I was hanging in mid-air. My body was in shambles. Something clung to my twisted arms and legs, suspending them and holding them in place. I couldn't see it, but whatever it was it was sticky.

"You had me worried, Foxy."

A woman stood just below me. A pale woman with light blonde hair and a patient smile that did not match her listless eyes.

"Or did you prefer Alex?" she continued, losing her smile as she gazed off into the distance, seemingly in deep thought. "It has been so long, I can no longer remember."

"Ash," I said, then winced as my chest seized. Everything hurt for a moment. One searing, agonizing moment.

"Ash?" Ash repeated back. She looked to me with a quizzical frown. "No, I do not think that is right. Ash is my name."

"I was just—" I cut myself off with a groan. There it was again. The pain. Overwhelming, deep inside every bone and muscle. "It hurts."

"Yes, you are hurting," Ash agreed as she walked until she stood below me. "What is hurting you so much, in that world I can no longer reach?"

"I don't—" Overwhelming, seizing pain. Making me want to struggle against my binds, but fearing the consequences all the same. "I don't remember."

"You do remember," Ash countered. Her eyes widened a fraction. "You simply do not want to."

A sudden stab in my chest, like the piercing of a knife. Like all the pain honed in on one spot and twisted. I wanted to scream, but no voice came out. I was chocking on the sheer agony of it all. Of the black spider webs wrapped around my arms and legs, and of the bright red rose growing out from my heart.

"You have suffered a lot of pain, Alex Foxy. It's scars still lay deep inside you." Ash reached out for me, but it wasn't Ash anymore. The skin was too dark—the face too scared by burns. "You cannot shut them away."

"Kat," I said, groaning again as thorns from the rose sprouted out from the hole in my chest. They wrapped their spikes all around my body, and I finally had a visual to the intense pain that tore away everything. "It hurts too much."

"Isn't that what's so beautiful about it?"

Kat had somehow reached me from way down below, cupping my face in her hands as she is want to do. But, as I looked deeper, it wasn't really Kat. This new woman had both her green eyes, and they were much warmer than Kat's ever were.

"Pain is our strength," Minerva cooed as she gently stroked the sides of my face. "We've been through more than them. We've hurt more than them. We have seen and done things that would make even the cruelest of witch's squeamish. They could not break you, little fox. But you can break them."

The witch released her hold of me, and the pitch dark webbing did as well. I fell from a great height, but landed faster than a gasp of breath. It did not hurt to fall. The pain was still there, the thorns were still there, but they were nothing but dull throbs. Hollow knocks on a body that could not really feel them.

I slowly stood up as the thorns and rose continued to wrap their presence tighter. I had fallen at the feet of yet another person. Another witch who possessed all of Minerva's awesome power, but somehow also lacked the crippling insanity.

"What is it you want, Alex Foxy?" Lady Louise asked with a gentle smile. "When you figure it out, direct your pain towards it."

The Lady's body was a pillar of black. A void. From within that darkness, a small, teenaged girl's face stared out at me. A face that was, at first, humorless and lacking in any visible emotion. But, when our eyes met, a smile sweeter than I had seen in years spread out to greet me.

"And don't let anyone stand in your way," Rosetta commanded.

"Foxy?"

A new voice, unlike the echoey quality of the voices of the previous women, called out. As soon as it did, the mother and child vanished in a swirl of black smoke. Just behind them, as if he had been waiting for me, was Stallion. Old Stallion.

"Damn, man, is that really you?" he asked as he waved and stepped closer. He stopped just short of a few meters away, his hands loose at his sides. "Or are you something else?"

"What else would I be?" I asked back. I braced myself for the pain, but nothing came. The roses and thorns were gone. "Are you the real Stallion?"

"You wanna do that thing like they do in the movies?" Stallion said with a wry grin. "You ask me something only the real Stallion would know and I ask you something only the real Foxy would know?"

"That wouldn't work," Ash informed, suddenly appearing between the two of us.

"Whoa!" Stallion said with a gasp as he fell back a step. I did the same, only my body went rigid at the sight of her.

"If either of you were figments of the other's dream, you would know everything the dreamer knows about you. There is nothing either of you could ask that the figment wouldn't know the answer to as long as you knew the answer." Ash looked between us and, when her eyes met mine, I could feel the thorns swirling around in my chest. "Understand?"

