Ander - Chapter 7, Subchapter 78
78 There was a lot to take in in a very short amount of time. Nilia kept her eyes trained on Banno, a hulking shadow. There was something unnerving about the way he moved. Maybe because his fur was also black, it was difficult to tell where he ended...
Ander - Chapter 7, Subchapter 77
77 Ander's mind reeled. He couldn't have heard her right, he just couldn't have. He had stared death in the face several times before tonight. It was something he understood, perhaps not completely - For who but the dead could ever fully understand...
Ander - Chapter 7, Subchapter 76
76 The first thing to come back was the pain. After the pain came the sounds. The roaring wind and a muffled voice up high, trying to call his name. He wanted to answer her, but he wasn't sure if he could. A second voice, this one much closer. It...
Ander - Chapter 7, Subchapter 75
75 Ander screamed. He screamed until it felt like his throat would tear itself apart. "You like that, huh? Not so nice is it!?" The pain was all-encompassing. For those first few moments, nothing else existed. There was no light, no sound, no...
Ander - Chapter 7, Subchapter 74
74 The door to the mill stood wide open, and as the wind rushed by, it flowed over the darkness inside and produced a low and constant moan, a hollow mouth with no need to stop for breath - a deep, black maw that reeked of his brother's...
Ander - Chapter 7, Subchapter 73
73 The wind doubled in force as Ander left the relative shelter of the woods, breaking out into the open fields for what felt like the first time in an age. He held up an arm to shield his face and squinted into the combined layers of snow and shadow,...
Ander - Chapter 7, Subchapter 72
72 There was something wrong, she knew that right away. Why did she feel so cold? Was the window open? She tried to paw it shut from the comfort of her bed like she had done on countless nippy mornings before, but something was holding her back. The...
Ander - Chapter 7, Subchapter 71
71 She was waiting for him in the snow. The red, red snow... pulsating, throbbing like a heartbeat... "Banno, I'm cold..." she said, holding out her arms. The sun was shining through the trees and playing across her face in shifting patches of light...
Ander - Chapter 7, Subchapter 70
70 The way Banno looked at her, it made her skin crawl. It was different from a normal look. Even a bad look you could understand, as long as it was something you knew. You could tell if the person giving you that look was angry, or scared, or sad,...
Ander - Chapter 7, Subchapter 69
69 Banno felt... wrong. He did not understand why he felt this way. The 'why' of it was too much for him to grasp. Even the wrongness of it, the reason for all these feelings, was something he was barely aware of. It was a deep thing. A low thing....
Ander - Chapter 7, Subchapter 68
68 In a grim twist of fate, Banno had become the very thing he had accused James of being. A walking corpse. A pile of meat without enough sense to know it was already dead. James shifted his weight from foot to foot, trying to time his attack...
Ander - Chapter 7, Subchapter 67
67 Banno stopped, his jaw still open wide, his single eye fixed on the serrated blade. It was only a fraction of a moment, but in it, James saw something that would stay with him for the rest of his life. The flat of the blade caught the fireplace...