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187

Kiana didn't think she had ever been in a formation quite as lopsided as this. She had Hezzi's arm slung over her shoulder, and she, in turn, had her arm slung over Valery's shoulder, whose knees were just about shaking under all the weight. Hezzi was trying to help by holding onto the bannister, but the poor boy was barely clinging to consciousness, and he wasn't the only one. Waves of dizziness kept washing through her head, making her vision cloud over at the edges. If it weren't for the jolts of pain that kept shooting through her jaw like a slap in the face with every step, she might have blacked out ages ago.

"Are you okay, Kiana?" Valery asked, looking up at her with those striking blue eyes. This little girl was putting on such a brave face, not letting the strain show even a little bit. How could Kiana call herself an adult if she couldn't do the same?

Kiana smiled. It hurt her mouth, but she did it anyway. "I'm fine, Val. Don't worry about me." Then she turned to Hezzi. He was moving so slowly, so methodically, carefully considering each step before committing it to action. He'd slide his hand down the bannister, take one step down, and then repeat the process again, stoically making his way down the stairs.

"Hezzi, are you okay?"

He looked at her with eyes that were every bit as striking as Valery's, but for different reasons. Valery's eyes were pure and innocent, every bit the eyes of a little girl who liked to play in the garden when it was sunny or stay inside and draw pictures when it was rainy, but Hezzi's... they made Kiana feel... uncomfortable. That wasn't quite the right word, though. Looking into his eyes made her feel like she wasn't actually looking at a child, but something that only resembled a child. It was like looking into the face of someone who was much, much older than they appeared, someone who had gone through unspeakable hardships. There was a weariness to them that simply didn't belong in the eyes of someone so young, and Kiana constantly had to remind herself that she was at least six years older than him, as absurd as that sounded.

"Hezzi? Are you okay?" she repeated the question, getting ready to make a grab for him just in case his legs gave out. Heaven knew it was hard enough to get him back on his feet.

Hezzi nodded in the same slow, methodical way he was descending the stairs, moving his head down, then up again. There was a thin line of blood caked into the fur at the corner of his mouth, and the scarf around his neck, which was red before, had taken on a blackish colour. She could feel it rubbing against her on occasion, all tacky and sticky, infused with blood.

He wouldn't last very long like this.

They finally made it to the last stair and stepped out onto even ground.

But what about outside? the thought flitted through Kiana's mind. What about the cold and the wind and the snow? Will Hezzi make it? Oh gods, please...

Kiana was trying to estimate from memory how many paces from the mill to Old Jon's house when Nilia's voice pulled her back down.

"Gargh, dammit! Ander, he's -"

All three of them had gotten a good look at what was happening on the grindstones as they descended the stairs, but seeing it up close like this was a different story.

Nilia was trying her very best to keep the pitchfork steady, but her body was actually being lifted off the floor because...

Because Banno was slowly sitting up.

"Nilia!" Mateo fell in beside her, grabbing hold of the pitchfork just above her hands. For a moment, his added weight seemed to pull Banno back against the bedstone, but only for a moment. The beast growled against Ander's arm and then continued on his suicidal task, sitting up and up despite the three spikes of iron sticking out of his chest. His body was actually sliding along the metal like a tomato slowly being pulled off a fork, bleeding its juices all over the plate.

"Ander!" Kiana gasped, absolutely horrified. Banno had chewed his arm to such an extent it didn't even look like an arm anymore. It more closely resembled a hunk of meat that had been dipped in strawberry jam and then left outside for the ants to munch on for a few hours.

"Sorrin, wait!" he screamed, his face contorted in pure agony. Banno's head was too high. If the grindstone were to roll through now, it would simply push him to the side instead of...

Kiana didn't even want to think of it.

Ander tried to push Banno back with that arm, shoving his head down, but Banno was simply too strong. He was getting up, and there wasn't anything they could do to stop him!

Kiana started towards the stones, moving on pure instinct, driven by the love she felt for the father of her unborn baby, but the arms over her shoulder and around her waist gave her pause. There were children with her. Before all else, she needed to get them out. Except... they were struggling towards the stones, too, pulling her along.

"Hezzi! Val!" she said, confused. "What are you doing?"

In a voice that was hardly there at all, Hezzi mouthed the simple words: "They need me..."

Kiana understood that. She understood it so well it hurt. But what about the girl? She was unhurt, but...

"Valery? Do you think you can get to your uncle's house by yourself?"

She shook her head vehemently. Her bottom lip stuck out, as if she was about to cry, and she bit down on it, almost like an act of defiance.

What should she do? Hezzi wanted to help Ander, but Valery was too scared to go on her own, and Kiana was stuck between them.

