Nour had little care for the normal things kits cared about. She certainly cared for her parents, but she wouldn't know love if it hit her in the head. In fact, she wouldn't know any common emotions about others if any of them hit her in the head. In fact, all of this had just been one exciting field trip for her; there wasn't any war in this place, and even if she was aware of exactly what the war was–she had watched in glee as her father maimed cat after cat during the NightClan invasion, and talked excitedly to Eden about it too–she ignored all of it for the pretty amusement she felt being taken to a whole new land to explore.

"Where are we going?" she asked brightly, trotting alongside Eris, "can we go see that big waterfall again? I can't believe you guys live in a hole! That's literally so cool, wait till I tell Eden about this!"

Their voices, so unafraid, so nattering, grated against Eris' ears, and she didn't bother to keep the distasteful scowl off her face. "Hush," she snapped to Nour, eyes shifting to Matilde as she spoke. Nour was loud, boistrous, uncaring — Eris could tell she didn't feel any immediate threat, too busy with the excitement or whatever it was, of being out of that dark, dingy Mansion. Matilde, on the other hand, was stuck-up, prissy, unwavering and uncaring but without the sense to keep it to herself. Perhaps it was just her bitterness that found them so irritating, even though it was partially her fault they were here (Eris never fancied herself above hypocrisy, though). If her own kits had been like these two, she wouldn't have minded, she would have greeted them with amused smiles and words of encouragement and propped up anyone who so much as breathed a word of annoyance about them on the stand for trial (or, perhaps that was wishful thinking). At the thoughts, she felt a tinge. Anger, bitterness, an overwhelming sense of longing. Again, Eris wished she could just pretend, just as she'd been doing since the attack, but the fantasy was wearing off, propelled by reminder after reminder. 

"Your sister is right, Nour," she said the name mockingly, like it was poisonous, "and I don't think you'll be seeing your friend any time soon. Come, now." Pushing them forward again, she stepped half beside them, half behind them, tail whisked so it was hovering around them, almost like a cage. Impatiently, ducked through the exit of their solitary den and waved the guards off with a simple, glowering look and a nod elsewhere. Instead of leading them through the primary exit of camp, she turned towards the direction of the cenote, winding around the edges of the circular cavern, the water wading gently in the centre, until she came to a path, half obscured by old, toppled rocks. It wound upwards, towards a hole in the side of the wall that she knew led to the surface.

"We are going," she picked up the topic from earlier, tense in the lapsing silence, "somewhere safer. Yes, somewhere safer. Now, up you go," she nodded towards the first stone.

i'm taking over cordelia just for this thread and no one can stop me, not my wife or my wife or my wife or my wife or my other wife or my wife or my

"Nour, shhh," Delia hissed to her sister; of the three, she was the most fearful, the short fur along her spine sticking up and her legs shaking uncontrollably — she hated how her own body betrayed her. She kept looking around, starting at shadows and pebbles that skittered down the stone walls and then, as they emerged into the night, the rustle of wet ferns all around them. She pressed closer to Nour; she was far lankier than her sister, so much so that Nour's back only reached up to the tops of her legs — she hadn't had a chance to speak to their brother no matter how much she'd tried, lurking by the entrance to their cave and trying to peer out enough to catch his eye, but the guards had always hissed and swatted her back in when she crept out too far. She had a fresh scratch on the bridge of her nose from one such recent swipe; at first they'd been wary, trying to work out where these League kits stood with Kier. But as soon as they'd learned he didn't care one bit about their physical wellbeing — really, if war was coming, what did it matter if these kits even made it out of their imprisonment alive? What did it matter if the Nemesis came and found his little daughters' bodies, as much as that terrified some of NightClan? — they'd become more savage. Anyway — Laertes. Druzyprince. From the few glimpses she'd caught of him, mainly when they'd first been bundled into the cavern, she was now the same size as him, tied for tallest of the siblings. And yet, for all her size, attacking Eris to free herself and her sisters never once crossed her mind — they were far from home; there were eyes and ears everywhere; the stench of blood carried easily on the damp breeze; and they wouldn't make it out alive if she tried. One might. Two might. But who would be the one that didn't? Matilde was a survivor, she might make it — but she was small, and her fur was soft and bright, and there only so many places white could hide in black. Nour might make it — she was crafty and quick, but she was also foolhardy, and her legs would be no match in running for some of the long legs she'd seen around NightClan. They had systems. Ways of knowing when there was an escapee. There'd been a cat hunt while they were being kept captive; she'd peered out of their prison, breathing short and fast as she watched a bloodied cat dragged back into camp and thrown down like a pile of limp, skinned fur on the cold stone — she remembered the delight, the uproar, the cheers, the feeling of her own eyes stretching wide.

