Something cold, wet, and rough scrapped across my forehead, pulling me from the world of dreams to the world she could no longer reach. I didn't think Ash had been expecting it as she did not warn me before our conversation was cut short, but the simple fact that I could even remember all this gave me the assurance I needed. The witch was back on my side, for now.

            Fawn was the first thing I saw when I opened my eyes. She was hovering over me, holding a damp cloth in one hand and studying me. Her gaze locked with mine for a few long, uncomfortable seconds.

            "How are you feeling?" she asked.

            I broke contact with her to look down at my arms. They were as sun burnt as they had always been, but not scarred. Not touched by flame. My hands clenched unconsciously as I thought back to my previous torture.

            I was unbound now and my immediate desire was to strike my former teacher, but my body was no less stripped of muscle and fat. The earrings were still there—Lady Louise's Knowledge still flowed through me. The only thing I felt was a gurgling pain in my stomach.

            "Hungry," I answered Fawn without looking at her.

            "We have provided you food, Foxy."

            It was another voice. Abigail's. Looking past Fawn I could see her standing in her same dark suit and watching over Maple. The latter was similarly unbound and was preoccupied in slowly spooning what appeared to be soup from a clay bowl into her mouth. She wasn't looking up from her food, but I could still clearly see the fresh weakness in her face. The haggard way she bent over the bowl and the way her limbs shook as she struggled to eat. I thought again to those sobs before a plate of raw meat was raised to my face.

            "Can you eat?" Fawn asked. "Or do you need me to feed you?"

            Her face was carefully masked. Emotionless. I could not tell if she was mocking me or genuinely offering.

            "And what if I refuse to eat?"

            "Then you will go hungry," Abigail answered for Fawn. She was equally as guarded, her words more matter-of-fact than anything else. "If you refuse long enough, you will die. But is that something you wish to subject your friends to? To subject Mary to?"

            "Anything's better than having any of them be your slaves again," I snapped.

            Abigail raised her hand which was soon followed by Fawn lowering the plate of meat. I braced myself as best I could for a fight, but my former teacher merely placed the food on the floor beside me before rising to her feet and walking to another side of the small room. There she stood just as blank and quiet as before, staring at seemingly nothing.

            "Let's discuss that," the witch said. Maple stiffened when Abigail knelt down, but the woman merely offered her a smile that did not reach her eyes. "Maple, do you see Kat as your slave?"

            Maple let her spoon rest in the remains of soup. Her arms were still shaking, but she did not let it go. "No," she answered without looking up. Her voice was raw, but she refused to clear it. "Elizabeth is my family."

            "Similarly, you and the others are connected with us," Abigail continued, standing up and watching me again. "We took you from other families, yes, but families either too broken to support you or families already mixed in with this life of Knowers and Knowledge. We gave you and your friends purpose."

            "Really? You're going to try this now?" I tried to swallow down the familiar rage that was building. I knew she wanted this. They wanted this. I couldn't play their game. They had to play mine. "If you guys really thought this was all okay you wouldn't have stolen us in the first place. You wouldn't have tried to steal away our memories and our ability to choose."

            Abigail raised a single brow. She was still closely guarded, but I knew I had gained her interest. "So, you all do remember again. Your past lives? Is this why you've all chosen to abandon your duties to Wildwood?"

            "You witches had to have seen it coming. Ever since the Exchange we've been remembering. Was it some sort of test? Trying to see if we were truly loyal?"

            Abigail's face returned to stone. "Perhaps," she said. "If so, each one of you have clearly failed. Do your past lives hold so much weight that you would abandon a life of true purpose? Here you protect Knowers who struggle with a power far greater than any average person could comprehend or control. Without people like you, such power could escape into the world and—"

            "I don't give a shit about that," I cut in, finally failing to hold back some of the building malevolence. "You stole away my life. You stole my friends' lives. Whatever happens to all of you because we're gone is what you—!"

            "Wait," Abigail interrupted this time with another rising of her hand. I immediately glanced to Fawn, but she had yet to move an inch. "Before you go any further down your line of thought, I believe I need to inform you of something that you seem to not know. Yes, you and Mary were of those deemed to have deplorable lives and thus chosen to have said lives given new purpose and structure, but Mutt, Stallion, and Kat were not. They were made aware of this world and by their own volition chose to join it."

