Dark Forest The Tunnels Resident: Marrowpaw
Aliases / Nicknames: N/A
Gender: tom
Family: Swanthroat (mother), Hawthornstar (father), Mistdusk (sister), Duskkit (sister)
Other relations: Froststar (mentor)
Clan: Thunderclan
Characteristics: tormenting, targets those who act or speak against him
Number of Victims: 4+
Number of Murders: 3+
Murder Method: mutilation
Known Victims: Duskkit, Swanthroat, Hawthornstar, Beecloud, several others
Cause of Death: killed by Hawthornstar
Cautionary Tale:Â Violent behaviour in a child should not be met with neglect or abandonment. It is crucial to take the time to discipline even those that seem like a lost cause, lest there be more heartache in the future.
Story:
Marrowkit was born to Hawthornshade and Swanthroat, alongside his sister Mistkit. As a young kit, Marrowkit was already very troublesome, often playing mean-spirited "pranks" that lead to cats getting badly hurt; such as placing sharp brambles into a warriors nest, or trying to get younger kits to eat random herbs in the healer's den.
Despite such troubling behavior, rather than punishing him, Froststar took a liking to the young kit. Froststar himself was also prone to aggression and extreme acts of violence, and it pleased him to see such a young kit acting like him.
Hawthornshade and Swanthroat began making Marrowkit sleep in his own nest, afraid he might hurt Mistkit in the night, without their watchful eyes. They start to exclude Marrowkit from a lot of family-orientated things, which Marrowkit really doesn't like. Even with Froststar teaching him fighting moves, Marrowkit still wanted his parents' attention desperately.
Moons passed, and Marrowkit and Mistkit became apprentices - Froststar made himself Marrowpaw's mentor, while Mistpaw was apprenticed to the skittish warrior Palewater. Marrowpaw began to have strange dreams - where all he can see is red and everything smells like blood, cats screaming all around him. He didn't tell anyone about them, since he actually enjoyed having them.
With Froststar as his mentor, Marrowpaw was given free reign to be as horrible and violent toward his Clanmates as he wanted. The one line Froststar wouldn't let him cross, however, was killing or seriously wounding anyone, to Marrowpaw's ever-growing disappointment. And to make it worse, Marrowpaw's parents continued ignoring him, and now even Mistpaw had begun avoiding him.
True, he did pull out some of her whiskers and yes, maybe he did put all of those sharp, clear Twoleg rocks (glass) in her nest, but it was always good fun! Everything Marrowpaw did was always good fun, how did no one else see it as that?
At least he had Beecloud, the medicine cat, to torment, scaring him witless and destroying his stocks of herbs; but pretty soon warriors would begin piling into the den the moment Marrowpaw so much as looked at his den, complaining about bellyaches or cracked paw pads - even though Marrowpaw never saw Beecloud actually give them anything.
Marrowpaw was beginning to grow convinced that ThunderClan hated him, especially when Swanthroat announced that she and Hawthornshade were going to have another litter of kits; and he couldn't have fun with them, either.
Marrowpaw hated his new sister, Duskkit - hated how she was so graciously doted on by his family, the family who should love him despite all that he may do. Taking out the aggression during training with Froststar didn't help anymore. He had to do something.
It hadn't been that hard, really. Duskkit was so naïve, and trusting, even after Swanthroat had told her so many times to not ever talk to her big brother, let alone follow him out of camp. Their parents had always been so watchful during the day, so vigilant - but they slept as hard as rocks, and never thought to ask someone to watch over the nursery at night. Marrowpaw knew all the places in ThunderClan territory where nobody could hear a cat scream, let alone a tiny kit like Duskkit.
Suspicion immediately fell onto him, of course. Marrowpaw wasn't secretive about his dislike for Duskkit, and had tried to approach her before, always being stopped by Hawthornshade or someone else. The suspicion didn't come as a surprise to him; what did come as a surprise however, was Froststar actually punishing him.
ThunderClan had grown restless with Froststar's rule, moreso with his mentorship of Marrowpaw, and only after extreme pressure from the Clan did Froststar consider punishing Marrowpaw for what he had done. But what punishment could Froststar give to Marrowpaw, someone who was an expert at turning any punishment against him into punishments for others? What would please the Clan other than exile, something Froststar definitely didn't want to do?
Reluctantly, Froststar decided the only fitting punishment was to announce that Marrowpaw would stay as an apprentice forever, never allowed to leave camp without at least one warrior, moved to an entirely separate and new den, guarded at night, never to become a warrior. The Clan was outraged that they didn't get an exile, or better, an execution; but they still took the punishment with open paws.
Marrowpaw reacted, as most expected, extremely violently. He screamed and thrashed, even trying to attack Froststar, and only continued to writhe and shriek in rage as warriors held him down.
Marrowpaw only got worse from then on. He grew a temper, snapping whenever someone talked to him for longer than he liked, or if someone dared to bump into him while he was in a bad mood. He grew worse toward Mistpaw and Beecloud, actively seeking them out when he could, even when other cats were around to protect them.
As the moons passed and Marrowpaw only spiraled further, he was sure things couldn't possibly get worse.
And then, Hawthornshade killed Froststar with a group of other warriors, leading a rebellion against him. Hawthornshade became Hawthornstar, and his first order was Marrowpaw's own public execution.
Marrowpaw was no fool, not like Froststar, anyways. He had seen signs of the rebellion, expected it, even; but had he expected his own father to want him dead? StarClan, no, he hadn't. Marrowpaw had only managed to get away by the skin of his teeth, running off deep into the territory where the warriors lost his scent.
Marrowpaw knew his time ran short. He could only hide for so long until they found him, so he figured, why wait for them to find him when he could come to them first?
The first one was Mistpaw; or, Mistdusk by then. Apparently she had wanted to be named after Duskkit. How sweet. Marrowpaw found it only fitting he killed Mistdusk the same way he had killed Duskkit - mutilating a fully grown cat was hard work, but Marrowpaw managed.
The others were easier - some of the annoying warriors who kept him away from Mistdusk and Beecloud; Beecloud himself; and one of the cats who had shouted out that they wanted to be the one to kill him, when Hawthornstar first announced his execution. It was only a matter of time then that Marrowpaw ran into his mother and father again.
Fighting two cats at once was definitely a challenge - but Swanthroat had always been frail, and Hawthornstar was always slow to react. By the time Marrowpaw was finished with either of them, both of his parents were unrecognizable lumps of fur, and Marrowpaw was soaked paws to tail with their blood.
Marrowpaw was perfectly content then to leave the Clan territories, head elsewhere, perhaps to the Twolegplace and kill the kittypets there; but Marrowpaw had made a mistake in thinking that he had wounded Hawthornstar badly enough to get rid of all of his lives.
Before Marrowpaw knew it, his father was upon him, and pain exploded from the back of his neck as his teeth sunk in, and blood filled his mouth, and his legs shook, and everything hurt so much and-
Instead of waking up in the Dark Forest however, Marrowpaw found himself in the tunnels, StarClan having sent him there in fear that if they did send to the Dark Forest, he'd dream-walk to hurt even more cats.
Additional Information:
--This was a submission by @bvuuy-skv11s !
--They wrote the entirety of the story in their submission, I just copy-pasted it.
--Sorry I couldn’t draw him, I ran out of paper in my notebook so I gotta wait to get a new one. Here’s a bunch of picrew stuff to make up for it.
--I forgot to copy the links, but you can find them by going to picrew and searching the names on the images.
--Poor Fallen Leaves.
--Emo.
--EDIT: read his name as Mallowpaw at first (probably because it’s the name of one of my own OCs). It has been fixed!
