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Chapter 4

Dark Nights

1

... down... down... down into the freezing darkness. He couldn't see it, but he could certainly hear it roaring inside his ears, impossibly loud, but also muffled, like the death gargles of a giant choking on its own blood. It pushed against his body, unyielding, uncaring, unrelenting, an unstoppable force. He could feel it sweep him away like a child's ragdoll, a million fists punching him from every angle, buffeting him from one side to the other, spinning him around like he was nothing.

Nothing? No... that couldn't be right, could it? Everything else could be nothing, of course. When the light is nothing, then it is 'dark'. When the sound is nothing, then it is 'quiet'. When the life is nothing, then it is 'dead'. Everything else could be nothing, but not him. That was impossible. That was...

Unacceptable.

He was _not_nothing. He was the first son of the chieftain of the Wolves! He was the biggest! He was the strongest! He was the only real unstoppable force here! And he would not be denied what was rightfully his! Not by his freak of a brother, and certainly not by a stream of tasteless dead water!

He... was... BANNO!!

Banno tried to open his eyes, but something was definitely wrong. It somehow felt like the right one was already open, but he still couldn't see anything. There was pain, and quite a lot of it, but that alone didn't really bother him all that much. Pain was just pain. He forced his left eye open, even though his instincts told him to keep it closed. He was instantly assaulted by a rush of icy cold water, pitch black, flecked with momentary flashes of white and brown, and he had no choice but to shut it again in face of this onslaught.

What was happening to him? He knew he must have fallen into the river, but he couldn't remember how. Did he black out? He remembered fighting Ander, and he remembered the juicy piece of Fox meat by his side (oh, what he wouldn't give to have another taste of her blood), but the last few minutes were just a blur of uncontrollable anger, a mix of random images without rhyme or reason, all tinted with the black-red haze of his hatred, his fury, and his hunger.

Something yanked against his right ankle and he suddenly came to a painful, lurching stop. With all the water still pushing against him, and with that thing - whatever it was - pulling on his ankle it felt like he would be torn apart. But he had an even worse problem to contend with.

His lungs were starting to ache.

It wasn't the desperate kind of burn that would force a Wolf to take leave of his senses and try to suck in air despite being underwater just yet, but it would only be a matter of time before it reached that point. Maybe as little as a minute.

Banno tried to swim upwards, but that infuriating thing wouldn't let go. It held him in place, biting into his flesh like a -

A biter...

It all came rushing back, every single last detail. The thing around his ankle was one of Wardo's blasted traps, modified from one of Ander's stupid contraptions, and the one who caught him in it was that filthy Fox bitch! It must have gotten stuck on something!

Banno tried to jerk his leg loose, but that metallic abomination didn't give an inch. If anything, it just bit down harder. And now the ache in his lungs was getting worse.

Any other Wolf would have panicked at this point. He would have thrashed in the torrent, swiping madly at the water all around him, desperately trying to claw his way back to the surface, his mind consumed by the inevitability of death. And then, predictably, the sad little thing would drown.

But not Banno. The possibility of his own death didn't even enter his mind, but if it did, he would have laughed it off. Him, die? How absurd. He was the only real thing in this world. Without him, there wouldn't even be a world. The only reason anything existed was for his own benefit. Every living thing belonged to him. Eventually, they would surrender their lives to him, or (and this is the one he very much preferred) they would resist, and he would simply take what was his. He would let the lives fulfil their purpose by taking them into himself, where they belonged. Even Ander's defiance would only serve to increase his death's flavour once it finally passed over his tongue.

So all was well. All was still as it should be.

But that didn't make him any less angry at the freezing situation he now found himself in, or his freak brother for putting him in it.

Banno bent his knee and reached for his ankle, fighting against the current. Every now and then a larger something would smash into him from out of nowhere, usually a big chunk of wood by the feel, but Banno just shrugged it off until he finally felt his fingers close around the rusty metal teeth of the biter.

He was starting to feel uncomfortable now, and all this physical exertion was only making him use up his air even faster, so he'd better pry this damn thing open as quickly as possible.

He squeezed his big fingers into the gap made by his own ankle and started to pull as hard as he could, the jagged teeth biting painfully into his hands. He growled silently, feeling the vibrations in his neck, and a small stream of bubbles burst out of his nose and was swept away by the muddy waters. There was something scratching at the back of his throat, something sharp and solid, probably a twig. It kept poking at his gag reflex, making him want to throw up, but that was out of the question. He'd just have to bear with it until he prised this accursed trap from his ankle.

He doubled his efforts, his muscles bulging. The pain in his ankle increased, but he didn't feel the biter's grip loosen at all. He was sure of it because his knuckles were still touching.