            My anger was, temporarily, caught in my throat as I wracked my brain for something to throw back at the witch and call her out on her lies. But Mutt never talked about how or why he joined. Stallion and I never had the relationship to discuss his past. And Kat only mentioned it once.

            Years ago, in the junkyard, she let spill a short, sad story in her desperation to get me to help her save Stallion.

            "Kat tried to escape once, on her own," I muttered.

            Abigail took a moment to think. To remember. "Ah, yes. All three of them had moments of disloyalty, but that was long after most of their memories had been removed. They had agreed to such a thing happening at the start—truly, most of their horrendous lives demanded they be forgotten—but, of course, there is little to be done once those memories are gone. Mr. York has little control over his own Knowledge and it is very hard for him to be extremely selective and, as it turns out, for him to keep such things buried. But it was a necessity at the time. It was our desire to try and rework the lives of five miserable adolescents and provide them a life of fulfillment and hope."

            "How am I supposed to believe any of that? There hasn't been any hope or whatever ever since you witches dragged me into this. Between Mallard, Terrebonne, and all the other monsters hunting us down this life has been nothing but hell."

            "Mr. Mallard and Minerva made fools of us all." Abigail kept her voice even, but I did not miss the glimmer of malice as her dark eyes looked down on me. "But do not forget that you, Foxy, were the reason for everything else that occurred since his betrayal. Mr. Crooster feared you would become the next Mr. Mallard, but spared your life regardless as we all hoped you would be different. That you would overcome your directionless anger and self-destructive sentimentality if not for the sanctity of what Wildwood hopes to protect but for those you chose to call your friends. But, it appears we were made the fools once again."

            "Maple, close your eyes," Abigail said before raising both hands, and I found myself pressing against the dirt wall as doors suddenly flashed into existence all around us. Glowing, golden symbols of intricate equations were inscribed into each one from thin air before being thrown open with violent, invisible force.

            Behind each door was a body. Someone dead and preserved in a tangle of thick roots that bore into their flesh from the dirt ceiling above them, suspending each one in the air like a twisted marionette.

            There was the mangled form of the Hunter, still missing an arm.

            A beaten and broken woman I only barely recognized as Son.

            The burnt corpse of a young woman I could only guess was what remained of Ovidia.

            An old man I once knew as Wolf, his shriveled neck punctured and torn from my teeth.

            And the young boy I once knew as Mutt, his neck punctured and torn from the teeth of the old man I once knew as Wolf.

            "Look around you, Foxy," Abigail muttered darkly. "Witness the hell you have caused."

            My eyes flashed through each one. My brain was slow to catch up. Maple was screaming and crying before I was. My hunger was long forgotten; rage and pain bubbled in its place and exploded out of me in a scream that forced my eyes shut and my throat to strain.

...

            Lost in a scream and the wracking sobs that followed, Foxy did not see the doors shut, the symbols change, and the doors fly open once more to reveal various torch-lit, dirt-strewn tunnels that lay below Edgar Crooster's ruined mansion. His cries took on a strange, echoing quality that much more easily allowed them to filter through this underground maze. Even Mary, who had thought she was very far away from the scene of Alex's torture, heard him crying.

            It was a sound she had grown somewhat used to. For all his brave talk and callous actions, he was still a crier. He wore his emotions on his sleeve, as people said. It was something that once drew Mary to him. His cute and awkward attempt to befriend her was certainly charming, but it was the guilt and pain he carried with him that really drew her in. His suffering as a familiar had been so clear to her because he had never hidden it from her. And, when he tried, he was very poor at it. He was a victim, like she had been. In many ways he still was, but now it was merely a tool Wildwood was using to try and pull her back.

            They were all fools in Mary's eyes. She did not have to read their thoughts to know they would never kill Foxy before they could kill her. He was their only tool. They already had to change their methods from simply causing him physical pain, as his screams today were much rawer and emotionally charged. And while Mary genuinely pitied her old friend, she would not let him make her weak. The priority was still to escape and find their creator. Only she had the strength to destroy what remained of Wildwood, and only Mary knew what Wildwood was preparing to stop her.