"Listen, Val. I know it's scary, but you can do it. The door is right there. Just go to the light. Run. Don't look back. You'll be there in -"

Valery was shaking her head so forcefully it made her ears flap back and forth against her temples. "No!" she said, the tears she had tried so hard to keep at bay finally spilling down her cheeks. "I'm a part of this, too! It's me he's after! It's my fault all this happened!"

"No, sweety, none of this is your fault -"

"It is, too!" she almost shrieked. "I still have a part to play! I can't just run away like it doesn't mean anything! I know it's scary, I know it'll hurt, I know I'll probably have nightmares for the rest of my life, but I have to do it! I have to make everything right!"

Looking into that face, Kiana knew there was nothing she could say to dissuade her. But in the back of her mind, she couldn't help but wonder...

Do what?

"Come on, let's move," she said, and together they soldiered towards the grindstones, supporting each other as best they could, leaning on each other, depending on each other, grabbing hold whenever one of them started to fall. And soon, they were right there.

"What are you doing here!?" Ander shouted at them. "Get back!"

He was trying his best to keep Banno down, but he was fighting a losing battle. The beast was sitting up straighter and straighter as they spoke, sliding along the iron spikes with greater and greater ease as they narrowed into points.

Hezzi broke free of Kiana's support and -

*

• clambered onto the stone table. He thought Ander might be shouting at him to get away, but sounds had taken on a dull, echoey sound in his ears, and he couldn't really be sure of anything anymore. Even the sound of his own heartbeat was loud enough to drown out most other things. It beat in his ears at a fantastic pace. He had run circles around the village since he was five summers old, and he didn't think he had ever heard or felt his heart beat this fast.

He pressed his scarf-

My scarf this is my scarf Bethany-Kai gave it to me as a present and I still haven't done anything to thank her I need to think of something soon something nice something she'd like...

Hezzi crawled along the stone, chafing his knees through his pants, until he was right next to Ander, shoulder to shoulder. This close, even his messed up ears could hear him just fine.

"No, Hezzi! You have to get back! Get back!"

Wet, slurpy sounds of undercooked meat, and the dull grinding of teeth against bone. It had to stop... It had to stop...

Banno was here. Right here. But at the same time, he wasn't. This thing wasn't Banno. Maybe it had been inside Banno all along, or maybe this was what Banno had always truly been, but Hezzi chose not to believe that. He chose to believe that all the fun times they had had together were real. He chose to believe that all those times Banno had smiled at him, ruffled his hair, and called him 'killer' were real. He chose to believe that all those times they had gone hunting together, sat together, ate together, lived together were real. He chose to believe that there was meaning in the time they had shared with each other, meaning in the time where their lives had overlapped with each other. And because of that...

There was meaning in ending his life together.

"I'm sorry, Banno..." he said and pressed his hand against his big-big brother's chest.

No. This isn't him anymore. This is just... this is just an animal caught in a trap, an animal in a lot of pain. It would be better to put it out of its misery. Kinder.

Tears spilled from his silver eyes and landed on two different hands, one grey, and one brown, surrounded by black on all sides.

"I'm so... so sorry!"

Hezzi began to push.

*

Kiana did not know how she was supposed to feel, because every feeling racing through her heart and mind as she stood there, watching this horror unfold, seemed so wrong, so conflicting, so contradictory.

Here was the Wolf who had tried to end her baby's life and the lives of everyone in this mill, the Wolf who had succeeded in taking the lives of so many outside of it, too. Should she not feel glad, or at least satisfied, seeing him like this? Should she not be thankful that he would never harm another living soul ever again?

How could she, when Ander was killing a part of himself?

The pain on his face was a product of more than just his bleeding body. It didn't come from the raw piece of meat where his leg ended just above the ankle. It didn't come from the gaping hole in his face where his eye used to be. It didn't come from the cracks in his bones or from the countless gashes and bite wounds in his arms and shoulders.

All his pain, all his real pain, was coming from his broken heart.

And this feeling, this feeling swelling inside her right now, was the one feeling she could never doubt, the one feeling that suffused her more fully than any other. It was a desire to take his pain away, a desire to be with him, to hold him, to help him in any way she could.

It was love. Simple as that. And if she felt doubt about all her other feelings, whether it was guilt at the satisfaction of seeing a baby-killer getting what he deserved, or disgust at the pity she felt when she saw the way he struggled and thrashed, it simply didn't matter, because as long as she had so much love in her heart for Ander, then that was all she needed. That was all she needed to think on to know what she had to do.

Kiana climbed on top of the bedstone, hiking up her dress so it wouldn't get caught on the hard edge. She crawled up next to Ander and embraced him, wrapping her arms across his back as far as she could reach and placing her cheek against his shoulder, not feeling any of his drying blood or the prickliness of his fur, feeling only him.

"Kiana..." he said, his shoulders heaving. "You can't!"

