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Time Together, Time Apart

Part six of seven

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Written by Arian Mabe (Amethyst Mare)

Commissioned by Adagiodajiang

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There was no right way for the fox to proceed, as he was starting to understand. That did not make it any better as a sick feeling churned in the pit of his stomach.

Three people.

Three innocent people.

He had killed and eaten three innocent people.

He could try to tell himself that the panther wasn't all that innocent, from how he had spoken to Alyssa and about her, but that did not mean that he deserved to meet his end. For, he had absorbed the panther's essence, his life force or perhaps even his soul too, draining him of everything that he had to give. For it was not just the physical body that the devouring had been hungering for, oh no. Not like when he had eaten those hares, when he had been out on his own, hunting for a cure, far away from anyone else. It was more than that, darker than that, an evil drawn from the roots of that very age-old tree itself.

For all the powers it had given him, in besting it, it had cursed him too.

He heaved onto the sand, stumbling away on his hands and knees, trying to scramble up again but just tumbling straight back down. He could only imagine the marks that he left behind, the rising tide coming in to sweep what little remains there were back into the depths of the ocean. Yet he knew that there would be others that loved and cared for those that he had stolen the lives of, three people that were no longer on the earth, living their lives. They would be known as missing and, soon, a hunt would begin, whether or not foul play was expected.

He needed all the time he could and he could only hope that the ocean sweeping away the blood drenching the sand, taking it away into the waters were it would disperse as if it had never been, would not lead to any dark conclusions. No one deserved to know that their loved one had died in that way, drained and broken, screaming soundlessly for their life.

He retched, on all fours, head hanging, stomach churning. But the meal would not come up again, his body full - not just his stomach.

And Sandor hated it.

"I see that you have finally given in."

It was her. Oh, that sweet, soft voice... The deer-taur, the ancient being, stood above him, her dainty hooves sinking into the sand. In the light of the moon, though dawn had to be near, he caught her smile, her expression gentle, her face even rosy. Her hair spilt down the back of her neck and shoulders even more luxuriously than before and he growled, twisting his muzzle back and forth, anguish ripping through him. Anguish that he did not have any right to bear - for he had failed!

"You... Please..." He whimpered, forcing the words out, refusing to allow the sobs to come, not when he could finally find a way out. "Cure me... Or kill me... Please... I can't... I've done... Please... Please, help me!"

He lowered his head, ears pinned, muzzle twitching with the effort it took to hold the scraps of his raging emotions together.

"Oh, Sandor... You should never have come to me. Whyever did you think that I would help you?"

He blinked up at her, hurting his neck with the sharp angle he tilted it.

"What... You..."

He couldn't get out the words, not as she looked down at him with a sweet, pitying expression. Her words didn't match up with the face that they emerged from, a bite more savage than even his own when caught up in the devouring.

"Three people, Sandor... Three people," she mocked, her voice darker and more ominous, like the calm before the storm. "You were so naïve, coming to me, just like everyone else. I've been around the whole time, since you set foot on this island! You should have known that no one could really cure you, no one that would accept the price you're willing to pay to be cured."

"I..." He gasped, getting one knee on the ground, trying to get up again. "I trusted... I asked..."

"Oh, yes, yes," she snorted, rolling her eyes. "Everyone asks me for help. So, I did. You gave in to the devouring, did you not? Stupid fox... Your silly partner was so easy to break, just a pawn in my little game. I don't always have to be nice, you know!"

Too late, he understood the warning he had been given.

"Draining you of your magic - oh, I knew you would have to go out to find her, of course, I did. Your energy and reserves depleted in the perfect time, though I was so sure too that you would take a proper bite out of that silly fawn before you left. And the anthros too - they didn't just decide to walk down to the beach. No, no, no - these things have to be planned, Sandor, but that's not something that your little brain is capable of doing now, is it?"

He gulped, shaking his head, heart pounding a sickening, drumming beat in his chest. Blood roared in his ears, overcoming even the din of waves crashing on the shore. It was not a rhythm that the fox wanted to at all lean into.

"No... You couldn't..."

