Warrior Cat Clans 2 (WCC2 aka Classic) is a roleplay site inspired by the Warrior series by Erin Hunter. Whether you are a fan of the books or new to the Warrior cats world, WCC2 offers a diverse environment with over a decade’s worth of lore for you - and your characters - to explore. Join us today and become a part of our ongoing story!
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11.06.2022 The site has been transformed into an archive. Thank you for all the memories here!
Here on Classic we understand that sometimes life can get difficult and we struggle. We may need to receive advice, vent, know that we are not alone in our difficult times, or even just have someone listen to what's going on in our lives. In light of these times, we have created the support threads below that are open to all of our members at any time.
She took a moment to consider his answers. "The last one's a bit of a cop out, but I'll take it," she decided after a pregnant moment of silence with a ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. She smirked a little, before tilting her head in thought. "Well, favorite color is probably the color of the night's sky, although I'm not normally that edgy. My mom's dead so that's a moot point." She paused again. "Does it hurt when they sting you?" She then continued with her own line of answers. "I dream of the day when I rule the world. Aspiritions of world domination, but a good afternoon nap is probably more probably."
"You're probably right about that." Cradlegrave didn't bother to answer her question about the scorpions. They kept walking in silence for a few more moments, before he realised he actually had something mildly important to say. "Though I did hear that Chim's been thinkin' of movin' the whole Clan away somewhere else," he said, "so if the stars align for you and you play your cards right, you could stumble your way into rulin'...this corner of the forest, maybe."
"Don't wanna answer my question on scorpions, I see," she meowed with a slight laugh. "That's okay, I'll just assume it hurts and not get stung by one in the future." When he told her about the clan's leaving, a glint passed her eyes. Her own stretch of territory where she would be queen would be -
Her train of thought was interrupted by the thick stench of blood. She paused momentarily, before glancing at him. "Am I going mad, or do you smell that too?" There was a slight urgency to her voice, and she found her steps moving faster in that direction as she spoke.
Cradlegrave sniffed the air as he bounded in the direction of the blood. He could usually smell blood no matter where he was in the territory, but Frenzy was right--the scent was becoming overpowering as they continued on, until it was seemingly right in front of them.
"Behind that bush," he murmured, giving Frenzy a pointed glance as he gestured toward the shrubbery in question. With paws as light as a feather, he parted the branches to reveal a bloody corpse of something that used to be feline, stretched out in an unnatural manner as if its limbs had been dislocated. The forest floor beneath it was coated with blood--some of it having sprayed out in delicate, arched patterns, while some of it spilled out around the corpse in a thick, dark pool.
"...Hmmm." Cradlegrave swallowed around the knot in his throat, as if the scent of blood had somehow congealed inside it. "This is probably a bad time, but yeah, those scorpion stings can really hurt."
Her jaw dropped slightly as she became viscerally aware of the scene in front of her. Her stomach churned, and she fought the urge to get sick in front of him. It wasn't very cash money to puke at the sight of a corpse, and she still wanted him to think she was cool. Instead, she let out a long breath, trying desperately to center herself as she moved towards the corpse.
She'd never seen something like that before. It was unnerving the way the.... what used to be a cat's limbs were sprawled out. Limbs jutted at angles that never should have been possible, and deep gashes struck through what had once been thick fur. She had seen her fair share of blood, of mutilation, and of gore, but this.... this was worse.
"What the hell do you think could have done this?" she asked, trying to hide the shake in her voice. She pulled her eyes away from the horrific scene to scan the world around them. "The claw marks seem too big for a fox, and I don't smell dog..." Were they alone? Was whatever did this gone? The overwhelming smell of rust made it hard to know for sure.
Cradlegrave wordlessly made his way over to the body, stepping carefully around the blood on the ground as to not disturb it the scene. Sometimes it was possible to get an attacker's scent off a scene, but the scent of blood was so overpowering that it was the only thing he could sense as of yet. They hadn't seemed to have left any tracks either, although he couldn't rule out the possibility of a set of tracks further away.
"This ain't a Swiftie," he said to Frenzy as he inspected the corpse. They had matted white fur that stood in stark contrast to their bloodied wounds, and a few patches of black fur that glistened, wet and dark. Their face had largely been left untouched, bar one thing--their eyes had been scratched out. Cradlegrave would've closed them, if not for that. "Also, you're right. Not a fox or a dog. Something bigger." He squinted, peering down at the wounds on the corpse's torso. Vaguely circulator, with chunks of flesh torn away. Bite marks. "And lots of teeth."
Thanks, Captain Obvious. It was very clearly not a cat that did this, but she felt a quick snap back was probably not the best course of action, given the circumstances. Instead, she let out a soft hmph noise, realizing that the tom had meant that the cat was not a Swiftie, not that the attacker wasn't a Swiftie. True to her name, her brain was a frenzied mess on a good day, and this suddenly was the opposite of a good day.
