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"we survived... they told us to run, and we did... now we don't know where we are... we don't know if they're still alive...
but what we do know is that it's up to us... and if we have any hope of making it... then we have to rise from the ashes."━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
The fire raged, burning through the trees with a fierce roar. Embers floated through the air, catching on dried leaves and setting them ablaze. A hot wind blew into the warrior's den where the clan's apprentices sat, huddled. The young cats cowered in fear, shrinking back against each other, seeking protection in their clanmates' warmth. In the distance they could hear the sounds of fighting cats, shrieking, hissing, growling. A tree branch fell somewhere, crashing to the ground with a sound like thunder.
The sound of pawsteps coming rapidly near drew the two oldest apprentices to their paws, running to the front of the cave with every intent to protect the younger cats behind them.
Breezetail appeared in front of them. Blood soaked his fur, and a long scratch over one eye bled freshly. He peered into the cave, breathing heavy and eyes wild. He had come with an urgent message.
"A-are all the apprentices here? Kits too? Good, good." He nodded. He seemed distracted, glancing around as though looking for someone. Then looking back in at the young cats, who stared wide-eyed at the beaten warrior, he said urgently, "You have to leave. Whitestar has ordered all apprentices to take the kits and leave."
There were yowls of protest. One apprentice cried out that they should be helping to fight. But Breezetail just shook his head impatiently.
"Orders are orders!" He glared around at them all. "The forest is on fire and we are losing this war. Much longer,
and the rogues will make it here to camp. Whitestar sent me to tell you all that you have to leave, and now,
before it's too late."
At the urging of Breezetail, the young cats all left the den, kits hovering around the apprentices' paws, confused as to what was happening.
The sound of the fighting drew closer, and Breezetail glanced nervously towards it, tail flicking. Giving the young cats one last glance over, he said, "Good luck. Now, go!" And with that he left, running off back to the battle: the one they would inevitably lose.
Picking up the kits in their mouths, the apprentices left, running as fast they could without stopping. Behind them they could hear the fading cries of dying cats and the sounds of crackling flames. They ran, and ran, and ran until once again, all was silent. And only then did they stop and turn to look back.
Below, they saw their beloved home aflame. The forest was black as night, and smoke rose so high in the air, they could still smell it from there. And although they could no longer hear them, they knew that far below, their clanmates were fighting for their lives.
"Let's go," called one apprentice, and giving their home one final glance, they ran off into the unknown.━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Welcome to Emberclan, a clan formed by the surviving apprentices of a clan destroyed by war and fire. These cats were forced to leave behind their home and clan, not knowing whether their mentors and parents survived, in order to protect themselves and the kits. Now they are on their own with no warriors to teach them or lead their way, and it's up to this rag-tag group of apprentices to figure things out for themselves and learn what they need to know in order to survive.━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