They had ways.

There was brutality in the League. There was cruelty. Her mother was a torturer; her father would smoke out a den of foxes and kill them with cleverness. But they weren't here.

They weren't here.

Ducking her head closer to Nour's ear, she whispered anxiously, "there's only one reason she's bringing us out here, Nour." Her hushed voice was urgent, eyes swimming with desperate fear, and yet she couldn't make her shaking voice any louder than a breath. She could feel eyes on them, staring out from the exit Eris had led them through; there were always eyes. "No one else even knows. She didn't bring us out through the main entrance. She's going to kill us." Hoping Nour might take her seriously, Cordelia swallowed and raised her head again, not wanting to put her sister at risk by being seen whispering to her. When her father was gone, she was the head of the family; she always had been. She had to get them out of here alive. Forcing a smile onto her face that shook at the edges, she looked over Nour's head to Eris. Making yourself sympathetic to the enemy who had the advantage; she'd heard that strategy bandied around the League. "Did I hear... Did I hear that you had kits?"

---

In the League, the patrol was preparing to go out. It wasn't a war patrol — it was a patrol made for efficiency. For quick, ruthless brutality. For no mistakes. The war would come later; Eshek wouldn't have her kits in a war zone, not when the two possibilities were equally unacceptable: either their rescue would be trusted to the paws of others, or she would have to do it herself — and then she wouldn't be able to watch the life bleed out of Kier. No. They had to wait. Get the kits. Go to war. Waiting would be worth it.

She wove between the assemble cats with hateful, stalking steps, her head thrust forward and her shoulder fur prickling. Hunters sharpened their claws; lapped up travelling herbs; stretched their muscles. She wanted to go herself — she'd be faster; she'd be able to run the distance without stopping. Didn't matter if she met ten warriors on the other side; didn't matter if she killed three and died herself. She wasn't thinking clearly — and that would have been precisely why Bermondsey hadn't let her do that. She would have gotten herself killed, and she wouldn't have gotten their kits out. She had to be shackled by a patrol; it was the only way to somewhat guarantee she wouldn't go off by herself. This would be the first time she'd helped to lead one at the side of the Nemesis. Despite everything, that meant something to her. She'd always be radically devoted to the League.

"Are we ready?" she hissed, stalking up to Bermondsey and angling her head down to roughly slam her forehead into the side of his foreleg. Raising her head, she prowled a tight, angry circle around him, tail flicking back and forth dangerously. "I want to go. I want to go now. They might have heard we're coming — every second we waste here is another second they might be at risk." There was nothing but blood behind her eyes.

Matilde watched her sisters exchange secret words with suspicion, her frosty expression concealing a twist of jealousy in her gut. She trailed a few steps behind, her mind rushing to sudden presumptions; were they plotting some plan to escape together? They had always been closer to each other than her, and she could torture them at times, she knew that. Were they putting on an act to distract their abductors? Cordelia was suddenly the cowardly lion? Nour was as clueless as the scarecrow? Is that why Delia was asking about some stupid Nightclan kits? The fear of abandonment rose wordlessly in her nerves; not defined enough to be named, but present as a sinking feeling in her stomach. Her idle mind roared awake; fine, if they were devising escape, she would too. She’d always been able to make it on her own, and being in unfamiliar territory wouldn’t change that. She hadn’t really entertained thoughts of escaping; she imagined that as long as she sat patiently, behaving herself as well as she could, their father would inevitably come to their rescue. But she’d look quite a fool if she was the only one left behind if it was every cat for herself.

She could play mind games, too. Cordelia’s diversion tactic was well intentioned, but she’d need a bit more OOMPH to light a fuse in Eris. Of course, Tilly was making the massive misjudgment that Cordelia was trying to make Eris upset rather than sympathize with her. She didn’t really understand the concept of sympathy, after all.