"Sshh, I'm here," she whispered into his ear. "It's okay. You don't have to do this alone. I'm here with you."

Banno made a deep, guttural sound as he continued to bite into Ander's arm. Blood flowed past the corners of his mouth, down his neck, and dribbled down onto the rough surface of the bedstone, which was beginning to look more like a sacrificial alter. He was still trying to sit up, still pushing against Hezzi and Ander's hands, and the pitchfork's teeth were slowly disappearing into his flesh.

I'm here for you...

Kiana placed her hand next to Ander's, and began to push.

*

Valery couldn't do it. She had talked like a big girl, but now that the moment was actually here, she couldn't go through with it. She just couldn't!

She couldn't help them kill him...

The sounds, the smells, all the blood dripping onto the floor. The way they moved, with their bodies half in shadow, arms and legs overlapping, terrible grimaces, teeth and claws shining in the dim half-light, it was hard to tell where one ended and the next began. It was hard to tell where the monster was beneath it all. So many voices, so many screams, so many broken hearts striving together, all to kill, all to murder, all to do what needed to be done, she knew that, but still... it was too much. It was just...

It was too mean!

Her hand unconsciously crept up to her neck, and her fingers brushed over the hard scabs that had formed there, two on either side of her throat. She could still feel them in there, sometimes. The way Banno's teeth had just... sunk into her flesh, a tiny little bit at a time. She could still remember the pressure that had built up on the inside, first locking away her air, and then building into unbearable pain. She could even feel his hot breath blowing into her face, faster and faster the more excited he got, slowly taking something from her, something more than just life, something she couldn't begin to understand. It was filthy. It made her want to scrub her neck with boiling hot water, again and again, until her skin blistered and peeled away.

She ran her fingers over the scabs, wondering if they would ever heal fully, or if they would leave scars. But there were all kinds of scars besides the physical, weren't there? Her Mommy was a scar. She knew that was a terrible way to remember her, but she was. The scar she had left on Daddy was even deeper, perhaps deeper than any of them could ever know.

Banno had tried to make more scars like that. If he had taken her away, he would have left another scar in Daddy's heart, and if he had taken Daddy away, he would have left another scar in her heart to go alongside Mommy's. The same was true for her brothers. They were a family, and they all lived in each other's hearts, and when something like Banno crept inside you heart to tear it apart, to take your most precious thing in the whole wide world and... and bite into it like it was nothing?

What did it mean when she was unable to muster up enough hatred against him? What did it say about her when she could do nothing but stand here, frozen in terror while strangers were risking their lives to fight something that was clearly evil?

What did that say about her?

She squeezed on her neck, trying to rekindle that dull, burning feeling, that terrible, constrictive panic of not being able to breathe. She thought about how Banno had taken their fireplace poker and thrust it into Daddy's chest. She thought about how he had hurt her brothers. She thought about all those things, trying to make herself feel what she believed she was supposed to be feeling, what Luke had felt from the very beginning. But... every time she tried, she saw Banno the way he was back when he was just Banno, and not some blood-crazed monster. The very last time she saw him as the Wolf he was maybe only pretending to be. She remembered how he had sat by the fire, with that blanket wrapped around his body. She remembered how he had stared at the flames, and how the light had turned him into a mountain of shadows. She remembered how sad his voice was as he talked about all the friends and family he had left behind, how he wondered what they were going through without him, if they thought he was dead, if they missed him as much as he missed them.

She remembered listening to his story and feeling... well, sad, of course, but more than that, she felt relieved. Relieved that there was someone else who felt lonely, too. Someone else who, although he was big and scary and so very, very different, might actually understand her, even if only a little bit. She remembered how unexpectedly warm he had been when she slid in beneath the blanket with him, hotter even than the glow from the fire. She remembered how he had held her in those moments before everything shattered into a chaotic frenzy of teeth, blood, fire, glass, and metal. She remembered how gentle his touch had been, how careful and light. She remembered feeling... happy. Happy that she could help him, happy that she could take some of his loneliness away, happy simply because she could make someone else feel happy.

And that's when she knew what she had to do. She wasn't supposed to try and trick herself into feeling hatred. She wasn't supposed to try and force herself into doing something that she could never, ever bring herself to do. What she needed to do...

It was what she tried to do every day for her father and her brothers.

She needed to make Banno let go.

She approached the grindstones and the dark shapes writhing upon them, caught in a tenuous balance of strength, neither side willing to give any quarter. Banno was fighting with everything he had, fighting for reasons she could not understand beyond that they were evil and cruel, and the fact that perhaps Banno did not see them as evil or cruel at all. Maybe...

Maybe he just didn't want to be alone.

"Banno?"

He growled into the other Wolf's arm, jerking his head from side to side in an attempt to wrench it from its socket. He didn't hear her.

