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."

"Oh, you have been reading it after all," Ash mused as her pale head poked around the side of the hole. "I guess even you can hide things from me."

"I said get out!" Stallion shouted, and I was suddenly thrown off my feet again.

I could barely get out a cry of surprise before my body bounced off the pedestal and smashed into the back of the cave. Another flash of pain scored across my back, but this time it wasn't going away. Jagged pieces of the uneven wall dug in deep as an unseen pressure kept me pressed up against them.

"Stallion," I said through groans of agony. "I didn't mean to—"

The boy didn't say anything back to me. He just glared and ground his teeth and almost shook in his fury. I could feel his anger like an unbreakable pressure squeezing my body against the hard rock. It tightened my lungs and throat, hardly giving me room to breathe—let alone talk.

The boy took a step inside the cave, and I could hear the walls crack as my body was forced deeper into the stone. My bones had to be breaking, but all I could feel was the white hot pokers burning up and down my entire body. I tried to voice any sound at all through my crushed throat, but I was drowned out as the cave rumbled and broke apart around us.

"I'm sorry!" I screamed inside my head. "Please, Stallion! Stop!"

"You have become quite powerful in here," Ash continued to commentate. She shadowed Stallion as they both walked into the crumbling cave, looking around at everything with wide eyes and wide smile.

"I didn't want him in here," Stallion said, his voice shaking. His fiery gaze turned to his admirer. "Why is he here?"

As soon as his gaze left me, so did the crushing force. I sank to the ground sobbing and preparing to lose all sense when my shattered body hit the ground, but there was nothing. No pain. No broken bones. I was fine.

But the tears still came. I huddled as low as I could against the ground and scurried to some dark corner where I hoped he would not find me. I couldn't let him look at me. I couldn't feel that sort of slow, horrible pain again.

He was looking at Ash now, but she was feeling no pain. The only thing he might have done was make her thin air blow backwards for a second, but a draft would have had the same effect on her.

"We talked about this before, haven't we?" she asked with a tilt of her head. "Your subconscious—"

"Cut the shit!" young Stallion snapped, making me flinch as a vicious tremor shook the small cave. "I know what I want—what I feel when it comes to him. This is something else."

"Ah. Guess that makes two of you who have figured me out, then," Ash said with a small sigh and a shrug of her slim shoulders. "Maybe I have been a little impatient."

"You...?"

"Now, before you go Foxy on me, would you care to hear me out?" Ash ventured, holding up her hands as if she meant no harm.

But, despite the darkness pervading in Stallion's cave, I saw the glint in her eye. I knew who she really was. But, before I could voice a warning, she smiled at me before pointing in my direction.

"Look at the one who once made you so afraid. See what he has been reduced to."

Stallion turned and I curled into the smallest ball I could muster. Maybe if I couldn't see him he wouldn't be able to hurt me as badly. Smaller and smaller. The smaller I was the less she could hurt. Maybe, if I was small enough, I could just disappear forever.

"Foxy?"

I flinched. She was closer. She had found me. She would hurt me.

"You see, Stallion? Yes, I have meddled with your mind—your memories, but in doing so I am unlocking your true self. I am giving you the power to fulfill your wildest desires."

A new voice. A woman's. Was it her's? No. This voice had no emotion. No conviction. It was as dead as I wanted to make the person attached to it.

I peeked out from beneath my limbs and saw that Stallion and Ash were standing closer— deeper inside the cave. Larger pieces were slowly breaking off the walls and ceiling around them, but they hardly noticed the imminent disaster.

"This isn't real," Stallion said. I wasn't prepared for him to look back at me, but I wasn't crushed by his stare either. His eyes were as empty as Ash's. "We're just dreaming. Besides, even if this was real—"

"It is as real as you allow it to be," the witch pressed. Her hand hovered in the air between her and the familiar, but she soon let it fall back down by her side. "I've spent nearly my entire life in a world you would consider not real. Truly, what difference is there between the worlds we share? In your world, you flee from things outside your power to control. In mine, I am always the one in control."

"Stallion—" I tried to say, but Ash flashed me one look and my tongue was gone. Sliced off. I nearly choked on it and had to spit it out as it danced and twisted on its own accord.

There was no pain, but there was a lot of blood. Even with a hand over my mouth I could feel it pouring through the seams and down my chin and neck. Stallion looked on at me with open-mouthed horror while Ash gave me a wink that sent a shiver down my spine.

"Shit, Foxy, hold on, let me help." Stallion tried to move my way, but I scooted on my backside until I hit the cave wall on the opposite end. Somewhere along the way, I ended up kicking the weird magazine that had ended up on the floor and sent it sliding across the ground until it reached the small amount of space that remained between Stallion and Ash.

The two of them looked from me to it, Ash with a little grin and Stallion looking very sick. He was looking down at himself, rubbing his fingers together, adjusting his footing. It was only when he placed both hands on his protruding stomach that he spoke again.

"Ash, what have you done?"

Ash's smile widened, but she did not look up from the magazine. "Oh, I am sorry to say that I had nothing to do with this, but thank you for showing me. Alex's physical and emotional abuse has been starting to spiral in the same direction one too many times, but you may prove to entertain me for quite awhile."

"Ooo, ehhh," I said, choking on blood and mucus as I forced myself up. I tried to think my words at her, but only a sharp ringing and static answered my demands.