“Yes, tell us all about your dead kits. We’ve been itching to know all about them (I mean, not really), and seeing how we won’t being seeing much of each other soon, now’s the time to get it off your chest.”

mine is longer 😎


“Nour—” Cordelia hissed, trying to grab for her sister as she skipped away, but it was too late. She vanished ahead up the tunnel they were forced into, and all she was left with was the threatening warmth of Eris behind her in the suffocating, oppressive dark. And then Tilly was making everything spectacularly worse. Delia’s eyes widened in abject horror. Both her sisters were lighting fuses under simmering oil — haphazardly, wildly, for no reason she could comprehend; to her, staring around at her sisters, it seemed like chaos of absurdist extremes. Did they want to die? This was what happened when they were raised so spoiled — it was a mess. She’d grown up the most quickly after Laertes abandoned them, Nour had dissolved into a beatnik haze of apathy, and Tilly’s daddy’s girl sucking up had taken on resentful proportions after her poisoning. It was all such a disaster — their whole family was a disaster. Their brother, who she’d always been close to, was a weak traitor, and both her sisters seemed content to just walk into the jaws of death. She almost wanted to let them, wanted to sit back and say fine and tell their parents that she’d tried — she always tried. And what did she get from it? Whatever, Delia from Nour and scornful antagonism from Matilde. Their family was falling apart. She wanted so desperately to shout her feelings at them, but she couldn’t — because when the brother that had been told it’s your duty to look after your sisters had forsaken his responsibility and run off after his own dreams (she resented him so much because she felt unspeakably betrayed), the sister had taken over for him. She’d taken over — so Nour could act like a druggie and Matilde could act like a brat. And their lives were her responsibility.

“Matilde,” she gasped, sounding like a too-young substitute parent as she used her full name. It wasn’t a gasp at the offence of what she’s said — it was a gasp of abject despair, a gasp that breathed no, oh no, because she’s misjudged so dangerously. And then, before Eris could do something worse, she interfered for her — because it was either she did something, or NightClan did. Or maybe that was just what she was telling herself to justify it — really, she was just so furiously angry with her sisters. So full of desperate, overwhelmed hate, because she couldn’t cry and she had to get these feelings out somehow. Maybe this was just everything she’d been wanting to do and say ever since Laertes abandoned their family. When Eris stepped on Matilde’s tail, Cordelia felt, with a burst of fury, that she deserved it; and when Eris patted her on the cheek, she flinched back but let her, looking down and holding her gaze with an expression that looked like she wanted to cry angry tears — but she couldn’t blame her. Delia had her father’s reason — and they deserved this. After the way Nour and Matilde had been antagonising their captors, there was nothing they didn’t deserve. She felt herself siding with Eris — not because she didn’t hate her, but because the betrayed, overwhelmed resentment of her sisters in that desperate moment was stronger. She stalked in after Matilde, her temper growing and growing with every step in the dark, every stumble, every scrape of the walls against her sides, every sharp pebble digging into her paws — until, by the time they emerged, she was blind with it. They were out in the forest, and the air was hot and wet, and she didn’t know how far they walked — because the whole time, all she could feel was this growing ball of months-old pain burning in her chest and stinging at her eyes, not with grief but with an anger so overwhelming it was enough to make her cry. There was nowhere else for it to go — right now, with their deaths looming on the other side of every slight rise and peeking around every tree trunk, she hated them.

And then, imagining that Matilde’s mouth opened where she was walking ahead of her, she snapped.

“Shut up.” Her overwhelming emotions turned to rage in a second — and then she was leaping at Matilde. She barrelled the perfect white she-cat over easily, smearing her soft fur through the wet muck of NightClan’s ferns and jutting roots. “You always have to make everything worse — you always have to make everything about you.” The air had been damp and muggy all night, thunder rumbling in the distance — and now the storm broke. The gloomy forest was saturated in an instant, too close and pressing in on them — lightning flared, thunder boomed, rain poured down and formed puddles between the roots, hissing from the pines. And still Cordelia grappled with her sister in the mud and the rain, clawing at her perfect white fur. “When will you just shut up? What have you ever done for this family?” And yet still their father doted on her, because she was the favourite. There was such an outpouring of blind anger that she couldn’t see straight; a dam had broken. The rain poured down, so loud she could hardly hear her sister a breath away from her, so thick she could hardly see Nour or Eris. The grappling, inexperienced fight was ridiculously messy — her claws hardly found Matilde’s fur, and all she really succeeded in doing was ruining it with soaking mud. “I’m trying to save you and still you’re making this all about you — like you want to die. Do you? Do you, Tilly? Fine. I wish you would.”

