Holt strikes an impressive figure, tall and muscular with shredded ears and one white, sightless eye. His other eye is a gleaming hawk-yellow, full of charm and sharp intelligence. His fur is patched with ginger and black, the ginger striped through with tabby markings, with a large white patch on his throat and chest. Her two front paws are white around the toes.

While her fur is of medium length and easily tangles, she does whats he can to keep it neat, taking pride in her appearance. Scars part his fur in various areas, indicating a life of a hardship.

Between his extensive scarring, mottled coloration, and well-groomed coat, he makes quite the attractive picture. Unfortunately, he knows it.

I wasn't born on the mountain, but I was made by it.

In the beginning, there were twelve of us. At the time, we still had memories of where we came from: parents, humans, warm barns, distant clowders. These would all fade with time, because they were not important. Surviving was. And it wasn't easy.

The Hound trained us. We didn't know his name; maybe he didn't have one. He was a solid black tom with steely yellow eyes and a body covered in scars. And he owned us. His word was law. If we disobeyed, we were hurt and refused food. So we obeyed.

We learned.

Beneath his watchful eyes and quick claws, we learned how to survive in the Wild. We learned how to survive each other. And, when we were big enough, we learned how to survive him.

By the end of the year, our number had dwindled to half what we'd been, the rest taken by injury, illness, predators... weakness. One had tried to run; the Hound had pursued without urgency, and when he returned with the same stolid expression, the scent of blood clinging to his bent whiskers, we knew the runner had not escaped the mountain.

The survivors were strong now, bodies hardened and honed and minds sharp with a killer's instinct. I was strong; I could beat every cat on the mountain... except for the Hound. No one beat the Hound.

But I wanted to.

Every night it was his pelt I imagined sinking my claws into, his blood I tasted the ghost of on my tongue. The desire grew larger inside me until I felt I could not contain it; I shook with it. I was an animal in a trap, and the Hound was the trap. The Hound needed to die.

In the spring, the Gentry came. All six of us stood obediently while we were examined by two cats the color of snow, their pelts sleek and beautiful compared to our ragged crew. They nosed along our bodies, moving us as they wished, because our bodies did not belong to us; they belonged to the Hound, and by extension, they belonged to the Hound's master.

The Winter Queen was the most beautiful cat I had ever seen. Her tortoiseshell fur was long and glossy, the color of frost and wan sunlight, and her eyes were stone. Blank and grey. They gave nothing away as her attendants whispered in her ear. They just stared, all the way into our minds, our souls, like we were nothing more than ants, and my body burned. When those eyes landed on me, I didn't look away.

Our time on the mountain had come to an end.

There was no pomp or ceremony. At dawn, we rose, hunted for the Gentry and for ourselves, and descended Jagged Peak for the last time. The Queen, the Hound, and the two attendants took us north-west, further into the mountains, where I was thankful for how life on the peak had hardened our paws and thickened our fur.

Our education was to continue in the Court of Winter, the entrance of which was hidden at the end of a gorge. The tunnel took us deeper into the earth, divots in the path speaking to the passage of thousands of paws, before it opened into a vast cavern.

I'll never forget the first time I saw it. Gaps in the ceiling let in great shafts of light, revealing the sparkling river in the center, and all the paths winding through and along the walls like a hive. Cats were everywhere, more than I'd ever seen in one place, walking alone or in pairs or in raucous groups; a particularly large gathering by the river seemed to be arguing around what I later learn are baskets, filled with herbs and prey and strips of bark. A frazzled molly further down the river was trying to keep her kits from jumping out on the crossing stones, while three gangling youths raced each other across. It was chaos. It was beautiful.

But it wasn't for us.

They all bowed when the Queen passed, lowering their heads in subservience, just as we had done when she'd arrived to take us away. I wonder if the same fire sprang up in them. I wonder if they hated too.

Our destination was a small, sandy-floored cave which would be our home for the next twelve moons. There, the Hound instructed us in etiquette, history, and sums, and outside the cavern we learned astronomy, herbalism, and how to read weather patterns. Though the focus was now in educating our minds, it remained mandatory to spar every day to keep our bodies honed.

I learned about the Courts. There were two, having divided long ago over a disagreement in leadership, each led by Queens. Their names were always Mab, the Winter Queen, and Titania, the Summer Queen, because names are things to be earned. When each Queen rises to power, she always takes the name of the former Queen, and if the former Queen is still alive when she retires or is unseated, she will revert to a previous name.

But politics are dangerous in the Courts; a Queen rarely survives to see retirement, or gives up her power willingly. To be a Queen or, on rare occasions, a King, is to control everything, and to never be controlled. There is no higher power in the Courts, save death. Avoiding death is the trick to keeping that power. But there are many dangers, sharp claws, teeth, poison, waiting around any corner for the chance to shift the status quo.

That's where the Royal Knights come in. Her Majesty's personal force, all carefully trained in combat and educated in Court traditions, ready to protect the Queen from those who would harm her—from political assassins to deadly predators. They were richly rewarded. To be a Knight was to be powerful.

I worked hard.

I was rewarded. After my second year of life, when our education was complete, mine continued. The Hound, when he trained me now, was more ruthless, more unforgiving than he'd ever been; my hate for him grew, but so did my skill.

I wasn't his only student. Only one other from my original group, Nine, was continuing his training for Knighthood; the rest were strangers to me. Ursa, a molly my age but a name above me in rank, was the meanest of them; her claws were sharp but her tongue was sharper, able to tear cats down physically and verbally in a spar, breaking their spirit as well as their bodies. She was ruthless. She was beautiful.

She hated me.