She stood a little closer and touched his forehead. "Banno?"

He immediately stopped his shaking and only stared at her from his upside down perspective, his single eye slowly widening.

The brown Wolf, the grey Wolf, the lady Wolf and the old Wolf, they were all staring, too. The Foxes, Kiana and Mateo, their mouths had dropped open into silent gasps of surprise. They were all too afraid to say anything, too afraid to make any sudden movements. They thought Banno would try to hurt her. They probably thought it was a miracle he hadn't made a grab for her yet, but they were wrong. All this time, Banno had never actually tried to hurt her. Any pain she would have gone through was only incidental, a side-effect of what he was actually trying to do. Valery still had no idea what that actually was, or why he had chosen her, but maybe she wasn't meant to know. Maybe it would be impossible for her or anyone else to understand, even if he explained it a hundred times.

The gods made a mistake when they made him. They left out something that was vitally important. That's why he's spent his whole life in a dark hell, maybe without even understanding it himself, like how a Fox who was born deaf could never understand what music was, or one who had been born blind could never understand the colours of a rainbow. But he sensed there was something wrong, something empty, something missing, and everything he's done has been an attempt to fix himself, to climb out of that dark hell, to find the light, to find the music, to feel whole.

But that could never happen, because the part of him that was missing had never existed in the first place. And as long as he continued to draw breath, all he could ever do was break lives in an attempt to heal his own. And that was why...

Valery felt the sharp sting of tears in her eyes and throat, and a warm wetness flowing down her face.

That's why he had to die.

"Please, Banno..." she said, lightly touching his cheek, being very careful not to press on any of the cuts. "You have to let go."

His eye. It was the eye of a monster, black ringed with white, but not a pure white. It was a corrupted white, cracked with red.

But it was also a child's eye. It was the eye of a little boy who had awoken from a terrible nightmare in the middle of the night, a boy who had cried in the dark, waiting for someone to wipe his tears away, to come and tell him that it was all right, that there was nothing to be afraid of, that he wasn't alone...

"It's okay," Valery whispered, gently running her hand along his jaw. "I'm here now. You can let go."

Banno slowly opened his mouth, and the brown Wolf pulled his mangled arm free of his teeth, a look of incredulity on his face.

Using her sleeve, Valery wiped away some of the blood from beneath Banno's eye, just like Mommy used to do for her tears when she awoke, screaming, in the middle of the night, certain that there was a monster outside the window or underneath her bed. "It's okay, Banno," she whispered. "You've had a very bad dream, but it's all okay. It's time to go back to sleep now."

Banno tried to speak, but could only gargle blood. It bubbled from his mouth like a fountain and flowed over her hands, piping hot and steaming in the cold.

"Sshh, sshh..." Valery said. All she wanted to do was crumple to her knees and shut her eyes and cover her ears and cry into the darkness. She wanted these horrible moments to be over forever, and yet she dreaded the arrival of each new one, knowing that they were pushing her towards an unspeakable outcome that would leave her hands dripping red for the rest of her life.

So she put on a gentle smile, just like Mommy used to, and hugged his head to her chest. "It's okay, Banno. It's okay to rest. It's okay to sleep. It's okay to let go."

She felt Banno's head begin to lower and she immediately shut her eyes, but with her hands occupied, she was unable to shield her ears. She could hear the wet sounds of his body slowly sliding along the tines of the pitchfork and scraping against the bones of his ribcage. More than that, she could feel it, as if she weren't just holding his head and moving down with him, but actively pushing him down, like the others.

That's exactly what I'm doing... she thought in horror. I'm pushing him down... Oh, Mommy, Daddy... Am I going to be a murderer?

"It's okay!" she whimpered, trying to keep her tears at bay, but failing miserably. "It's okay, Banno! I'm here! It's okay! I promise everything is okay! You don't have to fight anymore!"

The brown Wolf gave the old one a nod and he began to twist the grindstone, forcing it along a curving path marked by blood. Gears turned, meshing so slowly she could clearly hear the wooden clack of every tooth slotting into place, and rock scraped against rock, closer and closer until it ran up against Banno's shoulder, pushing him even farther down against the bedstone.

She felt him moving his jaws, and when she looked down, he was smiling up at her, his lips peeled back impossibly far, his teeth coated in blood.

"I love you, Valery," he said, his breath every bit as filthy as his fangs, washing over her face, cold as death, carrying words whose meaning he could never understand.

Valery turned her head away, unable to look into that lonely eye any longer, and when she did, she saw who was standing just outside the door, staring in at what they were doing.

It was Tim, and leaning on his shoulder was Dad. He was hunched over and barely conscious, there was blood seeping through the strips of table cloth they had tied around his chest, his eyes were glassy and he kept blinking against the glare from the snow, but it was him, it was her daddy and he was okay!

