Chapter 18: Road to the Highest Sky
The first of the night’s stars was just beginning to glitter as the two toms reached the MountainClan border. The salty ocean breeze blew upland, giving them no hints as to what was waiting for them over the rise. The dense forest had thinned out, now almost no trees covered the forest dwelling cats, leaving them feeling unusually open and exposed, even on their side of the border. The earth underpaw was growing increasingly rocky, up to the point that little or no grass grew on the ground.
Razorpaw had taken no notice of any of his surroundings. He still felt hollow, his brother’s harsh words echoing in his mind like a never ending flow, and it was distracting him. He felt so guilty that he thought he would drown in it. His heart ached more now than ever before. He couldn’t bare the mix of emotions swimming around inside of him.
But he had to.
“We made it here first” Chaospaw noted, lifting his head to taste the breeze, “I can smell Shimmerpool and Ghostpaw downriver. They’ll be here soon”
“Hm” Razorpaw gave a little nod to show acknowledgement, but really it was hard to process the information.
“We’ll hide in the trees below the rise” Chaospaw continued, heading back into the cover of trees. Razorpaw followed absent-mindedly, hardly feeling the twigs and thorns poke at his pelt. They stopped just into the shrubs, hiding behind a thick Holly bush to wait for the Medicine Cats.
“We’ll have to be careful once they pass us” Chaospaw continued to explain, “The wind’s blowing upland, so don’t go directly behind them or they’ll smell you. At the same time, we don’t know where they meet the other Medicine cats, so don’t go too far ahead either”
“Okay” Razorpaw agreed after a moment, glancing down at his paws.
What if I don’t find anything at the MoonFalls? What do I tell them then?
“You’ll need to stay sharp. Stop sulking” The black tom snapped, jolting the silver apprentice from his thoughts. Razorpaw blinked a few times at the black apprentice, again finding it somewhat difficult to see his friend in the cover of darkness.
“I wasn’t…” Razorpaw started, but decided it was best not to lie.
“I’m guessing your little chat didn’t go well” Chaospaw mewed, “Were they angry with you?”
“Stingpaw was” Razorpaw murmured sadly, “I don’t know about Silentpaw…”
“Stingpaw was upset that you haven’t said anything to them since Wildstripe” Chaospaw meowed, but the way he said it just made Razorpaw feel that much more guilty about it.
“Yeah” The silver tom sighed in frustration, “I was such a mouse-brain… But you know, right? I didn’t mean for this to happen…”
Chaospaw snorted, “Of course you didn’t. Who’d want their littermates to hate them? But none of that matters at the moment. We could be onto something bigger”
Razorpaw shook his head, “I know that. But I-“
“Shh! They’re here!”
The two toms gazed across the open stretch of land to see Shimmerpool emerge from the trees, with Ghostpaw following obediently behind. The gray tom’s pelt looked silver in the moonlight, and the medicine cat’s ginger fur shimmered with a silvery hue. Even as normal living Clan cats, they looked strangely ethereal in the glow of the moon.
The two cats padded along in silence, heading up the steep rise that marked the MountainClan border. The two toms in the bush watched cautiously until both cats had made it over the rise and had disappeared from view.
“Alright. Let’s go!” Chaospaw urged quietly, stalking out from underneath the bush and slowly climbing the steep moonlit hill. Razorpaw followed directly behind, the reality of what they were doing only now setting in for him. His paws felt light and tingly, but his stomach felt knotted and tight. He held his breath out of instinct, placing his paws to the ground as carefully and quietly as he could. By the time the two had made it to the top of the rise, they began to see just what they were in for.
Razorpaw craned his neck, trying to gaze at the peaks of the mountains at the other end of the territory. There were several, high rising mountains, towering over the MountainClan territory like a barricading wall. It was like the two cats had stepped into a whole new world, just by crossing the rise. The ground was so uneven it looked like a storm had torn it to shreds. Crags jutted out from the ground seemingly at random, looking pale in the moonlight, some higher than Razorpaw would’ve liked. The few patches of straggly grass looked black in the night. The whole complexity of the territory made Razorpaw feel small and unwelcome. It truly frightened him.
Chaospaw took a moment to study the outcrop of rocks, before flicking his tail for Razorpaw to follow and headed off across the uncomfortably open ground. The two apprentices pushed on across the rocky terrain, doing their best to keep the medicine cats in sight as they followed.
“Wait” Chaospaw suddenly stopped in his tracks, and Razorpaw was sure if the black tom hadn’t of said anything he would’ve kept going. It was becoming bothersome how hard it was to see him in the dark.
“What is it?” Razorpaw whispered, padding up beside his friend. They were higher up than the cats they were following, so they looked smaller than usual.
“Flowerheart!” Shimmerpool greeted the MountainClan medicine cat with glee, and the two she-cats touched noses before continuing. “Wow, Russetpaw, you’ve grown!”
The brown apprentice stood beside his mentor, dipping his head politely, “I know” He admitted with a purr, “I seem to grow quickly”
“That’s good” Shimmerpool purred too, but stopped abruptly when she noticed something behind the other medicine cats.
“What’re they doing here?” She motioned with her tail to something in the shadows. Both Razorpaw and Chaospaw gazed in the direction she had pointed, squinting just enough to see the three pairs of eyes keeping check on the medicine cats.
“Oh, you see, Shadepaw was almost taken by an eagle yesterday, so Acidstar said we should have some warriors with us just in case” Flowerheart explained, “I hope you don’t mind”
“Not at all” Shimmerpool mewed, but still seemed cautious staring into the shadows still.