Sandor might have already known the truth, for it lay in the devouring and the wicked ancient being standing there before him, her lips finally curving into an insidious smirk, but he still pushed back against it. He still felt like he had to fight it, in some way, to make it so it was not true, that it did not have to be true.

"Oh, but I could," she went on. "I did it all... And it was fun! You academics... Pah! You live up there in your ivory tower, students when young and teachers when you think you're all grown up."

She made a face, though Sandor thought that it had to be one of disgust from how her lips twisted.

"Everyone thinks that they can just take - where is the give back? There is none, none at all... And the dim-witted studious types end up being even easier to take from when someone like me finally pushes back! It's so easy to cheat people like you, Sandor... Grand mage? Hah! You're no more than a goof with a few magic tricks for people to laugh at."

He shuddered, rounding his shoulders forward. If he had been able to, he would have lunged for her, even if the fox did not honestly know what he would have done if he had caught the deer-taur. Even the language she used, pulling from casual colloquialisms, made him quiver, cutting straight to the quick and the core of his being.

Words could rend the heart as much as his teeth had carved the flesh from their bones...

"You should thank me..." She said, drawing out his two bottles of pills from under her cloak, laughing out loud. "Oh, you should see the look on your face... Now, you have had your fill! Now you know what it truly means to give in to the devouring! And maybe this is the path in life that you were always meant to take, not playing with your silly magic tricks."

Sandor heaved, reaching for his pills, but his hand shook trembly and she stepped back onto a smooth, flat rock with seaweed clinging to it.

"Ah-ah," she said, waving her finger at him as if he was an errant toddler. "These are not for you, little fox... And you're a bad fox, you are, taking things that don't belong to you. You should thank me for taking away your medicine and showing you the way of the poison running through your veins, corrupting your magic."

"Please..." He wheezed, forcing the words out as if there was a giant hand compressing his chest, squeezing down more and more and more. "Please... Don't do this... I'm... I'm begging you..."

There was more in his head, but the words simply would not leap from his mind to the tip of his tongue, from where he could have let them fly. It was not as if, even then, the ancient being was going to help him out anyway.

"Why..." He tried again, when she only smirked down at him. "Why are you doing this? They said... They said you were a kind being... A healer... I will give you anything, do anything for you, any payment that you like. I just can't... No... Can't...continue...like this..."

He closed his eyes, though the reality of his situation crashed over him.

No... His life could not pan out like that, could not keep going forward like that, with the knowledge of what he was capable of, even if it had been the devouring that had forced him to do it. Again, he reached for his pills, but she made good and sure that she was well out of his reach.

"These aren't for you," she said. "And you are right... A long, long time ago, I used to be a healer. I used to aid anthros, folk like you, who were injured in wars or accidents, even with ailments from being born. And yet...they never expressed gratitude."

She looked down, lips pressed together into a thin, trembling line. Yet it was the hardness in her eyes that struck true fear into Sandor's heart.

"No... None of them. It became expected that I healed them, for nothing, even when I asked for the simplest of things, like food and shelter. Some even locked me up to heal and took payment for the healing that I did, before my power grew and I was able to break free of their chains. They took payment for my services and still made me nothing more than a slave."

Sandor gulped, his heart twisting for her. Oh, how he could understand that... Yet it was too little too late... He had not offered payment either, though the fox had to admit that the notion had not even crossed his mind.

That, however, was not the real issue at play there.

"After I was free, I tried to heal a red fox, a pretty thing, a male in his twenties," she said, casting her mind back to the time that had been before, so long before. "It was a beautiful day, puffy, white clouds floating in the sky, standing above the purple swathes of the lavender fields. I often return there... For it was that day that my healing, not setting a bone correctly, caused my first death."

Sandor flinched, shuddering in place. Was he shivering from the cold or from fear? His clothes clung damply to him and he noticed, more clearly for the first time, that they were sodden in blood. Likely seawater too, rain pattering down around him as the deer-taur loomed.

"I did not set the bone in his leg correctly or complete the healing with my magic," the ancient being said. "And, he fell. Down a hill, which may have rendered all while and I could have healed him... Yet there was a sharp drop off the hill behind the rolling fields, where I believe they had been mining, at one time. I do not know and I do not care to know either."