"Daddy?"

He reached for something above his head, a stubby rod of wood just barely sticking out past the doorframe. It was one of the mill's arms, stuck in place without any sail to catch the wind. It jittered back and forth as the old Wolf struggled to push the grindstone the final inch, all that movement transferred in reverse, through the gears and up into the ceiling, where Luke was standing this very moment, gritting his teeth as he kept the brake from slamming down, and out into the arms of the mill, a giant cross spinning ever so slowly, coming around at last to end up inside her father's hand.

"I love you, Valery," he said, and began to pull it down.

The grindstone rolled over Banno's shoulder, crushing flesh and grinding bone. Blood spurted up in crimson arcs, but Banno didn't seem to notice. He looked up at her with that monstrous eye, that lonely eye, that evil eye, that sad eye, perhaps wondering why she hadn't told him she loved him back yet.

"I'm so sorry, Banno," she whispered as her tears fell into his slightly parted mouth. "But please... please..."

Please die...

A double crack pierced Valery's ears in quick succession, louder than anything she had ever heard. The first was the pitchfork finally snapping under the pressure, dropping Banno directly onto the path of the oncoming grindstone. And the second...

The second was the grindstone rolling over his neck.

*

Banno heard the first crack clearly enough. He even felt his shoulder blades slamming into something hard directly afterward, but he didn't really understand what it meant, and neither did he care. He wasn't capable of thought anymore, at least, not in the way he used to be. There were no words and no lines connecting one thought to the next. In the split second that existed between the two world-shattering cracks, everything, everything had been distilled down to their most basic, their most _primal_forms. There were only feelings and sensations triggered by his senses, firing chaotically inside a brain that was barely functioning.

There was pain, he could feel that. It was one of the few things he still understood fully. It didn't bother him, though. It was no different from the warmth of the sun, or the embrace of a loved one. It was everywhere, all at the same time, completely enveloping him from every direction. Just another flavour among thousands. What did bother him was this strange numbness spreading through his body, making it difficult to move, or even breathe.

Something flashed inside his head, a brief spark of anger attached to a colour. He thought it was... red? Was that what it was? What did it mean? Was it blood? No, why would blood make him feel angry? He liked blood. It was real. At least while it was still fresh, it was.

A face swam out of the shadows, blurry and indistinct. He tried to reach up and grab it, certain that that was the cause for this infuriating numbness, but he couldn't. The numbness had spread to his arms. Or were they broken? Was that why he couldn't move?

A second face joined the first. Was it the same one, now doubled, or a different one altogether? Did it even matter? They faded away before he could think of an answer, and now he was back in the dark, all alone, trying to make sense of where he was and what he was doing. It felt like there was something important that needed to be done, something only he could do... but...

Banno tried to sniff the air, but there was no air, only blood in his nose and mouth, choking him, drowning him. He tried to spit it out, but swallowed most of it instead. He coughed and wet lines of warmth flowed down the side of his face. He was lying in blood, he was quite sure. Was that important, somehow? Did it have something to do with blood, the thing he needed to do? Something about blood flowing over his teeth and across his tongue? Something about the taste? Yes, he thought so... but it wasn't the blood itself, it was something else. The... the what? Holding something? He remembered holding something close, feeling the heartbeat. His own? Someone else's?

Hers?

Another face almost materialized out of the darkness. He couldn't see it, but he sensed it was warm and wonderful. It had a yellow kind of feeling to it, like a flower in the summertime. It was something he wanted to pluck from the ground and put in his mouth... chew it slowly, pass it from one cheek to the next so he could savour every second of its flavour before it ebbed away, becoming... a part of him? Was that what he needed to do?

The face became clearer, pulsing out of the dark like a heartbeat, a wonderful heartbeat he wanted to press his ear against, listen to it speed up, speed up, speed up, then vanish. Her warmth in his arms, slowly growing cold as he held her tight, her breath brushing his face, going in through his nose and into his chest, every little piece flowing into him, becoming a part of him...

Yes. That was what he was doing. He was supposed to make her a part of him. He was supposed to save her. He was supposed to save all of them.

Banno tried to get up, but something was stopping him, something besides the numbness. Were there... were there hands on him? Many hands?

Yes. He was sure of it now. He could feel them. Three on his chest, gently pushing him down like a mother putting a pup to bed, and two more beneath his chin. They were small hands. Soft hands. Holding him, caressing him... just like... just like that time... he couldn't remember, but it felt just like this, the way she had run her fingers through his fur, the way she had gasped as he took her into himself, crying with joy that she could finally become real... so real... real in ways that made her previous life look like a shadow by comparison, an empty spot on the ground where no light shone.

Was it her turn next...? Yes... she's been waiting for such a long time... waiting for this moment... All of them had...

All of them?

Yes... he could see them. They were right there... waiting for him.

