"Let him go, child!" Ninovan commanded.

Swinging as high up in the air as I was, I wasn't too thrilled about having to look down at the spinning world below me. Neither was I thrilled about my creator now standing at her full height, white fur bristling and growing from her wrinkled skin. I couldn't see their faces too clearly but from the way Tusk was holding up his hands it looked like he was trying to keep her from doing anything too hasty.

"It's alright!" I shouted down at them. "I'm fine! Just give me a second!"

"She's part of the witches that are after my children, Foxy," Ninovan called up to me as her body continued to expand. "I am willing to call a truce, but only if she is willing to betray them."

"Alright! Just let me handle this!"

Whatever that witch was thinking, I really doubted it was to benefit Lilly and her siblings. But as long as they were with me it was better than whatever hell they had been suffering until now. Getting them all back was the first step to the plan, and my creator had enough power to make that happen.

I tried to keep that in mind as I swung my head away from the nausea-inducing distance from the ground to the face that still glowered at me from within the tree.

"Okay, Lilly, you caught me. Now what?"

The question made her pause. I caught a glimpse of the scared girl before she furrowed her brow and put on another tough face. I would have called it cute if it didn't come coupled with the roots tightening their grip on my legs. I had to suck in a pained scream instead to keep Ninovan from thinking anything was wrong.

"Now I take you to the bug lady."

"She's dead," I said with a gasp as I fought to keep my voice even. "Map—I killed her, Lilly."

"Liar."

I couldn't help but groan when the roots started twisting. My legs were slowly being turned into knots.

"I think the time for negotiations is up," Ninovan said as she raised hands that had become more like claws. Claws with enough strength to tear apart bone and muscle like paper. Claws just like his.

"STOP!"

And, Ninovan stopped. I couldn't read her expression, but she paused mid-swing and didn't move for a few seconds. When she did, she merely lowered her arms and looked up at me. I couldn't see her eyes, but I could feel them burning into my skull.

"Five minutes," she said.

"I'm sorry," Lilly mumbled, bringing my attention back to her. Her face was downcast, her eyes closed, and her expression was twisted like she was concentrating on something really hard. "I don't want to hurt you, but mother gets angry. When she's angry, it's really scary. If I don't listen, she gets even scarier."

"Your mother?" I asked, but immediately shook my head. Now wasn't the time to dig into it. They had the same Knowledge, it was probably just her way to cope with what was happening to her. "Lilly, please, you have to believe me. I did kill the bug lady. Her name was—"

Strangely, I found myself choking up when I tried to summon her name. Instead of focusing on the current—very dire—circumstances, my mind was dredging up so many, unnecessary things. Like what it felt like to strangle her. How scared she looked when she thought she was dying. The way her screams sounded whenever that thing possessing Mary burned her alive.

"Her name was Ovidia. Leaf and you were there with her at the top of that building. Do you remember?"

Lilly's eyes opened, but they weren't looking at me. She was staring somewhere far below the two of us—somewhere I couldn't see. I intentionally left out Maple hoping she had forgotten so we could avoid any unnecessary complications. We both had enough to worry about.

"Where's my brother?"

Her question, or, more accurately, the way she asked it chilled me to my core. There was no hesitation in her words. As her dark eyes moved back to me, there were no tears and no hopes. Her expression changed entirely to one I've seen on so many faces. She was prepared to hurt me—maybe even kill me—if she didn't like my answer.

"Wildwood took him away," I answered. "Copper and Fawn to be specific. I was too weak to fight them so he made me hide with you so they wouldn't find and take us as well."

I tried to keep my own voice as even and clear as I could. It was the best way to convince her that I was telling the truth. But it was hard to keep my nerve with the roots digging into the flesh of my legs as their master continued to glare.

"Liar," she hissed again.

The roots really were digging now. Like a slow knife, I could feel them start to bore their way into my claves and thighs. Not deep enough to draw a lot of blood, not enough to make me scream. Even as her expression trembled and the branches around us shook, she possessed enough sense to know we still had a few minutes left.

"What do you think I did?" I hissed as her roots dug in deeper. Maple, Gust, all of them thought I was some evil creature they had to fear. Didn't they remember? Didn't they care how much I suffered to try and save them? "How do you think you got here, Lilly?

"You k—You killed him," she declared, her voice breaking into a sob. "And now you're trying to kill me!"

"What? I—" I cut myself off with a groan as pain flared up from my legs.

Whatever roots that got past the skin were now spreading. I could feel it like a river of needles traveling up and down the muscle. Neither of us had much time left.

"It's me, Lilly. Alex! Foxy! Don't you remember? You and your brothers and sisters helped make me better when I was at my worst. I was there when..."

Lilly was becoming hard to see. My vision was blurring as the pain continued to spread. Tears were unintentionally streaming down my face, making it even harder to see what her expression was.

But I had to know.

"You're a familiar," Lilly said, her words coming slow and strained. "Your Master is our prisoner. You're trying to kill all of us to get to her. But mother will stop you."

I had to see.

I tried to wipe at my face, but my vision wouldn't clear. My head was starting to pound as I hung upside down. The pain spiked again and coupled with a cold trickling that snaked up my legs.

"I'm so sorry," I said, but my voice was strange. It bubbled and blubbered out of me as I choked on blood and tears. "I'm sorry I let Meadow and your dad die, but I could never kill any of you. We've been through so much. I thought...I..."

I coughed and what felt like a ball of mucus and blood flew from my mouth and landed somewhere far below. Ninovan and Tusk were shouting and trying to tell me something, but I could no longer hear them. Nothing compared to the high pitched ringing in my ears.