"What ... other animals live in these parts?" she asked a bit nervously, still incredibly on edge. "And... what do we do? Do we go tell Chim? Try to gain more information on the threat? Go as far away from here as physically possible and pretend we weren't just extremely traumatized by the most horrific sight I've ever had the displeasure of setting my eyes on?" Her voice was quiet, her gaze still frantically moving around as she tried to take in the scene. Eventually, she stepped another tail length closer, trying to search for any sign that whatever fate this poor cat had acquired, at least their death was quick. The l-shape of the cat's spine was evidence enough, even if she couldn't say for sure if it had happened first. She could only hope, although that meant whatever it was, it liked to play with its prey.
Cradlegrave grunted, eyes still fixed on the corpse. "Not sure what to do yet. Could be a wolf, but..." But it feels too personal, he didn't dare voice. The dislocated limbs, the broken spine, the scratched out eyes--none of this was done so the killer could have a meal. This was done for pleasure, for enjoyment, like the killer had been playing with a toy.
He stood. "The blood pool below him's coagulatin'," he said. "Killer's gone, but likely not too far away yet. We could head back and tell the others, or we could...well. You know what I'm suggestin'." He couldn't help the way his eyes gleamed when he said that, despite the horrific sight before them both. The jury was still out on whether he'd ever adjust to SwiftClan life or not, but this? This was something he was used to.
She shuddered at the thought. He was suggesting that they keep looking, which probably meant putting her life directly on the line. What little sense of self-preservation she had didn't seem to like that idea, yet she couldn't shake the part of her that was called to it. There was a part of her that had to know, and she knew that if they went straight to the clan, she'd never get her chance. If SwiftClan was already considering leaving, this mess probably would be the straw that broke the camel's back.
She let out a sigh. "Time to cowboy up," she muttered to herself. This had been what she wanted from the start of their interaction, right? A chance at adventure? She looked at the corpse another time, and to the blood that she'd managed to step in. Disgusting. After another moment, she looked back at him, a glint of determination in her gaze.
"Guessing by the gleam in your eye, which, by the way, seems borderline psychotic given the circumstances, you have more experience tracking than I do." She shifted uncomfortably between her paws, the fur on her hackles never quite setting down. "I think we both know we've gotta find it, so what's the first step?"
Cradlegrave turned back to the scene with a barely-suppressed grimace. "Haven't got much experience trackin' in this kind of scenery..." he murmured, looking at the greenery around them. "Used to environments with a little less coverage and a lot more sand. But," he said, pointing a paw at the edge of a nearby clearing; near where he pointed there was a line of trampled bushes, as if something large had clambered over them and flattened it. "My guess is it went through there, which would eventually take it...into rogue land, I think. No clue if it got that far." He studied her, trying to read her body language. "You alright? I can do this alone, if you don't wanna tag along."
She narrowed her eyes at the very idea that she wasn't going to join him. "I'm a lotta things, dearest Cradlegrave, but a coward ain't one of them," she meowed after another long moment. "I'm goin' with you whether you -or I, really - like it or not." She offered a rye smile, trying to avoid the lingering thought in the back of their mind that she and Cradlegrave were probably literally going to be cradling the grave with this expedition. Oh, well. You only live once.
She took a few steps towards the trampled bush, her eyes wide and searching. She got a few steps back, before leaning her head around her shoulder. The air was surprisingly cold, and few sounds radiated from the natural world around them. "How long do you think the corpse has been... well... a corpse for?" she asked, before turning back to the bushes. Before he could answer, she'd made her way through it. The smell was overpowering here, too, but she still couldn't place it over the smell of the blood. "Whatever it was that did it, it reeks." She took a few steps further, completely ready to leave him behind in a show of her own courage, when she saw something. Three, long, wiry hairs. "Hey, look, over here!"
Cradlegrave shrugged his shoulders at Frenzy's question. Bodies and all their various fluids decomposed differently under the harsh heat of the desert sun compared to in a clearing surrounded by tall trees, and he didn't really have enough experience with the latter to give a proper time of death. Still, given the way the blood was congealing, he wouldn't have put the body as older than an hour.
He was just about to tell Frenzy that when his Clanmate called him over. He padded over to her and looked at what she was gesturing to, three long, wiry hairs, unlike anything Cradlegrave had ever seen before. They caught the light of the sun, and almost seemed to change colour depending on the angle he viewed it from. Uncanny. And unnerving.
"We ain't got anything with fur like this," he murmured, brow furrowed. "Not here, not back home. Frenzy, you ever seen somethin' like this?" Though it unnerved him deeply, there was a silver lining to the situation--they had a visual aid now, and there was even the possibility they could use the scent of the hairs to track the killer.
She poked the hair with her paw, and found herself shuddering at the texture. She quickly pulled her foot back to the rest of her body, before shaking her head. "No, I haven't seen anything like this before." She'd seen a lot in her short days, jumping from the frying pan into the fire repeatedly for your whole life often allowed for that to happen, but nothing like this. "There's something deeply wrong here," she continued, although she was talking more to herself than to him. She couldn't necessarily tell what, but seeing the hairs made her stomach drop even further than it had dropped before. If too much more happened, she was sure her stomach would erupt out of her body, making her the second most grisly thing of the day.