It was a horrible, untrue thing to say, blurted out in the moment — but after everything that had happened with Laertes, after all the fights between their mother and father, her teenage mind felt their family was irreparably broken. She hardly registered it, too caught up in her sister beneath her, her own breaths coming in anguished pants that were half sobs — but they had reached a decrepit church. Beyond the bounds of the dripping forest, an old cemetery stretched away, the gravestones crooked and broken and streaked with black. The ground was dead and barren, like the very earth had rotted, and around the edges, where a low, metal fence had rusted away and grown as crooked as the heaped and sunken graves, dead, tangled trees drooped black and haunted. The church stood like an ominous beast, raised up by a few crumbling steps; its roof was half missing, and yet it felt as alive as any monster. The storm poured down, coating everything in grey mist, but in the distance the sky was a dull, ominous red.

---

At Bermondsey’s words, Eshek drew her lips back at Moonblight, a gurgling snarl rattling in her throat; even if he proved a perfectly obedient pet, she couldn’t help what happened in the fray — things could get so confusing, all their scents were all over each other anyway, who could raise any questions if his throat was found torn out in the aftermath? She was the enemy he had to watch out for — if he lost sight of her, if he felt her behind him in his blindspot, she wouldn’t be the mother of his foster father’s kits anymore; she’d be the one with his name at the top of a hit list. She hoped he was paranoid; she hoped he’d hardly gotten a wink of sleep in the Mansion. She hoped she was every creak of every door and every floorboard to him. “Put a paw wrong,” she whispered, slinking behind Bermondsey’s back to draw close to Moonblight; there was murder in her eyes, on her teeth, “please. I’m begging you.” Her lips twitched back further, her eyes locked with his.

And then, finally, she turned and stalked ahead, outpacing the rest of the patrol until she was a lone, furious figure ahead of them. She disappeared into the woods that ringed the Mansion. She didn’t want to be near Bermondsey, didn’t want to give him any chance to change his mind and say she should be staying home in her condition — that a hostage extraction was no place for a pregnant queen. Eshek lashed her tail at the thought, working herself into an angry, imaginary argument despite Bermondsey’s complete support in reality. She was as highly strung as her daughter across the forest.

It wasn’t until they were in the vast, empty fields between the League’s territory and MoonClan’s — desolate and grey and uninhabited — that she finally turned on him. The wind had picked up, heralding a vicious storm; it rattled the tall grass between her and the rest of the patrol. “This is your fault,” she shouted at Bermondsey, her voice whipped away by the wind. It buffeted her fur; her ears were pinned against her head. It didn’t matter that it wasn’t, that none of this had anything to do with him — she had worked herself into a frenzy, and Bermondsey was easiest to blame. And he’d never failed to rise to her temper before — they spent half their lives fighting. Didn’t matter that she was in love with him — right now, in this second, he was the reason her kits were gone. “You knew he was there.” She gestured hatefully at Moonblight at the back of the patrol. They were gaining on her as she stood there, screaming back at them in the whirling grass. “In NightClan. You saw him, when we met with Aspenstar. And you did nothing. You knew the kind of monster she was — and you let him stay there. Because you’re a coward. If you’d had a scrap of courage, of honour, and taken him out, this never would have happened. If our kits are dead, their blood is on your paws.” Her voice was a shriek now; the howling wind tore it raw against the grey, desolate night.

And then it began to pour.

---

“Lord.”

Kier looked up from where he’d been gazing down at his reflection in the water of his den.

“Your mate. She was seen leaving camp with the League prisoners.”

“What?” Kier frowned, uncomprehending, but instinctively his heart sank. He could hear the pines lashing and whipping against each other through the hole high in the stone ceiling of his den; their trunks bent and groaned in the howling wind, almost drowned out by the hissing rage of the rain. Usually it would have felt cozy and he’d have been curled up with Eris; now it took on the darkness of a fairytale monster. “Out? In that?” He sounded truly, naïvely bewildered, concerned. But it was worse than growing fear for her; they’d never be able to track her in this raging storm. If she’d wanted to disappear, she’d done it. “Well— why?”

The Reporter fell into an uneasy silence, slowly bowing his head; he didn’t know why. No one questioned Eris — no one questioned Eris, and that was now Kier’s problem. He was completely blind to her movements. She’d vanished into the rain. Abandoned him and taken the prisoners with her without telling the tom she told everything to why.

And he was completely in the dark. 