"Foxy," Stallion said, a helpless hand held out in the air between us. "I'm so sorry, man. I don't know what's going on, but please stop moving. You look like you're about to kill over!"

I started to feel a pressure push back against me, so I looked away from him. Instead, I focused my eyes on the smiling witch and pointed a shaking finger in her direction.

"Ooo," I gurgled.

"Oh, does that upset you, Foxy?" she asked, feigning ignorance. Feigning innocence. "I know we've had our fun, but I've seen all I care to see from you. It's time for all of us to move on."

"What you talking about, Ash?" Stallion asked, but she held out a hand to him and he froze in place.

Literally. Expression, stance, every inch of his body remained stiff and stuck in place. Even the rubble and rock that was still falling away had stopped, some of it floating in mid-air. I hardly gave any of it a second thought as I hobbled towards the witch, blood still spilling down my mouth.

"That look you are giving me is interesting," she mused, and then smiled wider. "Why don't we get a closer look, one last time?"

Stallion, the magazine, the cave—all of it vanished, leaving Ash and I standing in a white void. But it only lasted a second. The next, the both of us were engulfed by flame. The witch screamed and flailed, but I hardly felt it. Or, rather, it did not compare to the feeling welling up inside me as I watched Ash's skin melt and smolder. As I felt my own flesh sear away from bone, all I could do was smile.

The screaming came next. Then someone shouting "Fuck, shit!" before I was dropped from their arms and sent rolling across ragged rocks and rough dirt. We must have been moving pretty fast, because I did not stop until my skin was a bloody mess and I was seeing nothing but stars.

As an orange sky and pink clouds swirled around over me, two faces peered down at me. The witch, Ninovan, with mouth slightly ajar and white eyebrows raised, and her familiar, Tusk, whose bearded face was fixed in a harsh grimace.

"The fuck was that, fox?" he demanded. As he did, he held out a meaty hand in my direction.

I flinched, expecting a strike, but it remained hovering over my face. I took it without really thinking further, and the old familiar hoisted me up like I weighed nothing more than air. He was quick to throw an arm across my stomach as a wave of dizziness threatened to send me back into the ground the opposite way.

"Are you alright, my child?" Ninovan asked as I rubbed a hand over my eyes and temples.

There was a pounding that I thought was just in my head, but as my vision returned to normal and the pain in my body receded, it had gotten a lot louder. Like rolling thunder that continued on and on and on. When I strained my ears, what creeped out between the rhythmic poundings shook me to the bone. It was screaming. Scores and scores of what sounded like hundreds of people shouting at the top of their lungs.

"Where's Lilly?" I asked when I looked around and saw only the three of us.

Tusk's glaring softened as his eyes fell to the ground. I only noticed then the deep, still bleeding gash that ran horizontally across his forehead. "Them other two brats, Gust and Maple, showed up soon after you conked out. The boy's been fighting us hit-and-run style, trying to get Lilly back, until she went and turned herself into a tree. When I couldn't get her down—"

"The girl is with her siblings now," Ninovan interrupted. "I am sorry, but if they refuse to join us then there is nothing else for it. If you have yet to hear, we have more urgent—"

"I am not leaving them," I said, refusing to meet the witch's eyes. "That was my deal for working with you. Without them, I have no reason to stay."

A firm grip on my arm pulled me into the burning coal's for eyes the witch had now. I tried to yank myself free, but it was strong. Impossibly strong. Ninovan pulled me in closer to her hard-lined face as she pointed with her free hand somewhere down the mountainside.

"Do you hear that, child?" she said, her voice both soft and urgent at the same time. "That is doom coming for us. For all of us. No one else but those damnable witches within Wildwood could be responsible and they make to wipe us all out here and now. You aren't leaving those children, Foxy, they have left you. They have led this doom to us."

I didn't want to agree with her. I didn't want to even consider it. But whatever was coming was close, and it did not sound friendly.

And Kat was still here. Stallion was still here—somewhere. If Ash didn't wake him back up he would be the most vulnerable of all.

"What is it, exactly?" I asked, pulling my arm out as Ninovan's grip slackened.

"Don't know," Tusk spoke up, keeping his voice oddly calm as he looked between the witch and I. "Mother had Em go get a look at whatever it is while we head back to re-group with the others."

We took turns looking at one another and, almost in unison, the three of us took off running back towards Ninovan's hut.

"The witches may have had months to prepare this assault, depending on when they discovered my home," Ninovan informed me as we made our way through the trees and underbrush. "This will be our first true obstacle as a family."

I inwardly winced at her final word, but found myself nodding to the rest of it. I had tangled with Wildwood in various forms. Fawn. Mr. Mallard. The Hunter. Each one took more out of me than the last, and they were only fragments of that coven.

Not this. As the air filled with the screams of madmen and the ground and foliage practically trembled at their coming arrival, it felt much worse.

It felt like an army.

...

*Author's Note*

As the sweet, little old lady has said, the familiars must now try and prepare for Wildwood's onslaught. Is this upcoming "doom" the coven's amalgamation of their best and brightest, seeking to use the majority of their power to take Ninovan and her children down in one mighty swing, or is this merely the first of many assaults seeking to wear them down slowly and assuredly?

It's a true fight for survival, and only one group can make it out on top! 

Boy, I hope Ash isn't too upset about the whole burning alive thing to try and interrupt Foxy during such a crucial time...