Sandor swallowed hard, focusing on the drumming beat of his heart in his ears. It was not the kind of music, however, that he would have wanted to follow the beat of. Not at all, not like a war drum being played out for something that, even then, the fox had no control over.

"He fell..." The ancient being said, her lips tugging up higher in a smile. "And I liked the sound of his screams as he crashed onto the rocks and leftover mining rubble below... Those screams... Oh... They fill my sweetest dreams now!"

Sandor pressed his lips together, afraid to do anything. He didn't care what she did to him, if she was going to kill him or teach him a lesson...but if she knew where Alyssa was then, that was the bigger concern in his mind.

He had to be quiet and he had to not aggravate her...or else the ancient being might do something to his doe-taur.

And he'd fought too hard to let that happen.

"Everything... Those screams..." The ancient being said, sighing as she clasped her hands to her chest, a dark smile on her lips. "It was as if I had finally solved the riddle of my life. I was never meant to heal... And I had always had a choice in healing, or not, even though people, even all that long ago, told me that I didn't have a choice, that I had to do it, that it was my duty. I did not need to keep being a kind-hearted, soft, sweet being rescuing people, always helping them, always so kind and so gentle and so sweet..."

She scoffed and flipped her hand in the air dismissively, the glow of the moonlight glancing off the back of it.

"I could rescue people... But I could also let them kill themselves too, with their silly wars, clashing, even back when there were humans around. I could do anything I wanted, truly, and not even be blamed for anything. And I didn't have to heal them from their silly ailments either, not if I didn't want to."

She smiled, leaning down to Sandor, tapping the side of her nose cheekily.

"But, Sandor... I liked _some_of the attention that I got. So, I still healed people. Some people. Not everyone. I wanted a presence in the world, even though I took more of an interest in it after I worked out that there was a way that I could take back from it too, a way in which it could serve me."

The fox turned his muzzle away, yet she caught that his pricked ears showed that he was still listening. That was all that the deer-taur needed.

"I kept up my reputation and no one knew any different. Only those that I sent down to their deaths, choosing different locations so that no one would suspect a thing. I more often than not mutilated them by choosing an even higher cliff to "treat" them on..."

She laughed, shaking her head, her eyes hazy with memory.

"Oh, Sandor, those fools... Every last one of them is as much a fool as you are to me. They didn't suspect a thing either, tottering up there, thinking that I was going to cure all their ails, that there was some special plant or flower there that I needed... Of course, there never was, not if I was taking them to the cliffs to send them to their doom. And it was better still when the cliffs were there, so I could listen to their long, long screams, all the way down to the bottom."

She smirked, leaning back, though there was still not all that much distance between her and Sandor.

"Is it wrong, to like their screams so much? Of course not. There were plenty of screams that came before me, they just weren't ones that I caused. And I wanted to cause them. It made no real difference in the way of the wider world if I made others scream or not, they would still scream and they would still die. I was just kind enough to help some along, being a good citizen of the world and playing my part."

Sandor gulped and said nothing, hunkering down. It was an instinctive reaction, a freeze response, though not one that he had felt slipping into his bones in quite that way before. He had always been one to fight back - which was why he had worked hard on aggressive magic, all so that he could be sure that he could defend himself and Alyssa, especially after the bandit attack and tree, before that.

Now, without his magic, he was as helpless as he had been as a teenager, so many years ago, not able to do what he wanted, not even able to get away from the one who had made so many of his problems so much worse.

"You and your poison... Mmm," she said, exhaling as if with great relish. "Oh, that brings me a new kind of joy too, something that I haven't felt before. Do you know how deeply this corruption runs, Sandor? No, no... Of course, you do not. All mages think that they know everything, regardless of how much they learn. Well, allow me to educate you."

She stood tall, proclaiming with the sweeping feeling of one who had waited a long time to say what spilt from her lips.

"The poison... It runs deep, Sandor, this sickness, this crawling into your veins, your bones, the marrow of them... It can transform anthros into plants, ultimately, a poison that you can spread too. You do not simply have to devour so crudely with your jaws - ah, but you have felt it too, haven't you? You want to absorb them too, all as you grow in strength and power, taking their energy for your own."

