[Fawn]

ROOKFROST

Five days had passed since he had first alerted Firestar to his plans for leaving. The Clan's leader was not as dimwitted as he had previously been led to believe; she could tell from the sour breath and the sorry state his body was in that he was obviously ailing from something. He recognized relief in her gaze after he informed her of his departure, no doubt sprung from having a very sick cat no longer loitering around their camp.

Rookfrost and Kindleflare both knew his condition was not contagious, but genetic. Though his parents would disagree, it was another point in his favor that he had chosen the life of a medicine cat and not gone on to be the proud senior warrior his parents had always envisioned him as. This was not an illness that should be passed on to the next generation. It was less about any hypothetical concern for any hypothetical offspring, but rather a personal loathing for his own deterioration.

There was little benefit in his progeny suffering the same ailment.

Preserving as much of his strength as he could, Rookfrost walked stiffly and slowly to Firestar's den, not calling to announce his presence, but walking right in. They both knew he did not have the time for wasted politesse.
"I formally resign from my post as Medicine Cat of LightningClan. I will require one escort of my choosing to leave the territory." Only the sharp flick of his tail betrayed his hatred of his own weakened state. His voice was still as clipped and coldly intelligent as it had always been. "I will not return."

Firestar could call a meeting if she so chose, to inform the Clan of his departure - but he wouldn't be here to hear it. He didn't care what excuse she made about his disappearance, or if she simply told the truth, that he was going into the mountains to expire at a place of his own choosing, it would, for once, be the only time the Clan ever truly knew of his whereabouts.

Yet even then, they would be ignorant to the many... atrocities he had commited while 'in service' to the Clan. Like old bones, they would stay buried, faded and forgotten as more layers of earth and detritus built up over top of everyone's memories.

Leaving in the same rigid, determined manner in which he had arrived, Rookfrost returned to the entrance of the medicine cat's den, where Kindleflare was blinking owlishly at him, her face wreathed in an emotion he could not understand nor wanted to. He said nothing to her. Five days hence, Rookfrost had already informed her of her new role as the sole medicine cat; any additional advice or herb-knowledge he had to give her were to be witheld.

She could consider it a final, indefinite test. To figure it out herself.

Besides, if LightningClan fell into ruin and rot in his absence, he would barely flick an ear. Their wellfare had always been a 'concern' of his because it was mandatory to keeping his position, and it had offered (though few and far between) some medical challenges to overcome every now and again. The scent of the redfish mushroooms would take a while to leave the medicine cat, but that was no longer his problem; he had instructed Whiteshade to bring them to the Hollow two days prior, knowing he had not the strength to walk so far and carry his poisonous parcel at the same time.

Already, he felt thirst clawing at his throat again, and he ignored the weak pangs of his shriveled stomach, the rabbit he had forced down enough to sustain him for the trip. He had eaten enough strengthening herbs and water to arrive without major difficulty.

Unsentimental, Rookfrost did not need to take one last look at the medicine cat's den, or relive old memories, or ponder how difficult it would be to murder the entire Clan for old time's sake. His mind was made up. His departure, his dark flight from LightningClan, was now at hand.

As if summoned from some spectral nightmare in his hour of need, Whiteshade appeared with a charming smile and a chilling light in his gleaming eyes.

"Ready?" Asked the phantom.

Rookfrost, with all the grim, resigned dignity of a cat marching to his own death, strode out of LightningClan without so much as a thought to those left behind.

"Yes."

my name is Death and the end is here

741 Words | oh death | Phoenix , Hellion | table by phoenix

[Phoenix]

now was acknowledged the presence of the red death

One would have to have been blind to have not noticed how their medicine cat had begun to deteriorate over the past moon. Death dressed in black, he had always cut an imposing figure against LightingingClan’s moorlands. His name was one that everyone recognized, though the albino tom thought it would be incorrect to attribute his companion’s notoriety to solely his position as the medicine cat – former medicine cat, now. There was something different about those flat gray eyes that peered out from thick midnight fur, a certain coldness, and after many, many seasons spent in the other tom’s company, Whiteshade knew that it was precisely what was not there that sent shivers down the spine of every cat who Rookfrost encountered. That absence was what they remembered.

