Ander - Part 5: Subchapter 30
30
"Laanaaah!" Danado shouted, his whole world collapsing before his eyes. He struggled against Sorrin's grip, thrashing and flailing.
"Don't go, Dan! They'll kill you, too! Don't -"
"Shut up! That's my sister! That's my sister!" He finally broke free and stumbled into the centre of the ring, pain flaring up in his feet with every wobbly step. He fell facefirst into the snow, feeling like someone was pushing needles into the nubs where his fingers and toes used to be.
"Stop it, Danado!"
He felt Sorrin's hand on his shoulder and he slapped it away, screaming like an animal, not caring. He plunged his bleeding hands into the snow and pushed himself back up. He needed to reach his sister, he needed to.
He staggered through the snow, barely able to keep himself upright, barely able to breathe. Wolves stared in absolute silence, following his painful progress with innumerable eyes.
Dorin backed away from his handiwork, staring down at what he had done with wide eyes, while Wardo crawled away on all fours with blood pouring from his arm and dripping from his ear, screaming about how that bitch had tried to stick him.
Danado barely saw any of this. All he could see was his dear sister, lying in the snow, and the dagger sticking out of her chest, twitching, twitching, twitching with her heartbeat.
"Lana!" he screamed and dropped down to his knees by her side. The blood was already flowing beneath her clothes, pooling in the little dip between her collar bones, flowing past her neck on either side in streams. "Lana... Oh, Lana... By the Cora, what did you do!? What did you do!!?"
"Dan..." She said his name, but she wasn't looking at him. She was staring straight up at the sky. "I'm sorry..."
"No... no, please no..." He reached for the dagger with trembling hands, still twitching and twitching as if it were alive...
"No!" Shekka said. "If you pull that out now, she'll die!"
"But what do I do!? Please, Shekka-Kai, save her! Just - Please, I'll do anything if you just save my sister!"
She squinted her eyes, and Danado thought how much they looked like dirty snow, snow that had been trampled by dozens of feet, but if this witch could save his sister, he would never think a single bad thought about her again.
She looked at his sister, and after what felt like an eternity, she simply closed her eyes and shook her head.
And that was all.
"No? What do you mean, 'no'!? You can't even see properly, you blind hag! What do you know!? Look at her and tell me you'll save her!"
"It's too much, Danado. No one can save her."
Anger and sorrow welled up inside of him, fusing together into an unbearable despair. If, in that moment, he had been given the power to destroy the entire village and everyone inside its walls, he would have done so without hesitation. He would have made everyone, everyone, feel what he was feeling right now, so that they would understand his pain before they died.
"Dan?" Lana raised her hand, grabbing blindly at the sky. "Dan?"
"Lana," Danado took her hand in both of his, folding them together tightly. Maybe it was just the gloves, but this was the first time he noticed just how much bigger his hands were than hers. His whole life, she had always been his big sister, but now she looked so small, so fragile, so helpless. "Lana..."
"Dan... I'm so sorry I hurt you..." she said, tears spilling from her eyes. They travelled down her cheek, first cutting a line in the snowflakes, then in her blood.
"No, Lana, no... you never hurt me, not even once, so don't say that, okay?"
"I'm sorry, Dan. I only... I only wanted to make things right..."
"No! Lana, why did you do that!? I'm still alive! I can make do without my claws, I don't care! We still had each other! We were fine! I didn't need anything else! Why couldn't you just let it go!?"
"Why...?" Her eyes moved just a fraction of an inch, but it was enough. She was no longer staring blankly at the sky, but at him, piercing him with a dark gaze he's never seen before. "It's because I'm not like you, Dan. I'm not like Hezzi, or Ander. I'm not different."
"What... What are you saying?"
"I'm just like all of them... all of these animals. We just... want blood."
"No, Lana! You're not like that!"
"It's all I could think about. I was so angry. I wanted to hurt the one who had hurt you, but in the last moment it wasn't even about you anymore. I just wanted him dead. I wanted him dead, for me. Because I hated him." Blood slowly dribbled from the corners of her mouth and joined the streams flowing down her neck. The knife in her chest was moving slower now.
"Lana, you shouldn't talk anymore, okay? You- You need to take it easy, I'll take care of you like you took care of me, so everything's going to be fine, you'll see, so just stop talking and -"
"Shut up, Dan... I want you to hear this..."
Danado stayed quiet and he held her hand. Even through his gloves, he could tell she was growing cold.
"Dan... no matter what happens... promise me you'll stay like you are. Promise me you'll stay different."
"Different?"
"Don't become like me. Stay strong. Don't throw everything away... Don't turn into an animal... Promise me, Dan. Please, promise me..."
"I promise!" he said. "I promise I'll stay different!"
She smiled. "That's my stupid little brother..."
"Lana?"
"I love you, Dan..."
"Lana!?"
She closed her eyes. The knife in her chest stopped twitching. There was no more mist coming from her mouth.
"La... na...?" He reached for her, deathly afraid, and gently touched the side of her face. Her fur yielded, bending slightly against the pressure of his fingers, but she remained still.
She was gone.
"Laaanaaaaah!!" He took her hand and he held it against his face. Any feeble attempts at holding back his tears broke apart and he cried next to his sister's dead body, lying in the red snow with a knife sticking out of her chest. "I love you, too, Lana! I love you... too..."
He cried and he screamed, and sometimes he did both, but the pain in his heart only grew as the snow piled up around them.
He heard someone staggering through the snow, and then the unmistakable heaving sound of throwing up.