He gulped and shook his head minute, denying it. Of course, he may as well have denied the sand on the beach for all the good it did him.

"Ah, don't lie, Sandor... This power, it can grow, yes... Twisting and curling into the roots of this land, even under the sea. For, if you transform others into plants, the poison will spread and spread and spread, absorbing life in a way that anthros and their stupid little minds could not even imagine. Why, it would spread even across the oceans into a continental-level disaster!"

She laughed and clapped her hands, the fox's jaw dropping in shock.

"What - but why?" He blurted out, startled from his freeze response. "Why would you want that? You... You could carry on, you could heal and you could find a different life for yourself! You don't have to be what you have been! You can find another way, something that fulfils you..."

"Hah!"

The ancient being shook her head.

"No, no... You won't wipe out all life, Sandor, there will be different lives too, though I cannot predict everything either. What I do know is that I could still appear to people, soft and kind, sweet and benevolent, accepting those wise compliments and watching all those tragedies, one after the other, roll out before me. I wouldn't even have to cause them anymore. That is what fulfils me, Sandor..."

He swallowed and whimpered. He really was just a pawn in her game and what she said made him think that she had known of him and the ancient tree for long before he had even been aware of it. For she was an ancient being and her way in the world, well...

It was beyond him.

"All I need to do," she explained, as if he was a fool who needed every last little word spelt out to him, "is to catalyse, of course, on your poisoning, the process of it. Yet you... If you had not been taking your medicine and devouring anthros, like now, the disaster itself may not have happened. The sickness is spreading through you too quickly. The longer you hold out, the better the tragedy - for the world, for me. Otherwise, the corruption will take you before your power has grown enough to handle it."

"I don't...want it..." He grunted, forcing the words out, tasting blood in his mouth. "Please... Give me the medicine. With this frequency and devouring...them...it should work...for a while."

Maybe a few years, though that was if he used the pills very infrequently. Yet he didn't want to die either, his mind rebelling and clinging to life with every fibre of his being, even though the fox knew that that would prevent another disaster.

It would give him time, however, to find a cure, another way. For he was a mage and she was wrong in saying that he knew everything. He did not know everything but he had to hold out hope that he would be able to find a way to cure himself, if she was not going to help him.

"Beg me for it properly, fox," she said, holding the two small jars high, the tiny pills within shifting in the moonlight, rain pattering down, marking the glass with beads of water. "I want to see your tragedy... You could end it all now and you shall not, even still. In the end, it will be you and Alyssa, that silly fawn, that end up in the spitfire of a breaking point, the first big tragedy that I shall enjoy."

"No!"

He knew what she meant but he couldn't have it! Without thinking, the wicked power inside him launched a plethora of vines at the ancient being, slapping her up in them, whipping her from the ground. He snarled, hunching forward, wrapping her up in them from head to hoof, though he was too caught up in the moment to realise that she did not struggle.

"No... Will...not..." He heaved. "Will...fight... Cure..."

He dragged her to him, no longer hungry with the devouring but with revenge. Dragging the encased body of the doe-taur to him, he snarled, fury giving him strength. It was her fault! Not all her fault - but she had caused their deaths! It may have been under his jaws and his power, but she had sent them there! If there had been no one on the beach, as Sandor had been trying to make it so, then he would not have given in and he would not have devoured anyone.

And she would pay...

He dragged her to him, hefting her up to a high level and...

...And the creature that looked back at him was Alyssa, not the ancient being.

"Agh!"

Sandor yelped, fear gripping his heart, tightness once again spreading through his chest. No - Alyssa? How was she there? Fearful already that he had hurt her, he loosened the vines, heart pounding, though he should never have done so.

"Oh, poor, Sandor," Alyssa said, though the doe-taur did not speak with her normal voice. "This isn't going very well for you, is it?"

In the blink of an eye, the image of Alyssa shifted - and she was the ancient being again. Sandor swore under his breath, nausea roiling in his stomach. He had been tricked!