Banno still didn't panic. He couldn't panic (at least not in the same way as other Wolves), but he was beginning to feel a bit... concerned.

The ache in his lungs was starting to leave the territory of 'uncomfortable' and was now quickly speeding into the realm of 'painful'. Hurt on the outside of your body was one thing, but hurt on the inside was something else entirely.

Banno tried again, using every last ounce of his strength (which was considerable, even in this awkward position). He felt the biter's maw open ever so slightly, and then it slammed shut inside his wound again, the tips of its teeth piercing so deeply he could actually hear the bone snap, even inside the gushing cacophony of the river.

More bubbles escaped Banno's mouth and nose as he struggled to keep from screaming.

Okay, this wasn't funny anymore. Not even a little bit.

He needed air. He needed it. That's why it existed. So he could take it into himself. If he wasn't there to breathe it, then that would be the same as if the air didn't exist at all. He needed to breathe, he needed the air, his lungs were starting to burn in his chest and he needed to get some air!

There was only one way he could think of to do that.

Damn you, Ander, he thought. Damn you for forcing me into this...

Banno ground his teeth together in frustration and went back to work on the metallic jaws biting into his broken ankle, but instead of trying to pull the two halves apart, he reversed direction.

He started to push the two together.

The pain quickly built up into levels he has never experienced before. He could feel the teeth sink into his flesh and force the break in his bone even wider. Hazy clouds of blood flowed over his fingers, mixing with the icy water to create a flickering sensation of hot and cold.

The pain was only a nuisance. What really angered Banno was how Ander was making him mutilate himself. He would be a cripple for the rest of his life, and oh dear, how he would pay for this. Banno would repay this debt a hundred fold. He would make him suffer. He would beat that bastard to within an inch of his life and then chew off both his legs and his arms! Leave him writhing in pain for a while as a de-limbed stump. Yes, that would be good. He'd wait for the freak to beg for death, and then... No! Wait! He'd kill the Fox first, make Ander watch him bleed her dry, then he'd kill him! Yes, that would be perfect...

Banno was so caught up in this fantasy he barely even felt the biter sever his foot at the ankle. One moment he was still pressing the jaws against each other as hard as he could, the next he was flying backwards through the water, slamming into the bottom as the current swept him along.

But he was free now, he had to get to the surface before -

He suddenly smashed into something huge and hard. All the air burst out of his mouth in a big undulating bubble and a nasty gulp of brown river water flowed down his throat all at the same time. He clapped a hand over his mouth to keep from coughing and kicked off against what he assumed must be a boulder with his good foot. He swam upwards as fast as he could, wondering how deep this accursed river could possibly be, his lungs screaming for air. Everything was going dark, even though he still had his eyes closed, and that couldn't be a good sign. It felt like he was being pushed back a dozen lengths for every one that he rose. The pain was becoming unbearable, even for him. He was still underwater, but he wanted to open his mouth and suck in huge lungfuls of air. It was as if his own body was trying to betray him, like a spoiled child who wanted to grab a piece of meat from the fire and only succeeded in getting himself burnt.

But if he failed now, if he was unable to suppress this treacherous reflex, he would have more than burnt paws to pay. Nothing so severe as death, of course (he couldn't die, not until every other living thing was dead), but it wouldn't be pleasant, that's for sure. He could feel more and more water getting inside his mouth and throat. It was trickling in through his nose, flowing past his fingers and between his lips, as if the river consciously wanted to get inside of him, like it wanted to -

(drown him)

• make this as unpleasant as possible. Well, he wouldn't stand for it! This river was already dead! It wasn't even worth thinking about! He wouldn't let himself be taken down by a dead thing! Never! NEVER!!!

Banno broke the surface of the water and he gasped for air, spluttering and heaving, choking on filthy mud water. Immediately his head began to clear, but before he could take that second breath, he went through a dip in the river and suddenly everything was black and freezing again. Water poured into his open mouth, gritty with sand and clay. He was getting very, very tired of this. He kicked his feet -

One foot now, thanks to that coward...

• and pushed with his arms until he felt the pressure of the water slip away from around his head once again. He spat water from his mouth in a dirty spray and sucked huge amounts of air into his impoverished lungs in rapid, whooping gasps.

