Warriors #5: Heart of Fire

Chapter 11

Swiftpaw's POV

"That's it!" Ashfur praised to me as I slashed at Ashfur's underbelly. "Now, what are you going to do once I do this?" The gray Dark Forest warrior then twisted around out of my reach.

Rather than emerging on the other side, back out the way you came.

Ashfur's words echoed in my head as I quickly rolled onto my belly and slid between my mentor's forelegs, then hooking my claws into his fur and dragging him to the ground.

I watched, welling up with triumph as Ashfur stood up and shook out his fur. "How was that?" I couldn't help but ask, not being able to sense approval or disappointment from the warrior.

"Not bad," Ashfur muttered, brushing a holly leaf off of his shoulder with his tail.

Hm, I suppose I'll take it, I thought as I lifted a hind leg to scratch at my ear, which at this point had grown sore from the amount of times Ashfur batted at it during the day. "What was that move called? The underbelly slash?" I asked Ashfur as I lowered my paw and stood up. "I'll have to show that to Snowpaw. It's a neat move."

I tried to keep myself from backing away when Ashfur's blue eyes suddenly flashed with anger. "No!" he barked at me.

"No?" I repeated back to my mentor, but bit my tongue before I could let anything that could possibly upset my Dark Forest mentor come out. "Why not?"

Ashfur snorted in contempt, as if he expected me to know the answer already. "What do you mean, why not?" the gray tom hissed. "You must never reveal these techniques to other cats!"

"Not even to a Clanmate?" I questioned, trying to keep my voice even so that there wasn't the slightest chance that Ashfur would think that I was being interrogational.

"Especially not to a Clanmate!" Ashfur insisted, unsheathing his claws and digging them into the ground. "Anyway, you should let Snowpaw stick to being the weak apprentice that she is."

Excuse me?!

Suddenly, all of the impatience and anger that I had been pushing down threatened to well up inside of me as Ashfur had insulted my friend. "Hey!" I meowed, a hint of growl in my voice. "Snowpaw is a fantastic apprentice! She's not that far behind me!"

To my luck, Ashfur didn't seemed too phased by my anger, or at least I thought by the way he snorted and lashed his tail. "Well, if that's the case, then I'm concerned," he muttered, and a shiver ran down my spine as I thought that I caught a slight glint of malevolence in his eyes.

Take it back, take it back! I began shifting my paws back and forth nervously. "Well... I didn't mean that," I murmured steadily. "She's a good apprentice, that's all."

I then had to suppress my sigh of relief as Ashfur let out a half-humored, half-disbelieving grunt as he began to pace the clearing. "Whatever. It shouldn't matter, anyway," he meowed, keeping his gaze on me as he padded about. "You're not Snowpaw - which means that she won't be learning any of these moves that I'm showing you. All that matters if that you get ahead and become the best, strongest warrior you can be. Clear?"

Great StarClan, am I a kit being lectured in the nursery? "Clear," I meowed back.

"Good," Ashfur mewed in the horrible, ominous voice that came out of his mouth whenever I agreed with him. Which now, unfortunately, is always... Sure, some things that my Dark Forest mentor would say, I agreed with genuinely. I was benefitting from learning these moves and not showing them to anyone else, I was getting ahead, and I wanted to be the best, strongest warrior that I could be.