Ander - Part 6: Subchapter 144
144
She could feel the vibrations of their footfalls travelling through the ground beneath her knees, could feel them going inside her chest and shaking her very heart. The pain in her back was steadily getting worse, and her swollen lips stung with every intake of freezing air.
"Dan...?"
His eyes were closed, but that was okay. He had worked so hard. He deserved to have a little rest.
She brushed the bloodsodden hair out of his face and kissed him on the cheek. Her sight was beginning to go hazy around the edges, and every blink seemed stretched out somehow, like small black bites out of time itself - seconds instead of moments. And for every blink, every swatch of blackness passing before her eyes, the vibrations would suddenly grow by a leap, rumbling like thunder.
She could hear voices inside that thunder. A low, steady drone. Maybe her ears were full of blood, or maybe...
Maybe she was getting ready to go to sleep, too.
Tio snuggled up beneath her arm and she pulled him in tight, marvelling at how fast his little heart was beating. She could feel it, even more so than the shaking earth or the steady pulse of pain spreading through her body. She could feel it.
She so desperately wanted to keep them safe - both of them - but how could she hope to do that when she could barely keep her own eyes open?
She was just a terrified vixen, small and hurt, who hoped to become a decent healer one day. She wasn't a warrior. She wasn't an archer or a hunter, but that didn't mean she would go down without a fight. She couldn't throw a punch or swing an axe, but she would fight back, down to the bitter end, the only way she knew how.
She raised her head, and she smiled. She smiled because it was all she could do. She smiled because they had made a promise, and that promise went both ways. She smiled because she had hope... hope that, one way or another, this night would finally come to an end.
They were coming. A wave of Wolves, a wave of hatred and pain, a wave of death, moving at impossible, breakneck speed, their jaws open wide and their tongues hanging in the slip stream. A wall of claws, reaching out to them, evil, wickedly sharp crescents black as pitch, splattered with streaks of blood and gore. Crimson maws framed by frozen tracks of tears, coming to engulf them all.
Layla blinked, and in the darkness behind her closed eyelids, their voices swelled. Their frenzied screams. Their furious roars. Animals in pain.
And that's when it happened.
Many years ago, back when she was just a little girl, Father had taken her and her sister out to pick oranges. The weather had looked ugly all morning, and she distinctly remembered Mother telling them to come right back if it looked like it was going to rain. She even remembered how Father had told her not to worry, switching his pipe from one side of his mouth to the other and grinning through a thin veil of smoke. Well, it had poured merry hell that day, and before they could get even a single decent basketful of oranges between them. She remembered how they had hurried back along the old dirt road that ran along the eastern edge of the orchard, she and her sister huddled together underneath Father's coat like a mobile tent, dodging and weaving around all the rapidly forming mud puddles. She remembered how warm and cosy it had been in there, despite the water splashing up around their ankles. The pungent smell of pipe smoke and orange peels. Kiana's laughter, mixing with her own.
And then the lightning came. It struck a mere dozen strides away, turning the world and everything in it a uniform white and instantly reducing a scraggly little orange tree into a flaming, black husk. But that's not what stood out most clearly in Layla's memory, even after all these years. The thing that stood out the most for her had always been the sound. The sound of the gods' wrath striking down upon the earth, white hot and furious, an overwhelming crack that seemed to shoot not just through your ears but your entire body in one fell swoop, like you had been punched right in the gut from the inside out with a thousand fists all at once. It was the sound of the end of all things. An explosion powerful enough to set the very air ablaze. Louder than loud. A sound that took all your paltry screams and swallowed them whole. A sound that stayed inside your head for hours. A sound that made the teeth rattle in your skull. A sound that made all your hair stand on end. A sound far bigger and far more powerful than you could ever be. A sound that reminded you of just how small, how pitiful, how helpless you truly were in the grand scheme of things.
And now it came again. That massive, overpowering sound like a hammer blow bursting through her skull. It was oh so very different from a blast of lighting, but at the same time, it was exactly the same. That feeling of being so small, just a speck of dust, cowering before something so big, so powerful, so complex, you could never hope to understand it despite being a part of it yourself. It was the sound of two different worlds violently crashing into one another.
Layla opened her eyes.