"Yeah? I guess?" Stallion caught my eyes next. "You get it?"

I made to open my mouth, but I could feel the thorns growing and tearing up my throat. I quickly shut my lips before they could escape and simply nodded to his question.

"You are both real," Ash went on at my lack of words. "My being here proves it. Any person or thing that was once part of the dream would have been initially washed away as I wished it."

"So, is that why we're standing in this big, black nothing space?" Stallion asked as he looked around. "Cause it's freaking me out."

It was true. We may as well have been floating with all that we could see. No walls or floor or ceiling that was clearly visible. Just an empty void.

"Partly." I froze up again when Ash looked back to me. My hands clenched into fists when she pointed a lazy finger my way. "This is also his dream. If there is nothing, it is because he is willing it so."

"Whoa," Stallion said again, looking from the void and back at me. "You can do that?"

Ash nodded, her finger still hanging in the air. "Alex Foxy has learned a lot since his dealing's with the Hunt—"

"Stop." I swallowed deep. Deep enough to feel the vines and thorns gouging the bottom of my stomach. "Stop talking, Ash."

"Oh?" Ash quirked her head. Mouth a frown, eyes still empty. "Did I do something to upset you, Alex Foxy?"

Alex Foxy.

"Hey, man, what's up?" Stallion asked. "Did something happen?"

Stallion, looking at me like he was concerned. Like he really cared about me. I could feel my whole body tremble as the thorns scored up and down my insides. As I turned my full and undivided attention to the witch.

"This was you," I said, my voice trembling. My whole body still trembling. "All this is you."

And Ash smiled. Small, barely noticeable, but it was there. A single, cruel smile. Stallion vanished in a puff of black smoke, and the darkness that surrounded us became much more intense. An impenetrable black that practically sucked the air out from my lungs.

"Are you looking at me like that because you are angry with me?" she asked. She had gotten much closer to me without moving. Those dull, blue eyes were practically swimming with the color and life our surroundings had long since drained away as she stared down at me. "Or are you scared of me, Alex Foxy?"

"Stop it!" I shouted, and the vines exploded out from my mouth. They wrapped around the witch and stabbed her with their thousands of thorns.

But Ash didn't seem bothered with their presence. I saw more emotion on her face than I had ever seen before. Her eyes were practically dancing in their sockets as they explored the vines that trapped her. Her smile only grew bigger and bigger.

"You haven't been keeping your promise with me, Alex Foxy," she said. Her voice came in many quick gasps. She was clearly in pain, but it was like it wasn't registering with her. Her eyes only grew wilder, her smile only bigger. "I thought that was really unfair, so I learned how to make you keep your promise. I learned how to make you show me so many, interesting things."

"I won't let you toy with me," I hissed inside my head. The vines that filled my throat hardly gave me room to breathe, let alone to threaten the mad witch. "I've dealt with worse than you. I've killed things stronger than you."

"You cannot hurt me in here, Alex Foxy. Not really," Ash thought back, not that she needed to. Maybe just to prove that she could. "And you may have figured me out now, but you will wake up, and you will forget. I will make sure of that."

Those words. Those countless, terrifying nights and days of waking up screaming and not knowing why. Not remembering. Never remembering.

"You've been making me forget?" I asked. I hated myself for how it sounded like such a pathetic, pleading question. "Why are you doing this, Ash?"

Ash lost her smile and the light died in her eyes almost at once. At the same time, the vines that wrapped around her withered and fell away from her body. I choked as the ones on my end spilled out my throat and mouth, crumbling into dust on the black floor at my feet.

"I thought..." I coughed some more and rubbed my sore neck, feeling the tears stinging the corners of my eyes. "I thought you were my friend."

"I find you interesting, Alex Foxy. And you have not been keeping your promise to me. You locked me out. You locked Mary and the other familiars out. Your reasons for breaking your promise to them are not my concern, but I refuse to be shut out. Not when there is still so much more you have left to show me."

"I'm not going to show you anything," I spat. "You're no better than the Hunter at this point, and you want to know what happened to him?

"He died?" Ash deadpanned. Her face remained unfazed. "I may have learned from his example, but I will not make the same mistakes as him. I will be patient. I will slowly and surely wear down your resistance."