Danado raised his head, and who was standing in the middle of the circle, staring down in astonishment at a puddle of his own steaming vomit?
It was Dorin.
Dorin.
"DORIN!!"
He looked up, puke dripping from his lips, his eyes dull and unfocussed. "Is...?"
"You killed my sister! You killed her, you bastard!"
"I... I didn't..."
The astounded look of confusion on his face was even worse than the smug look of superiority he had worn while he was cutting the claws from his fingertips.
Danado was never a very angry Wolf. He was never one to make a scene or draw attention to himself. But now... holding his dead sister's hand, all of that changed. It was as though Lana's anger, her fury, her rage, was pouring directly into his soul.
He thought he understood how she had felt now.
He wanted to hurt him.
He wanted to rip and tear him.
He wanted to kill him.
For Lana.
"I'll kill you!" Danado screamed, standing up on his tortured legs. "You promised you wouldn't hurt her!" He ripped the gloves from his hands, threw them into the snow, and held his bleeding fingers up for everyone to see. "I gave you my nails and claws and you gave me your word! But you lied to me, Dorin!"
"Dan, I didn't - I didn't think it would -" he stammered, frozen in place, looking from Lana's body to Danado's furious face. "How was I supposed to know this would happen!?"
Danado took one step forward, then another, forcing his feet to obey. He didn't care how much pain he had to endure, as long as he could return a greater amount.
"By the Cora, he's really gonna do it," someone said from amidst the stunned crowd. "Danado's gone insane!"
Five stabbing bolts of pain shot through his toes with each step, five freezing needles pushed deeper and deeper into his flesh. He was leaving tracks in the snow, blood red, leading from his sister's side to where he was now, going straight for Dorin as he stood with his eyes wide, holding onto his injured arm.
"Stay back!" Dorin ordered, pointing with his good hand. "I'm warning you!"
Ivio suddenly pushed his way to the front of the crowd, a long spear held tightly in his hands. "Dorin, catch!" he yelled and tossed it through the air, handle-first.
Dorin caught the offered weapon and entered a fighting stance all in one smooth motion. Confidence returned to his face as he brandished the spear, saying: "Ha! See this, Dan? You better back off right now or I'll -"
His eyes widened once again when he realized Danado wasn't stopping.
I don't care if I have to push my way through that spear from tip to handle. I will reach you, Dorin, and I will tear your throat open...
Everyone was yelling now. Most were screaming for the hell of it, but some were begging him to stop. It was too late to stop now. He wouldn't stop until his pain went away. Truthfully, he did not believe that staring into Dorin's eyes as he breathed his last would actually end his pain, but he knew that success or failure wasn't really a factor either. If he just kept going, eventually his pain would end.
"Stay back, you fool!" Dorin shouted. "What is wrong with you!?"
He would join Lana, wherever she was, before this day was done...
"STOP!!"
Sorrin's big, bulky arm suddenly wound its way around Danado's neck, pulling him back, choking off his air.
"Let me go!" Danado screamed.
"No! You're about to get yourself killed!"
"I don't care! He killed my sister, Sorrin! That son of a bitch! He killed Lana!"
"I know he did, but you can't -"
Danado didn't listen. He thrashed and flailed, scraping his clawless fingers against Sorrin's forearm, scratching at his friend with raw, bleeding stumps.
"Danado, please listen to me! You have to calm down! You have to -"
Danado bit down as hard as he could, plunging his teeth deep into Sorrin's arm, cutting off his words mid-sentence.
But Sorrin would not let go.
He saw Dorin staring at him, his mouth slightly open. He wasn't even holding the spear up anymore, the tip was just resting against the snow. Seeing him standing there, still alive, still breathing, still with his sister's blood on his hands, drove Danado towards the brink insanity. He closed his eyes and bit down on Sorrin's arm even harder than before, hard enough for his teeth to reach the bone, hard enough to make the big Wolf scream in pain.
"Stop it!" Mellah screamed, absolutely frantic. "Stop hurting him! Stop!"
"Let him alone!" Sorrin thundered back. "If he needs to bite on something, then let it be me!"
Danado could taste Sorrin's blood pouring into his mouth, dripping from his lips. Against the ice and snow it was like liquid fire. He could smell it, that cloying scent of iron, no different than all the game he had ever caught, but also vastly different in every conceivable way.
He screamed against Sorrin's arm, he screamed against all the pain, he screamed against the rage and the fury, he screamed and screamed and screamed until it felt like he couldn't scream anymore.
The strength finally ran out of his legs and they both sank down to their knees. Danado kept his eyes shut tight in an effort to lock his tears away. He didn't want to give up his anger. If his rage left him, all he would have left is sorrow, and that was something he simply could not live with. The hole Lana had left in his heart would kill him just as surely as any hole Dorin's spear could carve into his body.
But he couldn't stop it. He couldn't even slow it down. Just as he had feared, the sorrow started to overwhelm his anger. Unfortunately, no matter how much he wished for it, it didn't kill him. It simply spread throughout his body, making his muscles go lax. He opened his bloody mouth, intending to scream one last time, but what came out instead was the most painful sob of his life, and it would not be the last.
Sorrin quickly shifted his arm around Danado's chest so he wouldn't keel over into the snow, but it somehow turned into an awkward one-armed hug. Danado didn't mind. He just kneeled in the snow, blood slowly leaking from his hands and feet, and he silently begged for his life to end that very instant, so he wouldn't have to feel this way a second longer.
But the seconds dragged on and his request was denied each time, so he cried.
He cried for his sister.
And he bled for his sister.
There was nothing else he could do.
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