Ander - Part 6: Subchapter 104
104
"Well of course they're not real, you idiot!"
Everything stopped.
The pressure around Bartholomew's neck disappeared and he crashed down to the snow with a rather unceremonious bump. He gasped for air before anything else, sucking it in as quickly as his impoverished lungs could allow. His throat burned like fire and when he coughed he got a big, spluttering mouthful of blood for his trouble, but it was air, thank the gods, precious air!
He scooted backwards, blinking and wheezing. He got up, fell down again, and continued his worm-like struggle, crawling along on his hands and knees. The darkness faded back to the slate-grey curtain of driving snow, each flake a miniature monster in its own right, biting at his nose and cheeks.
Gods almighty, how close was I to passing out?
He reached up to feel his neck but pulled back the moment he came into contact with it. Even the slightest touch sent a burning collar of pain racing through his throat. He looked down and saw that his fingers had come back bloody.
Nicky!
"Ni-" He coughed and a fine spray of blood burst out of his mouth and coloured the snow. Breathing this frozen air was torture in itself, but he had to find his brother!
"Bart...?"
Nicky!
He reached into the grey flurry of snow and wind and something grabbed his hand. The grip was weak, but there.
They embraced each other like two children who had awoken from the same terrible dream, shivering in each other's arms.
But why were they awake at all? Why weren't they dead?
Bartholomew squinted into the darkness of the blizzard. That thing was still out there somewhere, maybe within a few strides.
The wind shifted and the curtain of snow opened just a crack, revealing a sight that instantly burned itself into Bartholomew's memory.
The Wolf was back to normal, or as close to 'normal' as it could possibly get. Its head was just a regular Wolf's head, still filled with dozens of razor sharp teeth, but no longer comprised entirely of them. It was hunched over, breathing loudly, so massive that the tips of its claws were almost dragging along the snow, but that demonic aura that had surrounded it mere moments ago seemed to have vanished.
But what the hell was that? Bartholomew wondered, lightly rubbing his throat. Was I just seeing things? Was it a hallucination? Did I go crazy for a second? Or -
It put its mask back on.
That thought came from out of nowhere, and he didn't care for it one bit.
Shying away from it, he followed the Wolf's gaze to the figure emerging from the driving snow, bent over against the wind, clutching its shoulder.
It was Mateo. His hair was matted with blood, but his eyes were as sharp as ever. He kept going, straight-backed and defiant, walking right up to the Wolf until they were only a few strides apart.
The Wolf cocked its head. "What did you just say?" Those were the first words it had uttered other than 'Are you real?' and it threw Bartholomew for a bit of a loop. There was something off about it. It spoke calmly enough, it didn't shout or scream or roar, and yet it seemed so much angrier than it did before. Even the blind rage it had used to tear poor Devin limb from limb didn't compare to this.
"I said they're not real!" Mateo said, taking on the air of a tutor trying to explain a simple maths problem to an exceptionally thick student. "They're obviously not real! Just look at them and you'll see!"
The Wolf's gaze did not shift. The Wolf didn't even blink. It looked straight ahead, right into Mateo's eyes, as if they were having a staring contest out here in the middle of this snowy mountain pass.
Mateo swallowed, but somehow managed to keep his composure. "Just look at them!" he said again. "They look exactly the same! How fake is that? It's like they ran out of ideas halfway through and just decided to make an exact copy of the last one. Hell, even rocks have some originality to them, but those two? Pffft!"
The Wolf pointed one gnarled finger at Mateo's face. The claw was crusted with hardened blood and frost. "You..."
"What, you think I'm real?" Matty raised an eyebrow. "Well I'm not." He patted his chest like one who had misplaced his keys. "You think this is real? Any of it?" He wiped his hand across his bloody face and held it up, palm out. "You think any of that's real? It's not! None of it is!"
Nicky nudged his brother in the ribs. "What the hell does he think he's doing!?" he hissed.
"I think..." Bartholomew replied in barely more than a croaky, burning whisper. "I think he's trying to save us..."
Mateo frowned in concentration, and another line of blood appeared on his forehead, following the crease in his brow. "That's just the way it is, Wolf. I'm about as real as a puff of smoke. You can see me, you can smell me, but if you try to grab me, all you'll get is sooty ha-"
The Wolf grabbed Mateo by the shirt, lifting him off the ground with no effort at all. "Don't you dare try to explain to me what I've known to be true my whole life, you pathetic worm!"
Mateo held up his hands. "All I'm saying is -"
"That's the problem, Fox! You shouldn't be able to do that!"
"What, talk?"
"Admit that you're not real!" The Wolf's eye blazed in its socket, jittering back and forth. It looked angry enough to crack the whole mountain in two. "You're not supposed to do that! Your job is to make it seem real! You're supposed to act like you're alive! You're supposed to scurry like the ant that you are, following the rules! You're supposed to eat and sleep and create the illusion of life! You're not supposed to know any different or act any different! You're not allowed to! But what you're doing, Fox, is breaking the rules! You're breaking the damn rules!" He shook Mateo like a doll, whipping his head back and forth. "How!? How are you breaking the rules!? How can you say you're not real!?"