Banno carefully opened his left eye, not entirely sure of what he would see. The sky was still dark, still covered with a layer of black clouds. Raindrops continuously pattered against his upturned face, and even more water was spraying in from the roiling river all around him. Branches reached out high above the river like black shadow-claws, speeding above his head as he barrelled downstream without any means of slowing. The river kept dipping up and down, forming crests and valleys, hills of white, bubbling waves, all of them conspiring to wash over his head, to pull him back down into the heavy currents, but he wouldn't let them. Even with only one foot, he would never let -

He suddenly collided with a very large, very hard boulder, practically invisible in the black night. Despite the burning, throbbing pain in his brand-new stump, Banno still had the wherewithal to grab hold of the slick surface with both arms, hugging it tight. He wrapped his legs around, too, just for added measure. The idiot fury of the river pushed up against his back, spraying two waves of water out on either side of him. He climbed up on top of it, the force of the water actually helping him along, and collapsed onto the cold, wet surface, breathing deeply of the sweet, delicious air. He had been resting for only a few seconds when a massive log smashed against the stone with a hollow thunk and got stuck, throwing even more water into the air in a wide spray.

Log? No, that thing was almost still a tree, with branches and green leaves that kept getting flicked back and forth by speeding water drops. If Banno had still been in the water when it came along, it would have -

The thing caught in the back of his throat suddenly stung him like a freakish wasp and he vomited a huge glurt of brown water all over his tiny little island.

There were smoky tendrils of blood in it. His blood.

The waves rose and fell all around him, occasionally washing over his back, so at least he didn't have to look at it for very long before the river lapped it away.

Banno carefully sat up, hacking and coughing, but no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't dislodge the damn thing from his throat. What the hell was that, anyway!? He sometimes got a bit overeager at mealtimes and swallowed bits of crunched up bone, but this was way worse. He tried to feel it up with his tongue, but instead of a rough, prickly twig, what he felt was smooth and flat. And sharp.

What the...?

Banno opened his mouth wide and reached in with his fingers. There was definitely something in there... He pinched the foreign object between his index finger and thumb and he pulled -

Pain exploded inside his head like a firestorm. It raced up through the roof of his mouth and burst open in his eye. In his eye!!

Bano cried out in alarm and jerked his hand back, shaking.

What the hell was that? WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT!?

Anger started to creep back in. His night wasn't supposed to go this way. It wasn't supposed to go this way at all! This night was supposed to be wonderful! He was supposed to finally shut up that snivelling shut-in of a brother of his. He was supposed to finally taste his death! And then there was the Fox girl, 'Kiana' Ander had called her. A pretty name for a pretty vixen. He was supposed to take her neck between his teeth and slowly, ever so slowly increased the pressure until they popped right through her skin. She would have gasped, and it would have been the most beautiful sound in the whole world, almost orgasmic. He would have run his tongue over her neck and he would have lapped up her blood and she would have moaned in ecstasy as the life slowly seeped from her body and entered his. It would have been perfect...

But instead he was sitting here on this Cora-forsaken rock in the middle of a raging river missing one foot and pondering this thing stuck in his head!

Banno slowly reached up and closed his fingers around the long, thin, wooden shaft sticking out of his right eye, and suddenly he remembered.

It was Ander's hellbound arrow!! That cowardly freak stuck an arrow through his eye! That bastard! That wretched piece of filth! That -

Banno knew no words, no insults that could adequately express his hatred, his utter loathing for his little brother in that moment. The red, animalistic haze was beginning to materialize around the borders of his half-vision once again, blotting out any traces of something as insignificant as pain.

He reached into his mouth once more, jamming his entire fist into his gaping maw, and closed his fingers around the arrow head still scratching maddeningly at the back of his throat. He snapped it off without any hesitation, plucked the sharp piece of metal from his mouth, and hurled it into the river. The shockwave of pain in his head was enormous, and even though he could feel it perfectly fine, it just didn't matter.

Now for the big one.

He grasped the haft firmly in both hands, just beneath the fletching, took a deep breath... and started to pull the arrow out of his head. He could actually feel the wood sliding through his meat. He could even tell when the broken end went through the hole in the roof of his mouth and entered his nasal cavity. He could feel the vibrations of his own shaking hands inside his skull. It felt... wrong.

Refusing to abide this alien sensation one second longer, Banno yanked the whole thing out in one furious motion. It made a sound like a well-done piece of venison being ripped loose from a juicy carcass, both wet and crunchy all at the same time. Pain exploded inside the destroyed remnants of his eye. Blood gushed out of the wound and ran down his face and neck in a disgustingly warm torrent. It even trickled down inside the hole in his head and onto his tongue. He looked down at the giant splinter of wood in his hands, red and dripping. As the rain splashed down, it washed away his blood one spot at a time.

It didn't wash his anger away, though. Oh no... Looking down at his own blood like that...

Ander did this... My little brother... The one I'm going to kill... The one I have to kill...

"No! Nooo!"

