Warrior Cats: The Omen of StoneTribe, Book 1 (The Essence)

Chapter 7

Naiyapaw sprinted down the hill, feeling the tall grass brushing against her brown fur. The flowers smelled of late green-leaf air. She had already lost the others, but she followed their scent, which was still fresh and clinging to the wind.

The caramel colored she-cat came to a stop once the slope of the ground began to ease. She glanced to her left and marveled at the vastness of the lake before her. The lovely water twinkled and bent with the breeze, feeding all life around it generously and without hesitation. She sighed, and drank in the air. The other cats were not too far away.

I might as well savor my time here, she thought with an excited smile, after all, Coralfrost will want us back at camp once we're finished.

The apprentice nodded her head and turned left, trotting over to the base of the lake. It seemed to stretch on forever. The sandy beach greeted her paws with welcoming warmth. Naiyapaw unsheathed her claws and buried them deep into the grainy earth, mewling with awe at the way they sunk. With a glance down at the water, she dipped her head, lapping at the cool liquid with her tongue. The journey around the territory had made her rediculously parched. 

Suddenly, a loud roll of thunder invaded the peacefulness surrounding Mouse Meadows. The new apprentice licked her muzzle and craned her neck to the sky, observing a bundle of thick black clouds. They were approaching fast, stirring up cold winds and blocking out the sun that had warmed her pelt not even a moment earlier.

"Naiyapaw?" a voice called out, catching the she-cat's attention.

Her mentor Coralfrost emerged from behind one of the tall boulders surrounding the lake, her ginger fur whipping around her face from the sudden wind. The crest around her neck lit up with relief, her pale orange eyes doing the same.

"Good, you're still here," the Jewel Collector meowed with a smile, "we thought we had lost you! Come with me, the others are already inside the cave. We don't want to get caught in this storm."

Naiyapaw nodded her head with agreement, prancing after her mentor once the ginger she-cat made sure her apprentice would follow. The pair rounded the boulder, and what greeted them was a towering wall of ancient-looking rocks of many different browns, greys, and silvers. Water lines wrapped around some of them in certain places.

At the base of the wall gaped a feline-sized hole. It seemed to burrow into the earth, stretching down into a black abyss for miles on end. Naiyapaw gave her mentor a hesitant glance of uncertainty, attempting to sniff out the burrow for any signs of life. The scents that she drank in were familiar, like flowing water and limestone.

"You haven't been down here before," Coralfrost stated, gesturing to the hole with one of her white paws, "so I want you to take my tail in your mouth to make sure you don't get lost, okay?"

The new apprentice frowned, fear invading her body, but agreed, "Okay."

Naiyapaw gently wrapped her teeth around her mentor's tail as the ginger she-cat made her way into breach in the stones. The apprentice bent her body into the correct shape, fitting inside the hollow with ease. The darkness that engulfed the pair was almost immediate, washing over them like a shadowy invisible river. The warm air that the she-cat had basked in earlier was suddenly replaced with a cold humid breeze. The apprentice refused to look back at the light that washed into the gloom. It would only encourage her to flee.

Coralfrost's red crest lit up the area ahead of her, revealing that they were making their way down a long spiraling tunnel. The slope of the tube-shaped cavern was steep. Naiyapaw would have to watch her step.

"This is the entrance into the Cavern of Whispers," Coralfrost mewed over her shoulder, her voice echoing into the nightly blackness, "It's a long descent, so be careful."