn’t faded.
biyuu ☆彡 CONGRATULATIONS: Then, his demeanour re-settling, he turned back to the apprentices, grin softening. “Many happy returns to the lucky two, and I expect I won’t be disappointed by Snowblister’s reports after your first classes.” He smiled again; he rarely mentioned his deputy’s name nowadays, and it hadn’t sounded too horribly poisonous in his mouth. He could be civil in this performance. There was no vicious rhetoric about greatness and empire and thrones, no echoing, sprawling speech to whip the crowd into a screaming frenzy; the brainwashing here was far softer — praise, gentleness, guilt-tripping accusation that piled on the pressure to please him, an utter curated devotion to him and him alone. The slaughter would come once the curtains were drawn. His voice was only vaguely more ominous as he added: “You are NightClan. You are its future. You are its blood. Be worthy of it.”
NightClan meant
Kier. They were his. Then, dipping his head one final time, he slipped down from his perch to awkwardly touch his nose to his daughter’s forehead, nodding more freely to Wendigopaw as he stepped back. Turning his back on his own kit, he drew Wendigopaw aside with one paw, smiling down at him. He looked like a little carbon copy of himself. “Well, well,” he purred proudly, all his grandiosity melting away. This was where the curation of devotion started: with one-on-one attention. “How does it feel to be an apprentice?”
Too bewildered by his relationship with his kit to talk to her so warmly, he could have run to catch someone in the crowd with some made-up official talk before it dispelled (he looked unfavourably on anyone who didn’t lavish the newly-named apprentices in congratulations), straight back to business to keep himself from having to congratulate her — that would have been less cruel. But, tactless when he should have been compassionate, he inadvertently chose the far cruller option.
☆
Brat squealed with excitement and was the first to burst free from the crowd to congratulate her sister. “Congratulationscongratulationscongratulations!” she squealed, drawing King into a tight, frantic hug. “You did it! We’ll read your cards later tonight — they’re gonna say such great things. Splendiferous!! The spirits are sii
iiinging,” she gave a goofy little grin, fangs protruding, wiggling her shoulders excitedly like a shiver had passed through her and raising her brows.
Then she rushed over to Wendigopaw, interrupting him and her father, who stopped mid-word to wait for her to leave, and drawing him into an excited hug as well. “Apprentice buddies!! Now that Oleanderpaw’s fat butt is in the medicine den, you can totally steal her spot, I won’t tell. We’ll talk.” Giving him a serious little nod, she almost immediately broke back into a beaming grin and danced away, squealing. “New apprentices! I love new apprentices!” To a lonely thing like her, a full den was always happy.
She had been apprenticed early, after the League raid; Kier had been so blinded by relief and tearful emotion that he would have said yes to anything —
can I be an apprentice now? she’d asked in the moonlit courtyard outside the Mansion;
yes, he’d agreed breathlessly, still holding her close like she was going to be taken again,
you can be an apprentice. He’d said
stay here, stay with me as soon as he had her back, as soon as he had his daughter. When he’d announced it publicly, back at camp after they’d all staggered in, weary and bloody save for the boundless energy of Kier as he bounded across the stone and leaped up onto his perch —
for many, this was your first battle, he’d told them, his voice so comforting, so gentle, so soothing, like he was unspeakably proud of them, just like he’d sounded when he spoke to King;
I know it’s easy to feel morose after tonight, but… and on he’d gone, about how they hadn’t lost a single life and how all their brave fighters like Oleanderpaw would heal, and he’d thanked Bumblebeepaw and picked individuals out of the crowd like he’d known that would revive their spirits with that most heady of elixirs, praise, and she’d tuned out until he’d smiled down at her and said
and my own daughter, Royalpaw, promoting her just like that — Brat had beamed from ear to ear, so jubilant — she was an apprentice! She’d already forgotten the trauma of the night, of Bumblebeepaw and Druzyprince and her grandmother, of Leveretpaw hobbling, ignored, behind her and collapsing for Twilightdance to look at him; now it took on a happy turn, because truly, they [i[had[/i] won. They
had struck fear and sovereignty and disrespect to the heart of them. They had achieved what they’d come to do.
She had won. The apprentices had had their cuddle pile, and it had been the greatest night of her life.
He was never like that with King. There was never that easy love, that bond. He was always nervous and reserved, always uncharacteristically uncertain.
Leveretpaw sat by the mouth of the medicine den, sad and bitter and downcast. His apprenticeship had been rushed and impersonal, a dozen too-old kits put through at once; he hadn’t been fussed over like this.
Sneakysnap, sitting next to Speedyraptor, snorted critically. She didn’t go to congratulate the new apprentices. “Stupid,” she muttered, irritated and jealous the second the spotlight was off her. “What did they do except be born.”