Mateo was holding on to the Wolf's wrist with everything he had, fighting just to stay eye to eye. The gash in his head, courtesy of the mountain wall, was constantly leaking blood. It flowed down his temples and soaked the collar of his shirt, staining it an ugly brown. But somehow...
Somehow he was smiling.
"That's a pretty flimsy rule, if you ask me," he said, grinning a crooked grin. "Just three words and it's broken. 'I'm not real'. There, I broke your precious rule, you great big palooka. Want to see me break it again? I'm not real! And you know what? I bet the other Foxes you killed weren't real, either. And your friends? The sorry Wolves who had the misfortune of standing next to you when the snow came down and buried you beneath that overgrown plank of wood? I bet they weren't real, either. But why stop there? The snow, this mountain, the very air we're breathing right now - none of it's real."
The quiet fury emanating from the Wolf was every bit as terrifying as its mindless rampage, perhaps even more so. Previously it was just an animal, a savage beast charging wildly, going after anything that moved. But this thing now? Mateo did something to it, rattled it somehow. It was speaking, holding an actual conversation. By the gods, it was thinking.
And it was clearly out of its mind.
"Mat is taking this too far," Nicky whispered and Bartholomew nodded his agreement. No good could possibly come of this, and the longer it dragged on, the more likely some poor innocent Fox would come stumbling into this horrroshow and start everything anew.
The Wolf slowly shook its head. "No... No, you can't break the rules. You're only pretending to break them so you can save your own skin. If that's what you're doing, then you're actually obeying the rules to a letter, the same as every other dead piece of flesh in this empty world."
"Maybe." Mateo still had that half-grin stuck to his face. "But what if I'm not? What does that mean for you?"
"It means nothing!" the Wolf shouted. "My rules are not the same as yours! The only one who's ever broken them is -"
A change came over him, so sudden and so profound it took a while for Bartholomew to piece it together. The anger disappeared from its eye. Its ears fell back against its skull. It tilted its head and began to sniff at the air, like Ander sometimes did.
"_She_can break the rules..." it whispered. "She knows things she has no way of knowing. She knows exactly what this world really is. I think... I think she even knows what I am... She is warm when everything else is cold... She is solid when everything else is just a scentless wind... She is flesh not just for eating, but also for touching, for caressing, for licking, for loving. She's not like the rest of you. She's not even like me. She has her own set of rules, separate from mine. Maybe Vallah had her own set of rules, too, but she gave herself to me before it became clear. She was such an eager little thing... so excited to become one with me... Oh... I want that... I want to feel that again so badly..."
The Wolf's eye rolled back in its socket and its eyelid fluttered, as if it was caught in the throes of a very, very pleasant dream.
Nicholas and Bartholomew slowly got up on their haunches, but stayed low. They needed to be able to move if things got too dicey, but they also knew that sudden movements were not safe. If they tried to make a run for it, they would only meet the same fate as Devin.
The Wolf's eye flew open and its mouth split into a snarl. "Where is she!?" it barked, shaking Mateo back and forth.
"Where's who?" Mateo was doing an admirable job of not panicking, but the strain was starting to show on his face. Blood kept flowing over his eyes, making him blink, and his teeth were clenched. He wouldn't last much longer.
"She has to be here somewhere! For you to even pretend to break the rules... she has to be nearby. Even if it's only a little piece of her, it's the only way... the only way..."
The Wolf suddenly buried its face right up against Mateo's neck and Bartholomew went stiff as a rod, expecting an explosion of blood to come splashing across the ground at any moment, just like with Peter. But that's not what happened. It simply sniffed him, moving its nose across his features, taking in quick, hurried breaths.
Mateo pulled his head back as far as he could, grimacing in surprise and disgust.
"Tch! You reek of Nilia! Her stink is all over you!" The Wolf hurled him aside with a revolted sneer and Mateo tumbled through the snow, end over end, before crashing into a jagged chunk of rock jutting out of the mountainside.
Mateo tried to sit up, but could barely lift his back. Blood dribbled across his face and caught the errant flakes of snow blowing through the air. He smiled that awfully out of place halfgrin and said: "I'll have you know... Nilia smells like... pine needles... in the rain... you... buffoon..." And with that he closed his eyes and slid down to the ground, his head leaving behind a crimson streak across the stone.
"Matty!" Nicholas and Bartholomew jumped to their feet, but how on earth were they supposed to get past that thing? How were they going to make it out of this damn hellhole alive!?
The Wolf lifted its nose, sniffed the wind, and turned its head in the direction of the twins.
They froze in place, each of them thinking the same thing.
What do we do?
What can we do?