“You don’t have to stay hidden” Flowerheart told the MountainClan warriors sternly. Slowly, the three cats padded from under the shadow of an overhanging rock, coming into the moonlight to stand beside their clanmates.
“Duskglow, Lilystream, Heatherheart” Shimmerpool greeted the trio with a nod; nowhere near as friendly as she was with Flowerheart. Ghostpaw dipped his head to them too.
“We best hurry” Flowerheart began to head upland, Russetpaw and Ghostpaw walking side-by-side next to her. Shimmerpool caught up with the fellow medicine cat, while the three warriors kept a certain distance behind.
“Well this complicates things” Chaospaw grumbled to himself, eyeing the warriors carefully.
Razorpaw was watching the three warriors as well, noticing how much easier they moved around on the hard stone and uneven ground than the JungleClan cats did. Even so, if they were in the thick bush of JungleClan they’d probably be just as uncomfortable.
Chaospaw opened his mouth to check the breeze, and then closed it again while shutting his eyes.
“We should be fine if we stay on this side of them” He calculated, “We’ll have to see what they do when we get to the MoonFalls. But be careful. One wrong move and they’ll see us for sure”
“Alright” Razorpaw swallowed hard, taking a deep breath as he tried to stay calm. He followed quickly as Chaospaw sat off again. For a while they pressed on smoothly, their cautiousness paying off as the medicine cats and MountainClan warriors failed to notice them. But as they approached the mountains, things started to become problematic.
“Shimmerpool said that the MoonFalls were inside a cave of one of the mountains” Chaospaw explained quietly as the snuck across the unfamiliar land, “Once the medicine cats get there, I don’t know if the warriors will go inside or stay outside. But either way, we’ll have to wait ‘till they leave to go in.”
“But we won’t make it back in time!” Razorpaw exclaimed as quietly as he could, casting an uneasy glance down to the cats they were following. Thankfully, they were still going unnoticed.
“I know” The black tom sighed, “So hopefully Leopardpaw can cover for us.”
“But how long does it take to talk to StarClan?” Razorpaw queried.
“No idea” Chaospaw admitted blatantly, “Never done it. We’ll just have to hope for the best when we get there.”
“I don’t like this” Razorpaw murmured ruefully, “What if StarClan don’t even talk to us?”
“Then that doesn’t matter” Chaospaw meowed to Razorpaw’s surprise, “Like I said, StarClan isn’t everything. We just need to-“
Razorpaw was waiting for Chaospaw to finish and hadn’t noticed he’d stopped walking. The silver tom stopped abruptly only a heartbeat before he would’ve crashed into his best friend, catching his breath in his throat when he almost yelped in surprise. He could feel his heart in his chest, drumming in his ears, knowing that he’d almost given them away so close to the MoonFalls.
“Why’d you stop!?” Razorpaw hissed quietly, “I almost walked into you…”
Chaospaw flicked his ears across the rocky ground, and at first, the silver tom thought he was pointing to the medicine cats. But after looking around for a few more moments, Razorpaw could just about see what Chaospaw had been looking at. It was difficult to see too clearly, but in the glow of the moonlight it was just about visible. Appearing and disappearing between the rocks, pelt merging with the shadows on the ground and then looking silver-gray in the open light. The figure of a small cat, pursuing the group of medicine cats and warriors just as they were. However, this cat was travelling alone.
“Hm. Looks like we aren’t the only ones doing a bit of sneaking around” Chaospaw observed, eyes narrowing down to slits as he watched the black cat move from shadow to shadow, crossing the rocks with ease.
“Is that another MountainClan cat?” Razorpaw whispered, bright blue eyes also following the shady cat.
“I’d say so, by the way he’s moving around the rocks. An apprentice, I’m guessing by the size” Chaospaw answered, and then crouched down to think. Razorpaw kept his gaze locked on the MountainClan apprentice, somewhat out of wonder, but mostly just to make sure he didn’t spot them.
“Ro… It’s defi…. Yo…” Words reached the silver apprentice’s ears, and he whipped around in fear that they had been caught. He slid out his claws on instinct, eyes raking over the rocky ground so quickly that he thought he’d go dizzy. Despite searching for their pursuer, by sight and by scent, there didn’t seem to be any cat following them.
“Di…Did you just say something?” He asked Chaospaw warily, and the black tom simply shook his head.
“…Kai… Ere…” Broken words flooded the silver tom’s mind, so much that it hurt. He gritted his teeth at the sudden pain, desperately resisting the urge to wail out, shaking his head roughly as white noise battered his ears. He began to panic, flailing around and scraping his claws against the rough earth beneath him.
“Say….Koll…. Fu…”
What’s going on!? Inside his head he was panicking, more so than he was physically, What’s happening to me!?
“Razorpaw?” Chaospaw had noticed the silver tom’s disturbance, and his eyes were growing round with concern, “What’s happening?”
If he could’ve answered, he’d have said his head felt like his head was exploding. But before he could even utter that much, all feeling drained from his body and he collapsed onto the hard stone floor. He felt his head hit the ground, feeling a throbbing sense envelope him and slowly watching his sight blur and dull until the world seemed to go black around him. Chaospaw’s voice echoed in his head as the black tom called out his name, growing slightly fainter every time it repeated. The only thing he could feel now was his own breathing, slow and even, but even that wasn’t going to last.
He didn’t know what had happened. But even his mind was failing him now.
All he could do now was sleep.
Iceclaw 
Silverstream 
Congratulate them 