A sea of Wolves had stormed in from the south to intercept the animals bearing down on her little group, and the sound she had heard was that of their bodies, hundreds upon hundreds of them, smashing into each other like two opposing torrents. It was all happening so fast she could barely piece together the fragmented images bombarding her tired, swollen eyes.
She saw Wolves charging in from the side and launching themselves through the air, crashing into their opponents and rolling along the dirt and snow, roaring into each other's faces. She saw explosions of blood spurting from broken jaws and shattered noses. Teeth clamping shut and pulling back, tearing bloody strips of meat from flailing limbs. And, just like a blast of thunder always followed a bolt of lightning, so too did their screams of anger and pain race through the sky.
Layla was only able to keep the two sides separate in her mind for a few seconds before they began to merge into a single melee. They really were like two raging rivers flowing into the same dried up riverbed. A violent clash, an explosion of muddy flood waters, dozens of eddies and currents all coalescing together into a single chaotic mess of destruction, and all Layla could do was sit there and watch, completely paralysed, as all the familiar faces began to pop up from inside.
Krin, with stitches starting from the base of his neck and winding all the way around to his forehead - stitches she herself had put there - pinning another Wolf to the ground and roaring into his upturned face: "Leave Kleine-Kai alone!"
Hisagi. Even though her arm was in a sling (and oh how she had cussed while Mother was splinting that one), she was using her one and only good arm to lead Cindy back towards the centre of the camp, yanking her along whenever she lagged behind or tripped and fell.
Thysan, a Wolf with a myriad of burn scars across his chest where Mother had been forced to cauterize his stab wounds. He was entangled with another Wolf, and the both of them were clamping down on each other's muzzles, wrenching their faces back and forth in a terrible kind of tug of war, spraying blood all along the ground in fine droplets.
Gordo. A Wolf who had lost two toes and one finger to frostbite, and who later came up to her with tears in his eyes, not to condemn her or her people for costing him those digits, but to thank her for saving the eight toes and nine fingers he still had remaining. He was down on the ground, wrestling with a Wolf far bigger than he was, rolling back and forth, both of their pelts taking on a thin layer of frost and ash and blood.
Vintil. A Wolfess with short, spiky hair and an array of bone piercings protruding from her ears, lips, and nose. She was running along at breakneck speed, carrying Frederick and Phillip beneath her arms like a pair of wine barrels.
Layla even recognised the old curmudgeon with the splinted leg, the one who had yelled at Tio to stop crying. He was wading through the battlefield, brandishing a jagged wooden club at anyone who ventured too close, yelling: "That's just a kid! That's just a kid, you sons of bitches!"
There were so many. A whole army, limping and lurching through a heavy blanket of smoke and snow. Wolves with gashes running down their faces. Wolves with broken arms and legs. Wolves with stitches running all over their bodies like fantastical road maps. Wolves missing fingers and toes. Wolves missing ears. Wolves with bandages wrapped around their heads. A sea of faces, most of them strangers, but all of them coming to help, to repay a debt.
Maybe there really was hope, after all.
She looked away from the bloodshed, trying to tell herself that the tears streaming down her face and breaking upon Danado's brow were tears of gratitude. They had come to save them, after all. So many Wolves... fighting to protect them... putting their lives on the line... all for them...
"Are you seeing this, Dan?" she whispered, lightly dragging the ball of her thumb across his cheek. "It's... It's..."
It's horrifying...
She could feel Tio's face pressed up against her side. He was shaking like a leaf, the poor thing, and his tears had left a wet patch on her dress, frightfully cold.
She pulled him in closer, covering him up like a momma bird enfolding a baby chick in the warmth of her wing. Her other hand she simply ran along Danado's brow. He looked so peaceful, sleeping on her lap like this. Yes. This was better. Better to look down. She didn't want to see what was happening all around them. She didn't want to acknowledge it in any way. The tortured screams. The rending of flesh and bone. None of it.
"Dan... what is this world becoming?"
Fighting for peace. Spilling blood to prevent bloodshed. Killing to save lives. There was no sanity in this. Only pain... only darkness... getting thicker, blurring the edges of her vision. She could see her tears landing upon Danado's face, ripples of shadow, growing larger and larger, meaning to engulf them all, but she would keep them safe. Somehow... some way...
Layla closed her eyes, and after one final struggle, the darkness finally took her.
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