Speak of the devil, that sounded like him now. Banno perked his ears and looked upstream, but all he could see was the river in front of him, the forest to his left, and the Cora to his right, all bathed in night time shadows and this incessant swath of rain. How far did this dead snake of water carry him? How far was his prey?

"NO!!"

How far!?

"Nooooooooo!!Nooooooo! No, no, no!!"

Ander's voice, flying at him from out of the dark - maddening! What did that pathetic whelp have to scream about!? Nothing! He was still perfectly fine, but that wouldn't last, oh no... Soon, soon his big brother would give him something to really scream about!

"Noooo!"

Banno snapped the arrow between his fingers like it was nothing and spat a bitter orb of blood into the river, the fury rising inside of him, consuming him completely. It felt so good... it felt so right. All other sensations were starting to leave him: the cold, the pain, the...

Black shadows flickered inside his eye, momentarily robbing him of his precious anger. Those shadows didn't come from the night outside, they came from the inside. How much blood...? There was so much pouring out of him...

He did it. Ander did it. He has to pay. Nothing else matters. Nothing...

Yes, it didn't matter how much blood he was losing. He couldn't die. He was the only real thing in this world. He wasn't the only life, of course not, but he was the only real life. All other lives only existed because he existed. They existed to sustain him. That's why he couldn't die. If he died, then the whole world would stop existing. All those lives would disappear without knowing the peace of being taken inside of the one, _true_life. His life. They would all become a part of him, eventually...

"I'm coming, Ander..." Banno said, swaying slightly, the shadows and the fury-haze competing for position inside his mind. "I'm coming... to taste your death..."

He tried to get up, but force of habit is a powerful thing. He went through the same motions as always, without a second thought, but instead of pushing off the ground with a foot he's taken for granted his entire life, he only smushed his raw, bloody stump against the stone, scraping the shattered tip of his bone against the smooth, river-worn surface. Pain erupted all the way up to his knee and he collapsed, fuming with fury, red ropes of saliva hanging from his mouth, penduluming back and forth with every furious breath.

"Andeeer..." he said, watching drops of his own blood leave his body and splatter against the rock like tiny red stars. "Andeeeerrr..." The pain wasn't quelling his anger at all, quite the opposite. It was fuelling his murderous rage. Before now, he's only ever wanted to kill because that's the way things are. That's the way it's supposed to be. He was Banno, he lived to kill everyone else. But now... now he had another reason to kill.

Revenge.

"I'll kill him... I'll kill him..." Banno whispered to himself, clawing his way to the edge of his rocky little island rest stop. Water splashed up against his face, but his focus never wavered. The fallen tree was still being pushed up against the boulder, held there by the crushing force of the river. Even better, the end reached quite a ways over to the opposite bank... maybe he wouldn't even have to swim... if he could just reach it... solid ground... he'd go back and he'd finish the job... he'd taste Ander's death, he'd have his revenge... and he'd have his way with the little Foxy, too...

Maybe more than once...

This was the last thought that passed through Banno's mind as he lost consciousness and collapsed onto the broken, dead tree. If it hadn't been there, or if the storm hadn't uprooted it, or if its seed had landed just a few feet farther away from the edge of the river, then Banno would have fallen into the dark waters and he would have drowned.

But the tree was there. Banno _didn't_drown. He lay upon its corpse for hours, with his arms and legs dangling in the water, held in place by its thick, leafy branches. Eventually, an errant stump floated by and knocked it loose, and together they drifted... the tree on the roiling currents, Banno on the hazy waves between waking and dreaming...

His dreams were mostly black, but sometimes... sometimes there was blood. Not his own blood, but the good kind of blood, the tasty blood, the blood that flowed just before the life left the body of whatever he was biting down on. Sometimes it was Ander, sometimes it was Kiana. One time it was Hezzi. The confused look in his eyes as his life found its real purpose was priceless...

Sometimes it was Vallah. She was so beautiful in death... her taste so exquisite... Dreaming of her... she was still his first and only...

So he drifted... He drifted on the edge of death, on the edge of life, on the edge of his dreams and on the edge of his waking mind. It all just... floated... in the dark...

Until it didn't.

Something felt different now. Not bad, just... different.

The pain was still there, and the darkness, too, but... he felt... something...

What was that? Something on top of him. Not heavy. Kind of... whispery... Was that the water? Was he still in the river? Why could he only hear it if he moved? Wait, the river couldn't be on top of him... it was supposed to be beneath him...

Banno could feel himself rising up out of whatever dream had trapped him. It felt like breaking the water's surface after going too long without air. He could even see the sun glinting through the ripples in bendy blades of silver. All he had to do was go up... up... up, and he could finally breathe again...

Banno broke through the shimmering light and he -

---

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