"They're long, too. Whatever this was, it was big enough to have hairs like that." She was stating the obvious, but it felt like she needed to keep talking if she wanted to avoid the inevitable sinking feeling that her own death was inevitable. Could she turn back now? Pretend that she'd never saw it? Pretend that she'd never met Cradlegrave? Disappear into the night, just as quickly as she'd arrived? A part of her desperately wanted to, before she got too deep, before it became too late. The other part of her knew that it was already too late. If she didn't find whatever this was, it was going to haunt her. She had to keep moving. They had to find whatever it was, even if her intuition said whatever it was, it was profoundly evil, and better left alone.
"When you track in the past, have you had any sort of strategy? Is there a game plan we should develop before trying to find whatever this was? Or is this something you just dive right in and hope for the best?"
Cradlegrave's gaze remained fixed on the hairs. He'd had strategies, tips and tricks he'd gathered from a lifetime of being on the hunt, but the evils he'd tracked had mostly been of the feline variety, plus the occasional predators, like snakes and gators. They shared behavioural traits that he could study, and biological features that forced them to act in certain ways. Everyone needed to eat, everyone needed to drink, everyone needed to sleep. They were confined within the rules of nature, and Cradlegrave could exploit them to predict his target's next move.
But with this thing, who knew?
"You're supposed to get in their head," he admitted, his gaze turning toward the flattened shrubbery and beyond it to where the target might've headed. "Talk to who they know, build a profile, and cut them off at the first opportunity. Don't know if that's actually gonna be much help this time." He cleared his throat. "The real trick is to never stop lookin'. You always gotta keep movin', even if you've lost your leads. Sooner or later, they slip up. That's why I wanted to be sure you really wanted to go lookin' for this thing. Last chance to get off the ride, and all that."
She paused for a moment. This was her last chance to go back, so why didn't she take it? He was providing her ample opportunity to save her own tail. Yet, something stopped her, and she couldn't tell what. "I'm riding this one to the end," she meoewd after a pregnant moment of pause, trying to sound as determined as possible. "Two heads is better than one, eh?" She tried to laugh, although it was just as shaky as the tip of her tail, which quivered both in anticipation and fear.
"Plus, we might as well have at least one adventure before SwiftClan packs up, right?" Slowly, her voice became more confident, and she took a breath to center her. She then considered the words he had provided her before his offer. Never stop looking, get in their head. What did that even mean given the current situation? What was their head? It was hard, if not absolutely impossible, to know.
Cradlegrave nodded slowly, finally satisfied with her answer after asking her like three times without meaning to. He liked that she was nervous--it meant she wouldn't throw caution to the wind, meant that she wouldn't rush blindly into danger and prioritize catching the damned thing over keeping herself alive. Maybe. They'd known each other for about twenty minutes.
"Fair," he said, nose twitching. "I say we follow the tracks it's made here then, see if this guy's dropped any more clues."
He was equal parts correct in his assertion and incorrect. On one hand, she had a desperate urge to survive. She would do just about anything to save her own skin. On the other, she was chronically unlucky, as could be seen by her discovering the corpse, which meant that she often found herself throwing caution to the wind precisely on accident. She hoped that the tom would be a good counterweight to that, but only time would tell.
"Alright," she meowed after centering herself for a moment, blinking twice. She then moved closer to the torn down shrubbery, her nose wrinkling from the scent. It was stronger right where the creature had walked through. "Luckily for us, this guy left an awful smell."
It was then she heard something in the distance. it was a noise she'd never heard before, a whooping yell, so faint she could hardly hear it. "Think that's us?"
Cradlegrave nodded, face grim. "That way. He pointed his nose in the direction of the sound, in largely the same direction as the scent. As they progressed through the bushes, low on their haunches, the sound became louder and louder, until it sounded almost as if they were a few mere tail-lengths away. He arched and eyebrow at her, signalling that he was ready to go, before pushing through the undergrowth to meet their mysterious foe.
sorry i rly phoned this one in but in my defense ive been socialising all day which is rare for me
Perched low in the spreading branches of an oak tree, the unhappy creature was in a bind. These trees were not large enough to hold her; she hated the low branches, they were ruined by the memories of danger in her youth, but she could not climb high enough to escape. There was easy foraging here; the berries were strange and foreign to her, but they tasted good, and the plants were not too bitter. She had been attacked by a tiny furred animal that failed to fight back against her very successfully, and she was enjoying the warm meat. It was a good change, but she was interrupted by more of the furry little creatures coming her way.
Huffing and flexing, she lowered herself to the ground and glared into the bushes, her mouth opening to emit a warning shriek at the top of her lungs.
She heard the shriek and the blood drained from her body. Her heart quickly amplified its beat, getting caught in her throat after each thump. The fear scent that eminated from her was apparent, but she'd never heard a noise quite like that one. When she saw it, she froze. It looked almost like a two-leg, but not quite. It was hairier, more compact, and it looked angry, or at least not very impressed it was being slowly approached.
"What the hell is that?" she whispered in a frantic tone to her companion. "You ever seen one of those?"