"I won't let you!" I snapped. I made to move on her, but found that my legs would not move. The blackness that surrounded us had consumed me up to my knees, locking me in place. I gritted my teeth as I glared back up at the patient witch. "This is my dream. These are my memories and feelings. I won't let you toy with them like your own damn doll house!"

Ash held up her hands as though she were asking 'and then what?' and sighed. "As I have said, you can try to resist, but that will only really make it more entertaining for me. Oh, and you never answered my question from before."

Then the witch was right in front of me again. Looking down at me with wide, sparkling eyes and a smile that stretched out across the pitch black sky. "Are you upset with me? Are you afraid of me? Or are you, in fact, just as excited as I am?"

I woke up to screaming. My screaming. I woke up to a hand slapping over my mouth, my body a land mine of pains, aches, and sores, and someone shushing me in a soothing voice as they stroked my hair with their free hand. I woke up not remembering a single thing.

"Are you still hurting?" Kat asked as my screaming died away behind her hand. She removed it to hold the other side of my face and press her forehead against mine. "I tried to mend you as best that I could. I tried to keep you from moving as much as I could."

I lay there breathing for a moment. Thinking. It still hurt, everything still hurt, but I didn't scream from pain. The feeling I was left with after waking wasn't like the numerous times I had woken up screaming before. I was left with my heart racing, blood pumping, and wanting to attack the first thing that crossed me. But, why?

"It's okay, Kat. I'm fine, really," I said, but Kat didn't move away from me or release my head. As the adrenaline subsided, I could feel her hands trembling as they clenched my face and hair. "What happened?"

"We were attacked," Kat said at once, making my entire body tense. Her voice was the opposite of her hands. Firm, unforgiving. "They did this to you, and Stallion is missing. It had to be Fawn or the witches from Wildwood. They knocked me out and, when I woke up, you and I were in a tree. And you...You were..."

I could faintly remember the last moments of Kat and I hurtling through the air. Of us plummeting into a tree and me desperately trying to take the brunt of the impact. I was alive but, familiar or not, I couldn't have walked away looking perfectly fine. The pain, and Kat's reaction, proved it.

"Must have been bad," I said with a laugh that only made me cough and regret it as my ribs and chest flared to life. "I still don't think I can move."

Kat raised herself so she was kneeling above me, her raggedy hair falling like a frame around her thin face. Her eyes were red from crying, but she was smiling, too. "You've been asleep for a few days. I made splints for your legs and arms so they will heal faster and more properly. You really scared me, Foxy, but I know you did what you did to protect me and you being awake proves that you will be okay. So, thank you."

"Hey, I know you'd try and do the same for me if our roles were reversed," I said with a smile of my own while trying not to picture it. "Let's just call it even for—"

My throat locked up. My muscles tensed again.

"For what?" Kat asked, smile falling as she looked down at me with genuine curiosity.

For Maple ordering you to kill me, and you almost killing yourself instead. For being there during the two worst days of my life. For acting like I'm the most important thing in the world, when, without you, I may as well be dead. Without you, I would have died ten times over.

"Nothing," I said, smiling wider. "Sorry, I think I'm still a little delirious from everything that's happened. Kind of hungry too, now that I think about it."

"Makes sense, I've only been able to get you to drink water these past three days, after all." Kat sighed as she moved away from me. A soft chuckle soon followed. "I've got fresh meat prepared, if you think you are up for it. And you really do owe me for all this."

"My savior," I said and gleefully chewed down on the meaty morsels Kat fed to me.

My friend seemed to be smiling to herself as she handed me piece after piece and watched me eat. But, as the silence continued, I watched her smile slowly fade away. When the food was gone, I couldn't read the expression on her face. She didn't speak until I tried to open my mouth.

"Hey," she said as she looked away from me. "Will you not tell me who really attacked us?"

A cold, sinking dread all but ate away the warmth of my full stomach as I found I could not look at her either. "You said it yourself. It was Wildwood."

"Please, do not lie to me, Foxy." I felt a hand on my face and was forced to look up into her perfectly green eye that stared back at me and the pale blue that stared off into the dark woods. "It was the children, wasn't it? My Master's siblings."