Banno reached out with an arm that did not move, called out to them with a mouth that was stuck in a perpetual grin, ran to them with legs that could no longer carry his weight. They were so close... if he could just reach them, touch them, hold them, take them... they would finally, finally be free, they would finally, finally be together... forever and ever... even after this empty world crumbled to dust, they would have each other.

Vallah! Valery! Those were their names! He remembered!

Joy exploded in his heart as he ran to meet them. They had their backs turned, and were looking down at something in their arms, giggling and laughing. What was that, he wondered? Was it the third one? The little passenger? The yolk inside the dead eggshell? Were they all here? Did he do it? Did he finally do it?

Vallah... Valery... I'm here! I'm here!

He reached out to them, touched their shoulders. They began to turn and he was happy, so happy, truly happy for the first time in his life, happy to see those smiling faces again, happy to be able to hold them again, happy to be able to kiss them, to take his teeth to their throats and -

They weren't smiling.

They looked at him with eyes as cold as ice, their lips locked into stone-faced masks without any emotion whatsoever. And in their arms... what was that? What did that mean? It wasn't...

It wasn't supposed to be like that!

He tried to ask them what was going on, what was happening, but his mouth was still clogged with blood.

But I spoke, didn't I? Just now, I...

He tried to reach out to them, but his arms were beyond broken, just useless shreds of meat hanging from shattered fragments of bone.

He tried to go to them, but he was being held down by invisible hands, skeletal claws on top of him, inside of him, pinning him to the stone. And they... they were just watching him. Vallah and Valery... they were watching him without any emotion at all, except for their eyes... they were cold. So cold... he could feel the cold, squirming over him, trying to get inside of him, trying to invade him, trying to make him -

No! Vallah! Valery!

They stood there, watching him with their cold, expressionless eyes. The creature in their arms writhed and squirmed, a hideous little monster with too many limbs, too many faces, screaming and crying from too many mouths, grabbing at everything they could reach with too many hands, too many fingers...

Help me! Banno tried to say, but no sound came out. Still, they must have heard him somehow, because they were...

What?

They were shaking their heads slowly from side to side, in perfect harmony with each other, a simple denial, a simple rejection, a simple defiance... just...

No.

Banno didn't understand. Why wouldn't they help him?

Vallah, I love you!

She shook her head.

Banno turned to Valery, desperation building in his heart. I love you, Valery...

She shook her head, looking at him like he was diseased.

Banno licked his lips, trying to understand, but he simply couldn't. What he was looking at, what he was seeing, it was something that simply shouldn't be.

Vallah? She was looking at him, but not in the warm, happy way she used to. Her brow was darkening, as if caught in the shadow of a storm cloud. Vallah! Such anger in those eyes, such cold, ruthless anger. But why? Why was she glaring at him like that? Vallah! Come help me YOU UNGRATEFUL BITCH!!

A single tear rolled down her cheek. He could smell the salty aroma. He wanted to hold her, to take her in his arms and just... just lick it from her face. To comfort her. He could take those tears and make them go away, lap them up and make her happy. Maybe that's all she needed. He could taste them already, so sweet on his tongue.

Vallah, come to me. Come to me and I will make you happy. Vallah!

Why wasn't she coming to him? Didn't she understand that the reason she was so unhappy was because she wasn't with him?

Valery was crying, too. It was an unnerving sight, the two of them standing together, crying in absolute silence, so cold and distant. They embraced each other, Vallah and Valery, cheek to tear-stained cheek, watching him with their cold, dark eyes as if waiting for something to happen. And between them, that horrid little creature still squirmed. It was... wrong.

It was just wrong!

All the colour was fading away, bleeding out of the world itself, turning them the dull, lifeless grey of morning ashes.

They were dying without him. They were becoming...

Not real.

Vallah!! Valery!! Banno screamed, straining against the grip of whatever phantoms were holding him down, desperate to reach them, desperate to save them. You have to come over here! Quickly!

They just stared.

Don't you understand!? he pleaded. You'll die without me! Everything that makes you real will fade away! Time is running out! Don't you get it!?

They stared.

Banno was getting angry. This whole world is only here because of me! he bellowed. Everything that exists inside of it only exists because I'm here, including you! That means you are me! Everything is me! Without me, nothing can exist! Without me, the whole world will disappear! It will be black and empty and you'll- What are you doing!? Hey! What are you doing!?

They were turning their backs on him. They were walking away, into the dark, fading from grey to black, leaving him...

... leaving him all alone.

Vaaallaaah!! Banno screamed. Vallereeee! Come back! Why are you leaving me!? Why are you being so cold!? I can save you! I can save all of you! Please, just -

The second crack came. It tore through Banno's very existence, and he was right all along.

Please... I just wanted to be

The world really did disappear.