But, still, I tried a pathetic smile as the pain reached beyond the point of feeling. I tried to focus my fading vision on where the little girl's face peered out from the tree.

"I wanted to be your family, too."

There was a single, split moment of relief as the roots retracted from my body before I was free-falling. My eyes had stopped working, so there was no way of knowing when I would land or what I would land on. The most I could hope for was that I would die before—

I landed hard enough to bounce once. Hard enough to knock the air out of me and wish I really had died as pain scored through my ribs and back. But as soon as it had struck me, it was gone. Like the pain had all just been in my imagination.

It was such a strange sensation I had to lie there on the cold floor as chills danced across my skin. Goosebumps. Like my body knew what was happening before my brain could catch up.

But catch up it did.

When I sat up, I knew I was sucked back into Ash's world. A room made of stone is what I woke up to. Rough, red, and gritty earth that made up the walls, floor, ceiling, and strangly shaped rocks.

Two people who were sitting on the weird rocks noticed me right away.

"Foxy?" Stallion—Human Stallion said, his face wide open in surprise while his body remained rigid on its seat.

"Ah, I wasn't sure that would work," Ash mused, her stance much more relaxed as she flashed me a half-smile. "It's been some time, Alex Foxy."

Just as she must have wanted, hearing her say my name like that forced all the memories to connect. I sat up, cutting off Stallion's question of why I was here with my demands. "I don't have time to screw around with you, Ash. Wake me back up."

Her smile only widened.

"Hey, man, why are you here?" Stallion asked. He seemed to only be able to move his head as he looked between Ash and I. "Why is he here, Ash?"

"Because I want him to be."

"You might have guessed it by now, Stallion, but this witch isn't with us anymore," I said as I walked to the nearest wall, curled my hand into a fist, and started swinging.

"What are you doing?!" the other familiar snapped.

"Mmm. Trying to literally break down my walls, Alex Foxy?"

Obviously, it hurt to punch solid stone. But as soon as my fists connected with the wall, the pain simply responded like a shockwave. It was there and gone in a second.

"I told you, I don't have time!" I shouted back at the observers as I continued to slam my fists into the rock. "If you aren't going to let me out, I'll make my own exit!"

"If you are trying to pull the same tricks that you used against the Hunter that won't work here," Ash called, smile still clearly in her voice. "This is Stallion's dream, not yours. You are just a figment with no real control."

She said that, but even so I know I was seeing cracks forming into the red stone at every blow. The whole room was practically shaking and raining dust from the ceiling. It wasn't indestructible. I wasn't powerless.

"If you can break down that wall, it is because Stallion wants you to."

There was a dent. A sizeable one riddled with deep cracks and practically crumbling apart. Just one more good hit and I would be out. I pulled back my fist for the decisive blow, only to feel it fall into a grip far tougher than the stone I had been beating.

"You want to get out of here too, don't you?" I snapped without turning to look at him. "So you can get back to running away."

The hand that held me flinched. "It's not like that, man."

"Then what's it like, Stallion?" I turned to face him, but of course he wouldn't look at me. Even while he kept me from striking his face remained downcast and his eyes staring at nothing but crumbling rock. "Because right now Kat and I could really use you and you're nowhere to be found. In fact, we could have used you for a long time now but all you seem to be interested in is being a little bi—"

I felt it long before I ever saw it. A blow like solid rock struck me across the face, sending me out of Stallion's grip and into the wall behind me. It really only needed one more strike. My flailing body crashed through it and I was then rolling across more jagged rock until finally coming to rest against a silver pedestal that grew right up from the ground.

Again, the pain wracking all throughout my body came and went, allowing me to recover as soon as the momentum was gone. As I regained my feet, I surveyed my new surroundings. What I could only guess was Ash's second wall.

It was a room much smaller than the one before it, and much darker. The walls and floor were still stone, so it was more like a cave than anything else that dipped a bit from the hole Stallion had made into the small opening where I was now standing.

The only other thing there was the silver pedestal, and the magazine that lay on top of it. It was open to somewhere in the middle, allowing me to see brightly-colored panels depicting people punching each other while wearing strange outfits. It looked like one of the people getting punched was wearing underwear on top of their spandex pants.

"Get away from there, Foxy."

Someone else had gotten into Stallion's dream?

That was my first thought. The voice didn't sound like anyone's I had heard before. He tried to sound tough, but his voice was too high-pitched to be a boy too far past his teens and even cracked in several places.

When I turned to face the demander, 'someone had gotten into Stallion's dream' was the only answer, I believed.

The person that stood just inside the crumbling hole was a dark-skinned, short, and chubby boy no older than fourteen or fifteen. He wore glasses that were far too thick and clothes that did little to hide his frumpy body.

I took a step closer, my own body taut and ready in case this unsuspecting child had any weird tricks up his sleeve.

"Who—" I started to say, but stopped. Because I had to stop.

In my search for anything the boy might be hiding, my eyes fell on his eyes. Even hidden behind a few inches of glass, they were glaring at me with the intensity the rest of his body lacked. With a darkness I had seen before.

"Please, man," Stallion said. A Stallion I had never seen before said. "I don't want you to see anymore."

...

*Author's Note*

Man, these witches can't seem to give ol' Foxy a break, can they? If it's not being accused of murder its being used as a tool to give them something more entertaining to watch. Really, our protagonist should start charging by the hour. 

But what do you guys think he should do? What can he do? Is it hopeless? 

Whatever your thoughts, I wanna hear 'em! Feel free to share 'em! Maybe if we hope hard enough it'll be enough to real our poor little fox.