Ander - Part 6: Subchapter 89
89
Devin had started to think that something must have gone horribly, disastrously wrong, but then the deep, agonal sound of the ram's horn finally echoed through the pass, bouncing from cliff to cliff and crag to crag, until it sounded like there were a hundred of those horns all blasting together, each one starting with a second's delay to create a note that trembled deep inside of him.
_Okay, Devvie. If this doesn't work..._He couldn't even bring himself to finish that thought, choosing instead to focus on pulling frantically at the rope he had been clutching in his freezing hands for the better part of an hour. It passed through his numb, aching fingers and suddenly grew taut.
This is it!
He yanked on the rope, but it wouldn't budge. There was no give at all, and Devin's heart stopped dead in his chest.
The horn was still going, but underneath it all, he could hear so much more. Screaming and shouting, crying, the metallic clang of weapons, and still that animalistic snarling.
Devin yanked on the rope again and again, but to no avail. Did it get caught on something? He peered into the darkness, but he could barely see past his nose, and his overactive sense of realism (some would say extreme pessimism) was quick to fill in any blanks his useless eyes left unanswered. He could see the rope buried underneath the snow, frozen in place. Or snagged on a tree branch. Or stuck beneath a boulder. He could see the hinges on the trap door locked in place. He could see the simple gears frosted over and covered in ice. He could see all these things and a million more, but what he saw most clearly were the faces of his friends and loved ones, huddled together in the valley, screaming in pain as a horde of rampaging Wolves tore them limb from limb.
The sound of the horn was dying down, fading away. All that was left was the echo, mixed with the wind.
"Come on you stupid! Damn! Piece! Of! Crap!" Devin pulled back as hard as he could, leaning back with all his weight, and the rope suddenly went slack in his hands. He teetered on the edge of balance and grabbed hold of the tree trunk, hugging it to his body like he would a lover, all while his heart beat in his throat like a runaway horse.
Did the damn thing break!? he thought hysterically. Did it -
A low rumble filled the pass. It sounded remarkably like thunder, except it wasn't coming from the sky. It was coming from below.
The tree started to rattle and shake between his arms, causing him to seriously question the safety of this perch. He looked down and squinted into the darkness, mesmerized by the way the snow was flowing along the massive wooden trough like a river. Well, maybe not 'flowing', per se. 'Oozing' would be a better word for it, but it was definitely picking up speed, of that there was no doubt.
A splintery crack filled the air and Devin looked up just in time to see the long slab of wood that had kept all this death at bay snap at the hinges like a twig and tumble down the steep slope, where it was quickly buried under a wave of rapidly accelerating snow.
The rumble suddenly grew into a roar, and Devin's mouth dropped open as a huge, hulking shadow passed close by, like a monstrous snake come to devour everything in its path.
*
Ander didn't know how to feel or what to think.
Kiana's breath finally ran out, and the sound of the horn faded away to nothingness. But strangely, it was not replaced by the howling of the wind or the shouting and growling of his people. It was if the horn had wiped away all the sound in the world, leaving only this deathly silence.
But then there was a sound, a strange sound he had never heard before. It was like thunder from the sky, but not the same. It was like the roar of an overflowing river, but that wasn't quite right, either. This was a low sound, more felt than heard. It built up inside your bones, shaking you from the inside out.
Even mired in their bloodlust, the Wolves took a moment to halt their charge. They perked their ears and looked to the sky, perhaps wondering if it was possible for thunder to strike without lightning.
All along the wall, Foxes looked to each other with mingled fear and hope, and among them, staring at Kiana with a look of complete and utter betrayal...
Hezzi and Renna, holding each other in the cold.
Renna suddenly broke free of Hezzi's grasp and hoisted herself up onto the teeth of the wall, leaning over so far that her feet weren't even touching the walkway. "Motheeer!!" she screamed down into the writhing mass of bodies below, frantically searching for the she-wolf who had abandoned her with tears in her eyes.
The rumble swelled into a roar and a stream of snow fell from the highest cliffs. It was thin at first, no more than a tiny white line that blew apart before it could even reach the bottom, but in a matter of seconds it widened to enshroud the entire length of the pass, growing from a weak trickle into a massive waterfall of snow. Ander couldn't even see the mountain through that thick, white curtain.
The Wolves who had been pressed up against the side of the pass realized what was about to happen, but they barely even had enough time to panic, let alone get out of its way. They had no sooner started pushing and shoving and thrashing and flailing than a surge of snow fell upon their heads, pushing them down against the cold, hard ground and piling even more snow on top of that, creating a growing dune that spread as far as the darkness would allow the eye to see.
Ander watched in silent horror as screaming faces disappeared beneath cascading layers of snow and frost, their reaching hands opening and closing, begging for rescue before they, too, were engulfed.
The Wolves who had been lucky enough to avoid the initial deluge scrambled to get away from the white waterfall of death and its steadily increasing borders, but there was nowhere to go inside this cramped pass. It was just as Ander knew it would be.
What have I done?
And that was when the entire world went white.
The mountain's roar exploded into a sound so deafening that Ander couldn't even think of it as a worldly noise anymore, but rather as the voice of a furious god, come to deliver the final judgement.
A cloud of snow erupted from the top of the pass, more snow than he had ever seen in his life, more snow than he thought could even exist, moving at unthinkable speed. Filled with uprooted trees and chunks of rock, it crashed against the opposite side of the pass and came plummeting straight down. For a single moment, they were caught in its titanic shadow, Wolves and Foxes all. It was a moment that lasted forever in Ander's eyes, a moment that afforded him an eternal view of everything around him, as if to force him to drink it all in, the magnitude of his deeds, everyone he had saved and everyone he had damned, weighing it all on a grand set of scales, all to see which side would rise, and which side would fall.
He saw Mother, standing in the middle of it all with her arms open wide, looking straight up at the falling sky as if in prayer. Father's necklace hung around her shoulders, teeth and claws and talons swaying in the wind.
He saw Hezzi tearing Renna away from the wall, all while she screamed for her mother, reaching for empty air just like the Wolves now buried beneath the snow. Hezzi turned his face away and closed his eyes tight, but he was too late to lock away the tears streaming down his cheeks.
He saw Kiana staring up at the monster she had summoned with naught but her breath, its darkness spreading across her horrified face. He saw the horn slip free of her numb, trembling fingers. It fell through the air, its broken string trailing behind it like a dying snake. The light from the torches struck its ridges and threw the valleys into shadow, steadily growing deeper as the horn fell lower, racing to meet yet another shadow, almost invisible inside the growing darkness. The sound it made as it touched the walkway was so tiny, so inconsequential. But, just as its first, thunderous note had signalled the beginning of these final moments, so too did this tiny sound signal the end.
Ander grabbed Kiana by the waist, threw her down and covered her body with his own just as the world went from white to black and all the sound disappeared, buried beneath a shroud of snow.
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