*

The pitchfork snapped and suddenly all the resistance was gone. Banno slammed down with his back flat against the bedstone, his neck lying directly over the grindstone's track.

Pushing down on Banno's chest, Ander got one last look at his brother's face before it all ended. There was something shining in his solitary eye, something that wasn't blood. It was -

"Grraaargh!!" Sorrin twisted the grindstone with all his considerable strength, rolling it across Banno's shoulder, snapping his collarbone like a twig. The rod of wood that connected the stone to the driveshaft was bending, on the verge of breaking just like Banno's bones, but somehow it held together and continued on its destructive path. It touched Banno's neck and immediately began to pull him under. His neck deformed like a piece of dough, being crushed flat on one side while bulging on the other. All the cuts and scratches split open along their length, showering the bedstone in blood.

Banno opened his mouth, and although no sound came out, Ander was certain he was trying to say 'please'.

The grindstone made one final turn, sinking into Banno's flesh, and then his neck simply collapsed under all the weight. The sound it made was exactly like the sound you heard inside your own head when you bit down hard on a piece of ice, crushing it between your teeth. It was a wet, crumbling, snapping sound.

And then it was still.

Banno's chest wasn't rising and falling beneath Ander's hands anymore. It had just... stopped. His head was lolling over the side of the bedstone, gently swinging back and forth, horribly limp. Blood was pouring into the track, spreading out on either side in a crimson curve. Given enough time, it would go all the way around to connect with itself on the other side, completing the circle.

Hezzi made a sound, "Haaah..." and clapped his hands over his mouth. He bent over the side and vomited a broken stream through his fingers, mixed with bright red lines of blood. He swayed on his knees and his eyes rolled back in their sockets. He would have fallen if Sorrin didn't step in to grab him.

"Hey, kid? Hezzi? Are you okay?" Sorrin shook him, but Hezzi had fainted dead away. Ander couldn't blame him.

He looked at the grindstone. It was blocking most of the view of Banno's head, and for that Ander was grateful, but the way his neck just... ended there, the way it went from relatively normal flesh to a crushed piece of meat disappearing underneath a bloody disk of stone...

Ander saw all this as a single line of information, just one thing after the other, passing him by. He didn't feel anything yet, but he knew he would. It was like looking down and seeing you had accidentally placed your hand in a pool of molten candlewax. The pain didn't come right away. It only came after you jerked your hand back and tried to wipe away the wax. Once that happened, once it actually hit, Ander wasn't sure what he'd do.

The little girl, Valery, took a frightened step back. The front of her dress was soaked in blood. She lifted her hands to her face. They were covered in blood, too. She stared at them in horror, as if they had suddenly turned into venomous spiders.

"I..." Her lip was trembling. She caught Ander's eye, and she slowly shook her head. "I'm sorry..." she whispered, then bolted for the Foxes standing in the doorway, staring in at the scene with their mouths slightly agape.

"Daddeee!" she screamed and launched herself into the big Fox's arms, launched herself so hard, in fact, that nearly all three of them went crashing to the ground.

"It's okay, girl, it's okay," the father said, gently caressing the top of her head while she bawled into his chest, vigorously rubbing her face back and forth as if in an attempt to wipe away more than just tears. "I gotcha. I'm here. It's all okay, you don't have to worry about anything anymore."

The other Fox put a hand on her shoulder and whispered something into her ear. Ander couldn't tell what it was, but the little girl nodded hesitantly, struggling to catch breath between her sobs.

The trapdoor in the ceiling opened with a bang and Luke stuck out his head, squinting into the darkness. "Is it over? Is it... dead?"

No one answered him, but the father Fox gestured for him to come down. Luke climbed the ladder in haphazard drops, nearly falling several times because of his broken wrist, and raced down the stairs. He gave the grindstones a large berth, but he did slow down as he went by, staring at the aftermath with a face that went through rapid transformations with every step, going from curiosity, to fear, to horror, to disgust before he was finally able to wrench his eyes away from the devastation. He covered his mouth and clutched at his stomach, just barely able to keep himself from throwing up. Clearly, he had no idea it was going to be like this.

He went to his family and they quickly made space for him, dragging him into an embrace that all of them needed together, giving comfort as well as receiving it.

"Ander?" Kiana lightly touched his shoulder with a hand covered in Banno's blood.

He couldn't look at her. Not yet.

Nilia and Mateo were lying on the floor in each other's arms, both of them only half conscious. Nilia had pulled him in close and was absentmindedly stroking his hair, gazing off into the distance while he hugged her tight and rested his face against her neck, two mismatched pieces that somehow fit perfectly together.

"Ander?" Kiana touched him again, more forcefully this time. "Ander?"

She took him by the chin and turned his head, forcing him to look at her.