I couldn't answer her right away. The complete memory of what happened was still piecing together in my head, but it was definitely the Quincy children. Gust and Lilly. They had us—nearly had us, but then something happened. Something big carried Stallion away. Something that scared Gust enough to toss his hard fought prize.

Bug lady...

"Yeah," I said at last. I heard Kat's breath hitch at my answer, so I quickly continued. "It was them, Gust and Lilly. But I don't...I don't know what they were doing or what they wanted."

"They were trying to capture us and take us back to Wildwood," Kat answered. A dark look came over the unscarred half of her face as she stood up. "I need to go make sure they haven't heard us."

"Wait." I grabbed her ankle without thinking. When Kat stopped and looked at me, I struggled for words again. But the look on her face scared me. These rapidly unfolding series of events were scaring me. "I don't know if that's what they really wanted, Kat. They had us, I remember them having the both of us, but they wanted to talk to you. They were angry...and scared. Lilly has the Knowledge too now. It's the same as their mother's. I think—"

"Stop." Kat kneeled over me and cupped my head in her hands, surprising me with a soft kiss on the forehead. What I had to say died in my mouth when she locked gazes with me again. "You need to take a breath, Foxy. Don't overthink this. Those kids have spent years within Wildwood, raised by the same people who are now hunting us. Whatever they want, it is not to benefit us. Remember what Stallion said, no half-assing."

I nodded. Something was still tugging at the corners of my mind about the whole thing, but Kat was right. I've spent a lifetime fretting over every little thing, trying to peer through every grey shade. But it was easier to just let go. I had my friends back and we had a direction to go in. That was all I needed.

"Is Stallion really gone?" I asked as Kat stood back up.

"Focus on getting better first, then we'll find him together," she answered before moving away and into the darkness. "I'm going to make sure everything is safe. If something happens, call for me and I will come."

"Okay," I said before my friend completely disappeared. I thought about telling her to be careful, but it sounded like such a silly thing to say in my head. Being careful wasn't really a luxury we had anymore, if ever.

So I remained silent on the damp ground, alone with my thoughts for what felt like the first time in months. Really, the last time it was like this was when I was a fox, curled up and moping in a dog bed.

None of that was something I wanted to think about. Hornroot was dead. I tried to pretend that seeing him in the mud, the Hunter's boot on his flailing body and the gun going off wasn't the last time I'd ever see him. I tried to pretend that it wasn't my fault for running away and for him to be captured while trying to save me. But all of that cemented in place when I found the Lady and her daughter again. Clinging to life. Desperate for anyone to help them. If a true familiar had been there to protect them, none of that would have happened.

Maybe Hornroot could have even stopped Wolf. Or, at least, kept him from tearing apart my Master. I knew she wasn't really alive to begin with, but maybe what happened tore away whatever Knowledge it was that kept her from truly dying. Would she be happy that she died? Maybe not after what I said about her mother.

The Lady told me she would come back for me, but I did not wait for her. I watched as the witches of Wildwood made plans to find her and take her in. Was she even still alive? Would they show mercy on the witch who allowed her daughter's familiar to ruin everything. Who promised she would help him ruin everything?

I didn't think so. No, they were probably all dead. Dr. Quincy, Meadow, Mutt, Hornroot, Rosetta, Lady Louise. All of them dead. All of them because I had been in their lives. Because I interfered.

I knew that, but I couldn't regret it. Not anymore. I said I was done, didn't I? Done pushing. Done trying. Done blaming myself. After everything that's happened, I deserved some peace. I deserved to rid myself of the guilt.

Still, it hurt. Every time I was alone my thoughts would trail and it would hurt. More than sore muscles and broken bones. Deeper than any physical pain could reach. If it wasn't guilt I was feeling, then I didn't know what to call this pain. It was just there. Every time I was alone. Every time I thought about the people I lost.

And I couldn't forget it. Not the pain, and not the remaining Quincy children.

I closed my eyes and desperately hoped Kat would come back soon.

...

*Author's Note*

Well, would you look at that. Foxy lives! But it seems that, awake or not, our fearful protagonist is dealing with trouble beyond compare. What's truly more dangerous, a pack of witch children and their bug lady matron, or a witch who can completely dominate and peer through your dreams, all without you knowing?

Whatever your thoughts, Foxy has a lot on his plate (as is his current lot in life), and I would love to hear what you all have to say about these current developments.