Bartholomew balled his hands into fists and lifted them up in front of his chest. He was a fully grown Fox, just a bit taller than average, perfectly healthy, barely been sick a day in his life, but his hands looked so small to him now, no more than an infant's. The shovel was only a gardener's tool, but right now he would give anything to have it back. Too bad it had to be buried somewhere under a foot of snow by now.
We can try to run and get torn apart, Bartholomew thought. Or we can try to punch the damn thing and then get torn apart.
Both of those were supremely crappy choices, but one was clearly slightly less crappy than the other.
Bartholomew hunkered down into a fighting crouch, ignoring the way his legs were shaking, ignoring the burning pain in his throat, ignoring the voice in the back of his head telling him to run and run and never look back, ignoring all of it.
He just wanted to get one good punch in. Just one last punch...
The Wolf was coming, limping through the snow. With every uneven step it grew bigger and bigger. The blood that had covered its body had mostly frozen over, giving its fur a jagged, spiky appearance. It really did look more like a demon than a Wolf.
It sniffed the air, tilting its head one way, then the other, always sniffing...
"Come on, you murderous sack of filth..." Nicky whispered, shifting his weight back and forth. "Come on, I dare you, I dare you! Come on!"
The Wolf ignored him completely and just kept on sniffing, walking with its nose up.
Forget the arrows sticking out of its back, forget the shredded mouth, forget the cuts and gashes. How in the name of all that was good and holy was it actually walking on a missing foot!? It was just stepping on its own bloody stump like it was nothing! Through the snow and the jagged rocks! Did it even know it was supposed to be crippled?
It kept coming, lurching along like a sleepwalker, sucking in air through its nostrils and blowing it out again in a puff of mist, sniffing and sniffing. "Where are you?" it whispered. "I know you're here somewhere... Where are you, little one...? Did you make all this for me? Something to make me hungry? Something to make me even more ravenous? I've waited so long already, but I understand. It's all for that one moment, isn't it? That single moment of release... All so the climax can be even better... for both of us..."
"Dear gods up in heaven this thing is so crazy..." Nicky whispered.
Bartholomew concurred, but even if he hadn't been bleeding down his own throat, he doubted he would have been able to voice that opinion.
He was afraid. He was more afraid than he had ever been in his whole life. Watching that black shadow coming for them through the driving snow was like watching death itself come to claim their souls.
"Where are you...?" it whispered, somehow fusing its voice together with the howling wind into something not of this earth. "Where are you...? I want to feel you... I want to taste you..."
"You want a taste?" Nicky said. "How about I give you a taste of my fist down your throat, huh!? How do you like that, you son of a bitch!?"
It was so close that Bartholomew could actually hear its footsteps now. Half of them were the perfectly normal sounds of a foot sinking through powdery snow, but the other half were short and wet. It created a disconcerting rhythm that hurt more than his ears, it hurt his mind. But then again, everything about this creature seemed to hurt his mind. Every single individual detail practically screamed that it simply should not exist, that a monster like this should never have been born, that a Wolf like this shouldn't be alive and walking. But it was alive, and it was coming.
It was coming for them.
Bartholomew tried to still his shaking fists. He could not. He tried to steady his stance. He could not. He tried to keep his heart from hammering in his chest. He could not.
It was coming.
It was here.
It was... leaving?
The giant brute simply walked right past them, still sniffing the air.
"Hey!" Nicky screamed. "Hey, you big piece of trash! You lost your other eye or something!? We're right here, right -"
Bartholomew rapped him a good one on the head and whispered words that tasted of iron. "Shut the hell up!"
Nicky rubbed his head and glared at his older twin, but didn't say anything back, and that was good.
The Wolf stopped, sniffed some more, and then slowly turned to the south, squinting through the falling snow. Its mouth peeled back into something that could have been either a growl or a smile, dripping blood. "There you are..."
The grey curtain of snow flickered with the gusts, switching from a solid wall of white into a membranous layer of gossamer as fine as spider's silk, and it was during one of these brief tears that Bartholomew saw what the Wolf was looking at.
Cowering in the snow, clutching a torch that had long since burnt itself out, was a single Fox, shaking and shivering.
It was Jonah.
If you enjoy my story, please help keep my face un-mauled by irritable ostriches by dropping me a donation.
Thank you! ^_^
Paypal:[email protected]
Donation Progress $239 / $300 (Unlock Sunday update)
How and Why: The Story behind "Ander" (Journal): https://www.sofurry.com/view/517234
Special thanks go out to the following furs for helping me keep this project afloat with their generous donations. I couldn't do it without your support.
- Mystery fur
- PyrePup
- KmlRock
- Faan
- Sunny-Fox
- Mystery fur #2
- Sky Star
- Claybrook
- 1_2Punch
- Cahal Silverpaw
- TheLoneDriftor
- Ariedren
Thank you! You guys are the best! ^_^