As he sat off to the side of LightningClan’s camp, the senior warrior found himself recalling days of the nearly forgotten past. Much had changed, since then, but much had also stayed the same. For the ebony tom on whom he waited, everything had changed – except, perhaps, those flat gray eyes. They still held the calculating mind and that glint of intelligence, even as their transport withered away to pieces around them. To have fallen apart so rapidly and without apparent cause or explanation was, Whiteshade mused, likely the worst torture for his old hunting partner. Where the devil with crimson eyes sought out the thrill and the rush that came with holding another’s life in his claws, the former medicine cat pursued his prey for the sole purpose of attaining answers to macabre questions that would have any other reeling where they stood. But that mind, perhaps, had remained the only thing untouched by time.

For the longest time, Rookfrost had enjoyed the benefits of his position as one of the top predators in the land, preceded as he was by a reputation as one of the most dangerous cats in the clan. He was a legend among the loners – stay away from the moorlands, they said, or else Death Incarnate and his ghostly companion will find you. He had a hollow, they said, a hidden crypt, from which no one returned alive. But when he watched the tom now, seeing the way his limbs creaked and the sudden, uncharacteristic air of fragility that lingered around him, Whiteshade found it hard to match the rumors to their subject. Dense black fur had thinned out and begun to fall away in clumps just as the trees in the open woods had been shedding their leaves, and as a result, the broad black shoulders that haunted the nightmares of so many loners had narrowed. Gaunt and frail, Rookfrost looked more haggard than ever before. The signs were all there, obvious to those select few who knew them well and even to the others who did not: the end was near.

In the game of life and death, Rookfrost had once been the harbinger of that which had now come for him, and Whiteshade, as death’s ever present companion, sat there waiting for it to arrive.

With a fluid motion, the senior warrior rose to his paws when it appeared as though the former medicine cat had collected his thoughts – but never his memories, for those were far too sentimental for him – for the last time. On quiet paws, he strode over to his old hunting companion, crimson gaze resting on the new medicine cat’s troubled features for a moment before flicking down to meet pale gray. Even as he was about to depart his home for the last time, the ebony tom stood with a grim determination as he gathered the shards of his dignity around him for that final trip to the hollow. No emotion flickered in his eyes. His gaze did not linger on the den in which he had spent the greater part of his years.

”Ready?” Whiteshade asked, knowing the answer even before it came. They had already turned, already begun to leave, when Rookfrost replied. Together, death dressed in black and the devil in disparate white, strode from LightningClan’s camp, accepting their joint understanding that only one of them would return with the cool apathy and acceptance with which they knew the sun would set that night. It was pointless to rage and scream against that which was inevitable; time and time again, they had seen others try only to fail in the end.

The whispers that had likely been left in the wake of their abrupt departure did not follow them out into LightningClan territory, into the mountains. In these lands, they were alone as they had been so many nights in the past, but it was the sun that shone down on them as they walked, not the pale light of the moon. The path under their paws was both familiar yet irrefutably foreign, for never before had Whiteshade been needed by his companion in such a way. Every other time they had traveled to the hollow, they had done so as equals, but only a sentimental fool would think that nothing had changed between them. Formidable though his mind still was, Rookfrost’s body was failing him; it would be all too easy for Whiteshade to turn, to overpower, and to walk away with blood on his claws and his former hunting companion lifeless on the ground. Had any other cat requested such an escort from him, that might have been the end of it, for he had better things to do than walk dying cats to their final resting place. But Rookfrost was different. Once he had commanded respect, and the traces of the high esteem in which he had been held kept the devil from unsheathing his claws.

and the red death held illimitable dominion over all

whiteshade | lightningclan | senior warrior | Fawn

masque of the red death | background image