The first time she was put against me in a spar, she shredded my ear and told me a number wasn't even worth her time. Thus began our rivalry.

Ursa consumed my every waking thought, until she even permeated my dreams. Every evening I woke with her liquid fire eyes lingering in my mind, burning there, and I burned too. When we sparred, she left me in the dust again and again, her paws quick and deadly, her body rippling with power; she was a force of nature.

I needed her in a way I'd never needed anyone before, so I continued to challenge her. She challenged me in return. I grew stronger, faster, just to keep up with her, the two of us locked in a dance hurtling toward oblivion—a dance that I'm not sure Ursa was even aware of. How could I put words to the feeling inside me? I hardly knew it, myself, for what it was.

On one grey, wet morning, she tossed a typical insult my way that, as usual, made my ears burn with something that fell short of embarrassment. Though her attention—of any kind—satisfied some part of me, my pride bared its teeth in the face of such disrespect. It seemed that, all at once, I could not bear to tolerate it any more.

"Ursa," I said, my voice steadier than I felt. "I invoke the right to a duel."

The other trainees around us fell silent.

The Right to Duel was put in place ages ago, when the Courts were young and hotblooded, constantly skirmishing over small disagreements that snowballed into full-blown feuds. Dueling provided a way for two cats to settle their disagreements without drawing other cats in, effectively keeping the bloodshed to a small, manageable scale. It almost always ended in death, so it wasn't dealt lightly. In fact, it was almost unheard of outside the Gentry. For a Knight trainee to throw down a challenge....

The Hound's eyes gleamed, unreadable, as he took his place at the head of the hollow. As our Master, it was his duty to oversee our duel. Ursa stood across from me in the center. At the fringes, her friends chuckled and nudged each other, but my eyes were trained only on her.

I knew how dangerous this was; it was a gamble, with my life on the table, but all our lives in the Courts were gambles with no safeguards, no guarantees we'd see the next dawn.

The Hound had barely nodded his assent when I lunged, and she met me.

Immediately, her claws raked across my muzzle, making my eyes water. I lashed out blindly, but she was already gone, leaping back. We circled each other, blood dripping off my chin, until she darted in low. Again, I missed her, and again, she left claw marks in her wake, cutting a burning path through my fur and into the flesh of my side.

The Duel hadn't felt real to me until now. Now, my wounds burned and throbbed. My blood was on her paws. The whole world narrowed until we were the only two cats in existence.

She continued to batter me, light on her feet as she lunged again and again, doling small injuries that I didn't raise a paw against. Until she made a mistake.

Again, Ursa darted in low, and in her eyes I could see her path—one she'd taken once before, and one I'd seen her drilling with the Hound countless times. I hadn't retaliated, I was bleeding, and she'd gotten comfortable.

It would be her last mistake.

This time when she struck, I struck first. It happened quickly, my motion already clear in my mind's eye, and I followed it to perfection. My claws sank into her shoulders, and when she drew her head back to retaliate, her throat welcomed my teeth.

Her lifeblood drained into the sand. The hollow was silent. When her body stopped twitching, I leveled my gaze at the Hound and in his eyes, I found a mirror of my own satisfaction.

"Hail the victor," the Hound intoned. "What is your name?"

"My name is Ursa." My voice rang clear off the stone walls. "I have taken it from the fallen."

"And the fallen relinquish."

That duel changed my life. My rank was higher in the eyes of my peers now; I was more important. The Hound took my training more seriously. At the Court's monthly meeting under the full moon, Queen Mab's eyes lingered on me. I smiled. My anger grew.



- rivalry with ursa gets intense. so do seven's feelings towards her, though which way he isn't sure. ends up challenging her to a duel for his honor, which is the right of any cat of the courts--which only technically includes trainees. he ends up killing her and takes her name. gets a fair bit of attention for such a bold political move.

- be a knight for queen mab. she's scary, smart, cunning, and ruthless. he learns a lot from her about how to conduct himself in social minefields. "i want to kill the hound" "nothing but a child's desire. what do you need?"

- blah blah fill with more stuff. learn about peregrines at some point because i'm gonna mention em later.

- gets sent to the valley to stoke civil unrest and gather intel on the clans. it's a big group, but as long as they stay divided and focused on each other, they don't pose a threat to the courts.

- meets a cat who calls himself Papa, who steals kits from around the valley in an attempt to glean knowledge and power from a mysterious force called StarClan, which is apparently worshiped by clan cats.

- on mab's orders, takes a litter of clan kits to send to jagged peak. she's curious about this ability of some clan cats to commune with the dead, thinking it could be useful.

Pre-Plotting: wip! maybe one of foxglove's deputies?

Holt's upbringing has given him a warped view of how relationships work; he's very good at making friends in that he's very good at making cats feel like he's their friend, like he's reliable and trustworthy and will always be in their corner. In truth, Holt simply tells cats what they want to hear. He has a hard time conceptualizing true vulnerability and camaraderie, and thus does not extend it. Friends, to him, are more like temporary allies. He's never had the luxury to think otherwise, but maybe now, in the valley...

Holt never knew his family, having been taken from them as a kit—and memory is fleeting. The closest thing to family he's ever known has been the Hound, which probably isn't the best example.

His first crush was on Ursa, and he killed her. This has further complicated his view on relationships; as with friendship, he views romance through the lens of strategy, as simply a tool to be wielded when necessary. But many crushes since Ursa have come and gone. Deep down, Holt has a lover's soul, but has never permitted himself to pursue such fancies in the face of his duty. Perhaps, tucked away in the valley far from the eyes of the Courts, that will change.

anyone with power over him in some way; wip

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