            But her dear Master was doing his absolute best to stop her. There was no relying on her memory of the underground system as he appeared to be spending most of his days now changing the layout. And there was no using his doorways for shortcuts as long as there was the risk of him monitoring each and every one.

            It both warmed the familiar's heart and pissed her off to no end that Wildwood was finally using Giles to his full potential, but the poor man must be very tired after so many days of this little game of cat and mouse. They were working him as ragged as he was making her work. But, at the end of it all, all she had to do was outlast him. She had to keep moving until the layout stopped changing and his doors stopped appearing. Besides having to kill the occasional dog that happened to track her down, it was all about conserving energy and moving only when she absolutely had to.

            Fawn had trained her harder than any of the other familiars. She was groomed to fight witches and the hilarity of the fact that she was using these very same tools to destroy those that created her was not lost on her. Mary was silent and still in her dark tunnel all throughout Alex's wails and sobs. When they finally died down, she considered moving again, but then she heard his voice.

            "Do you think I care?"

            It made her jump. Even though it was barely more than a stuff-nosed whisper, she heard it like he was right beside her. Mary was quick to dismiss it as merely due to the strange qualities of the tunnel, but she looked around her all the same.

            "Your tantrum suggests that you do."

            That was definitely Ms. Abigail. Therapist turned torturer. Honestly she seemed much more comfortable in this new role, so much so that it only added fuel to the growing fire of Mary's musings on how the witch found herself a part of Wildwood.

            Mary tensed again when Alex laughed. More than that, her stomach twisted together in both new and old knots. There was a sound she had never gotten used to.

            "No, I'm just sick and tired of this. I'm tired of having to keep dealing with witches and their prattling, their pathetic plans, and most of all how high and mighty you all think you are. You think you're so special, but all I've seen everyone do is care about themselves and fight one another. And none of you are even good at that! Minerva was the strongest witch I had ever seen and all she was able to do was kill her husband—someone without your precious Knowledge. How long have you guys been trying to catch her anyways? It took Maple—a child—one night to do what all of Wildwood couldn't."

            "I get the feeling you are trying to lead to something, Foxy."

            "That your little group of psychos and sickos is doomed, Abigail. You guys are calling me the next Mallard? Fine. But you should know something, I'm not him. I'm better than him. I didn't subjugate familiars to fight for me; I befriended them and gave them a good reason to fight. I didn't secretly team up with a witch to be inevitably betrayed, I dominated them and slaughtered any who tried to oppose me. For all your supposed power what have any of you really accomplished? A little hole in the ground for you all to hide in? Well, Mary and I are in that hole with you now. She, Fawn, and I will be the beacons our creator will use to find what's left of you. But you know that, right? That's why you haven't killed me and are instead trying to get a rise out of me. You need to kill all three of us if you wish to escape your destruction."

            As Alex caught his breath and Ms. Abigail failed to answer him, Mary allowed a small smile to creep on her face. At least he wasn't a complete liability. If he insisted on being self-destructive, at least he was making the most of it.

            "Thank you for sharing that with me," Ms. Abigail finally responded. Her tone wiped the smile off Mary's face. She was not affected at all by Alex's speech. "In return, allow me to share something with you. Something you may already be faintly aware of, but perhaps need it more spelt out."

            A deep, thunderous growl reached Mary's ears. She was on her feet in an instant, because this growl did not carry the echoing quality of something far away from her. This was close. Close enough to be in the same tunnel.

            It was a dog unlike any Mary had encountered. Massive enough to take up nearly the entire hallway, engorged with muscle and baring teeth the size of butcher knives. As it slowly approached her it stepped into the light of one of the torches and allowed Mary to see the true horror of it. Allowed her to see the sickly, pale blue skin and the numerous, yellowed spikes that protruded from its flesh.

            Ms. Abigail spoke again, and finally Mary realized she was not speaking to just Alex.

            "There is nothing we will not do to preserve our lives."

...

*Author's Note*

We finally find Mouse again, and already she's being attacked by some crazy malformed dog! Where's a goofy tom-cat when you need him, huh? Our dear Mouse is going to need to fight hard as it is not only her life that she's protecting! If Wildwood is going to be put in its place, she, Foxy, or Fawn need to survive.

Let's hope nothing happens to complicate things further.