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Moon Zero

The Beginning: Wrenpaw

The soothing sound of trickling water caresses your ears, calming the sore muscles of your body. Your eyes flutter open, greeted by warm sunlight that swallowed your vision. Wet fronds of forest undergrowth tickled at your cheeks and brushed against the lids of your narrowed eyes. As you rise from the ground, disoriented and weak, you gaze at the lakeside clearing that you awoke within. With waterlogged fur and tired limbs, you stagger through the weeds towards a forked path that twisted deeper into the dark woodland. One path, the one that branches off to the left, is shrouded in shadows and overridden with bramble and thistles. The second, which extends to the right, is clear of obstacles, but reverberates with the sound of unknown forest creatures.

Moon Zero

You go down the left path.

Dead leaves slick with bitter-smelling water crunch and squelch beneath your paws as you stumble along the uneven trail. The thorns of bramble bushes tug and tear at your fur, but strangely you’re numb to it. Thistles nibble at your ankles as you walk. You can feel drops of blood travel down from the wounds along your flanks as brambles eat away at them.

Does this path ever end? Is there nothing here?

It had turned out that, yes, something awaited you along the trail. But it was not something you had ever expected to find.

Two strangely familiar cats, drenched in foul-smelling waters and a viscous red — no, pink? — substance that poured from wounds along their soaked hides.

You discovered: Blood!

One lay unconscious, the other barely clinging on to whatever kept her awake. Upon seeing you, she rose a paw, weakly, from the foliage to reach desperately towards you. Her hooded blue eyes pleaded for help. Her mouth opened as though she wanted to cry out, but instead of words, blood cascaded from her maw. Now you recognize them — Kestrelpaw and Bramblingpaw. You grew up alongside them, though they were a few moons older. They were your best friends. Your… Clanmates.

You discovered: Clanmates!

You rush to the aid of your Clanmates, hurrying to the she-cat’s side and running your nose along her fur. She had no visible injuries besides one on her foreleg. Maybe some head trauma, but she’d be alright. You hoped. With your assistance, she hauled herself up onto her paws and swayed for a moment, as though she would topple over again, before righting herself.

“Thank you,” she said to you with a voice husky but full of gratitude. Now that you were closer, you could see that her bloody mouth was the result of two freshly knocked out teeth. “I tried waking up Bramblingpaw already but he won’t budge. I want to stay here until he wakes up on his own.”

You glanced at Bramblingpaw. With the amount of wounds he had, he might not ever wake up. But you wouldn’t say that.

The she-cat opened her bloody mouth to speak again, but she was cut off by a shrill scream and an ear-splitting howl that emitted from deeper in the woods. You glance at Kestrelpaw with worried eyes. You feel your curiosity tugging at your paws, telling you to go investigate, but should you when there’s two injured cats here?