"What a ridiculous excuse for a mage you are," she said, dancing around him as she taunted him, as if to challenge his lack of strength, his magical ability weakened further. "You thought that I was so quickly your scrawny beloved... And you released me? Oh, that is too rich. You're just another know-it-all mage who thinks that they run the world and rule it too, so slow in the mind and slow in body too... You couldn't catch me now even if you were at your usual strength and energy. But you've been struggling more and more for a long time, haven't you, Sandor?"

He shook his head, tears prickling in the corners of his eyes. Yet he resolved not to let them free.

Her image before him flickered and danced, disappearing. Mist curled and drifted where her hooves had been only a few moments before.

The fox, however, could not have known that he had entered her realm - the realm in which the ancient being was the strongest. He heaved and grunted, lashing out with fire, which he tended to avoid, and with more veins, trying to sink roots into the ground.

Yet it was there that he had less power, if not any power at all, lashing out at nothing more than the space around him. Everything that he tried, scattering fireballs, flooding the area with vines, was less and less effective, weak and nothing more than a mirage - an image of something that was not there, just because he wished that it was.

"Unff..."

He squirmed, fighting, thrashing, but something held him more and more tightly, as if he was being squeezed - but all over. As if ropes were tightening around every limb, squeezing his muscles, holding him in place, restricting his movement increasingly. Sandor gasped and heaved, though was still able to breathe, even though the fox did not know just how useful even that was going to be for him, not then.

"If you won't beg me, I can only show you these... All of these..."

The fox grunted, swallowing hard, clamping his jaws shut. He knew that voice, as much as he did not want to know it.

The doe-taur. The wrong doe-taur. The ancient being.

She spoke loudly, though she had no physical presence there that he could see.

"Scenario one... This was the first that I imagined. It is the famine in the year three-thousand-and-sixty, Sandor and Alyssa have almost reached their limit with the devouring claiming his soul. Sandor hunts the nearest animal to feed himself, unable to sate his hunger any other way any longer..."

It played out before him, the image of the fox that appeared before him as if he was present in the scene, grass under his feet, the forest around him like the one that was back home. He watched himself, hunched forward like a were, slavering like a beast, stalking Alyssa.

"No, Sandor..."

Alyssa said, in her own voice, the image of the doe-taur looking, to him, as real as the hand before his face was.

"No... Please..." She begged him. "Don't... We can work this out, I still believe that there is a cure for you. Please, Sandor... Don't do this, you're not like this..."

Sandor howled inwardly, thrashing against his bonds, jaw clamped shut until a rush of blood filled his maw from where he had sunk his teeth into his tongue. Still, he approached Alyssa in the image, feeling everything that the fox there did, how the ground felt under his feet, the rasp of air in his windpipe, how it dragged and how it scraped, back and forth, back and forth. He could smell the doe-taur before him, how good she smelled, the faintness of her perfume overcome by the musky earthiness of deer.

And she was a life-giving body, one that could feed him, sustain him, in more ways than one.

"Noooooooo!"

He broke, howling, thrashing, yet was forced to watch everything play out before him, again and again, the ancient being taking him through so many scenarios, one after the other, that he felt, however dimly, that she had to have had them lined up ready to go. He did not understand her and he did not understand her power, but the ancient being passed her pain onto him and those around her, forcing him to live through the worst moments of his imagined life.

So it was with every moment, feeling his teeth sink into her flesh, hearing her screams ripping through the air.

"Oh, how beautiful they are!"

That was the ancient being, though Sandor did not hear her, not as the hot, wet rush of another's blood flowed between his teeth, even though he was not the fox who was ripping apart his lover like a wild animal. Still, he felt everything, caught up in the rush of delirium that came with feeding the devouring and the horror of ending his partner's life.

Somehow, in his mind, retching and heaving, emptying the contents of his stomach, he felt everything right down to the last breath of life leaving her body.

He shouted. He cried. He begged. Anything to get the ancient being to stop him from seeing the image, to stop him from living it all out, horrific moment by moment.

Of course, she did not relent.

He should never have hoped for her to.

Continued in part seven of seven...