Even with those terrible cuts running down her cheeks, she was still so beautiful. The most beautiful thing he had ever seen.

"Ander!?" She touched his cheeks, his forehead, leaned in close to look at his eye, leaned back again, licked her lips, bit her lip, wiped the hair out of his face, touched his cheeks again. "Ander? Are you all right? Please talk to me!"

Ander understood what she was saying. He understood he was worrying her. But he couldn't think of anything to say.

"Ander! Are you... are you awake? Are you okay? Please just say something!"

Something warm ran down his face, something that was not blood.

Kiana made to wipe it away, but he pulled back. It wasn't right to wipe it away. Not yet.

"Oh... Ander..."

He climbed down from the bedstone, feeling like he wasn't actually moving at all, but rather watching the world move around him. He didn't even feel any pain as he limped around to the other side of the grindstone, as if he were watching it all unfold from within a dream.

Banno's head was partially severed and hanging upside down against the bedstone, held in place only by a few shreds of skin, muscle, and tendons. His mouth was wide open, and thinning streams of blood were still flowing from between his teeth and over his muzzle. Ander half expected him to jump up and scream something like, 'Did you think it was over!? How many times do I have to tell you I can't die!? I can never die!'

But he knew that was impossible. Banno was dead, and they all had a hand in it, every last one of them.

Ander tried to tell himself that it was for the best, that they had no other choice, that Banno was evil, that he hurt people, that he killed people, that he wouldn't stop, that they didn't have any other choice but to end his life, that not ending his life would have been the true evil, and although he knew all this to be true on the surface, deep down he couldn't shake this growing feeling that he had crossed a line, and he could never go back.

After living his whole life being 'different', after being hated and ostracized for his beliefs, after all the pain and suffering he had gone through in the name of 'peace', Banno had forced his hand to do something like this...

A line of blood dribbled down from Banno's open mouth, across his cheek, and into his wide and staring eye. It flowed around the outside in a solid ring, following the wetness of an unspilled tear, and then dripped to the floor.

Banno was crying blood, just like the stag they had killed on their last hunt together.

And that was when it hit him, just as Ander knew it eventually would. It hit him all at once like a hammer blow to the chest.

He fell down to his knees, clutching his heart, feeling like it was about to explode. He couldn't breathe.

"Ander!" someone called his name. Was that Kiana? He wasn't sure.

Another red tear fell from Banno's eye and joined the first, two spots of red on the dusty floor, slightly overlapping. They were flowing into the cracks between the floorboards, growing two long spikes at opposite ends as they seeped down into the shadows below, as if the darkness itself was eager to suck it all up.

"Ander!"

He couldn't hear her. He was in two places at once. Kneeling in the mill, watching his brother's bleeding corpse, and back on the other side of the mountain, watching a stag bleeding out onto a thick carpet of dead leaves. That was the only constant, the only connection, those crimson tears. Cloudy, amorphous spots seeping into the sand. Spiky circles flowing into straight-lined cracks of wood to dry in the dust. Both dead. Both the same.

A hand on his shoulder, a wicked grin drenched in blood. A dead voice in his ear: You did well. Aren't you proud?

Yes, the equally dead answer, flowing from the depths of memory just like the blood flowing from his brother's eye. Yes, I'm proud...

Ander screamed. It burst out of him in one long cry of agony, burning his throat, awakening the pounding misery in the hollow where his eye used to be. There was pain everywhere, all around and inside of him, too much to contain, too much to feel, too much to expel. He screamed and screamed, clutching his head, unable to bear it a second longer.

"Ander!" She fell to her knees beside him and embraced him, held him, wrapped her arms around him, enveloped him with her love.

Ander tried to pull back at first, but she simply squeezed him tighter.

"Kiana?"

"Shhshh... It's okay. It's okay..." He could feel her heartbeat against his own, slowing down. "It's okay..."

He remembered this. He remembered being here before, when the rain pelted their backs and the spray from the river washed over their faces. He remembered the lightning tearing through the sky. He remembered how warm she was, how caring.

He remembered the moment they began to fall in love.

It was the same. It was all the same. Except for one thing, one thing that was different. He could feel it pressing against his stomach, the slight swell of her baby bump, rising and falling with her slow, steady breaths.

Ander's hands travelled up her spine, coming to rest on her shoulder blades, and suddenly he was hugging her back. He rested his head on her shoulder and cried for his brother, cried until his tears seeped through her dress.

She held him, and rocked him, and told him that everything would be okay, and he held her.

They held each other for a long time.

Even after the snow had stopped.

---

This is the end of Part 6!! Woo! I can hardly believe it! :D

All that's left is the epilogue. I'm not completely satisfied with it yet, but since it's only 9 or 10 subchapters long, I think I'll just upload all of them together when I'm done. No point in spacing them out anymore, after all.

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