Sinking, foreboding terror was a pit in his stomach. He felt sick with it. Frantic with it. 

What was Eris doing? How could he find her in this? Why hadn’t she told him? 

Matilde could feel the pot simmering, threatening to boil over, and something in her, an instinct, told her to continue to feed it, told her that the explosion would create an opening, that this was the way to escape.

She brooded on her next move as they traversed through the darkness, doing her best to walk straight albeit the throbbing pain in her tail. She considered what her father would do in this situation, but she found that to be a challenge. As they stumbled through that darkness, she reflected that she didn’t really know how her father thought at all, only the caricature of him she held in her mind — she only knew a slice of him, not the shrewd strategist, but the doting Daddy, a softness he reserved for his children. But Daddy wasn’t here to help her now, and the soft alcove of a life her parents had built for them — crafted to keep them from the dangers of the world, designed to keep them from the tragic path that her parents themselves followed — that soft alcove of a life was no use to her here. I’ve been babied too much… the blunt realization faced her in that tunnel. Despite the anxiety, a strange tingle of excitement outpaced the nerves. It was hard to resist the thrill of the life-and-death danger of it all, after a childhood spent as a princess in a tower.

When they emerged back into the daylight, she was loaded and ready with further slings of provocation ready to fire at Eris. Her mouth briefly opened to dare one more waggish taunt ———

She didn’t see the attack coming. Before she could turn her head to find Eris, or even discern who’d told her suddenly to shut-up, a crushing weight dropped on her, rattling her bones, and sent her scrambling in the mud. She quickly lost her footing on the slick surface, her flight whisking her face-first into the rain soaked roots of a dark bush. When she finally got a chance to gather her bearings, she was surprised to find Cordelia of all people’s white fur charging at her, not Eris’. Matilde barely had time to exclaim her surprise, before she bore down her own teeth and leapt forward to intercept her. Their bodies crashed into a tangle of white fur, turned grey in the rain.

The funny thing was, Tilly had been waiting her whole life to get into a fight. She’d always fantasized about the strength the breadth of her scorn would grant her — and the more she brooded, the firmer her muscles seemed to become, especially now that she was taking her training seriously. Particularly after the poisoning, she’d imagined in a multitude of dreams what she would do to Kier if they ever met each other again; the multitude of ways she’d enjoy claiming her revenge.

But this fight didn’t go anyway like she imagined. It was messy, chaotic, feeble. Rain got in her eyes, so she was clawing at the mud more than she was finding pay dirt. The downpour and thunder were so loud that she doubted that Cordelia heard the taunts she hurled between the struggling. It was ugly — and worst of all, when the tangle finally came to a rest, it was her bigger sister on top. She found herself with the length of her spine locked firmly to the ground, and despite her earnest best efforts to break free, all she could muster was a squirming motion from side to side. The effort drained the last of her energy — after a few moments she finally came to a rest, her muscles sore, and her eyes shut to the rain that pattered down onto her face.

I’m trying to save you and still you’re making this all about you — like you want to die. Do you? Do you, Tilly? She could hear Cordelia shouting in her face, though she made no sign that she heard — Tilly looked like she was in a meditation, with her perfect stillness and her eyes shut tight. Her sister was right about one thing — this family WAS messed up. If Nour was the brainless and Cordelia the cowardly, then Laertes was the heartless, who’d abandoned them to play toy soldier for a man who’d tried to kill her. The branches of the family tree were already coming undone, the roots festered in soil spoiled by jealousy and disloyalty, and god’s the power they had in the League seemed to make everything worse. The rumor of a family curse seemed more pertinent than ever — and their damnation seemed a certainty.

Matilde opened her eyes to the storm, and fixed Cordelia with a blue gaze swimming with scorn. “Yes, I do want to die, but I wish you’d go first.”

It was an icy cold statement, spoken so softly that only Cordelia could hear, before Nour came over to take her bigger sister off of her. Freed, Tilly got to her paws to assess the few shallow nicks and bruises on her ruined fur, not paying any mind at all to her sister’s or her captor. The graveyard and the ruined church beyond raised in her sight, so old, tortured, and haunted that she was instantly surprised Kier hadn’t chosen it as his camp. Still, the macabre plot of land certainly fit the mood of the day — it called to Matilde, and she obliged. “I’m going to take shelter in that church,” she announced to no one in particular, and without so much as waiting for her Eris or asking for permission, she calmly sauntered away in its direction.