Sherri's grip on the gun was shaky as she helplessly watched Wolfram and Mapleshade's fierce battle. She warily pointed at Mapleshade as well, not sure what she would do if the one-eyed woman would move. Well, it might not be pretty.
She frowned, wishing this cat was dead already, instead of answering stupid questions. On the other hand, she didn't want to see anyone else dead, ans instead wanted to throw up.
"What do you mean?" Mapleshade struggled against his grip, panting.
"What changed?" Wolfram turned his gaze to her slowly. "Why did you kill her?"
"So you want the story, huh? Fine, then." Mapleshade snarled. "Your mother and I were friends since we were little. I always knew she was ambitious, and that she had fallen for your father. But so had I. She
knew I liked him! She knew! But she still went for him anyway, and ended up pregnant with you at only
twenty. We had plans, her and I, so many plans!" Her tone was pained as she spoke, her single eye glowing.
"We were going to travel the world, see everything we could! After she had you, though, oh no. No, she didn't have
time for me anymore, only when she needed me to watch you, whenever she went off doing whatever. Then I found out exactly what she was doing at the Multitude. I found out about the Pure. She was making a catalyst, a poison, as you know, to ultimately
destroy the Inhuman race." Mapleshade drew in a breath, still struggling.
"I was horrified. I thought she wanted to use it against me. Then I met your father again, you must have been ten or eleven at the time. He told me he was working for the Pure," she took in a shaking breath, and Wolfram narrowed his eyes. Was she faking it, he wondered, or was she really telling the truth?
"He wanted me to work with him. I don't know what we were doing, or why, but I realized that your mother was betraying me. For so, so long I tried to get that catalyst, until finally she put it in the bank, away from my grasp. For so long, Wolf, I was working with them! And neither of you noticed!" She spat, eyes gleaming viciously.
"Why? Why did you try and get the key? Why did you want to use it?"
"Oh, that was your father's idea. He wanted to rule the world, with that he thought he was so powerful. But I wanted to watch it BURN, I wanted—
As River left them to join the battle, Ash looked down at her afflicted husband somberly. "Stay down, Connor. You're dead," she insisted suddenly, fighting against the near-irresistible urge to get down on her knees again and pull him close to her, never to let go- daring the world to try to break them apart with all the malicious forces it had at its disposal. “You pose no threat to them now. They're not going to bother with a corpse."
Her trembling lips betraying the threat of an emotional implosion, Ash hurried away with her head down- a risky charge. Her collision with the enemy was nearly instantaneous.
Ash looked up into a pair of tumultuous gray eyes amongst a curtain of corruptive black. A poof of buoyant ginger curls sat atop the much taller woman’s masked head. Ash immediately thought of her as a volcano just boiling over.
The shotgun muzzle in her face probably would’ve quickly proved her correct if her reflexes weren’t so advanced. But, thanks to Bleddyn’s years of unpredictability, Ash had no issue with knocking the gun to the ground before any finger could even touch the trigger.
Disarmed, the larger woman lost her composure as she scrambled for her primary weapon. Again, Ash was quick to get her foot there first to dent the muzzle in a good bit before she kicked it well out of reach.
It was only a handful of milliseconds before her foe’s gloved hand swiftly retrieved a knife from somewhere on the colorless jumpsuit. Ash screamed as the brandished blade sliced clear through the hand she extended to dispel it. Her teeth clenched, she wrenched both her penetrated palm and the blade away from the grasp that wielded it. After ripping the knife free, she hurled it as far as she could. Ash turned back with a fist ready to make the first move for her offense.
From the moment their skirmish became physical, it was clear Ash was up against an elite and well-trained individual. Her blows were obviously strategic; almost all of them found purchase in an area of vulnerability. Further, it seemed she never ran out of weapons. The second Ash paused in her offense, her opponent would draw yet another knife from some hidden pocket.
Ash took a flurry of adept punches to her face without falling back, but only when her nose was bashed did her stubborn resistance falter. Eyes watering, she was easily shoved to her knees while waves of agony face pulsed throughout her compromised head.
"Surely you have a family of your own,” Ash croaked out as she hazily watched a boning knife descend for her neck. “Surely you can see what you're doing to us is so wrong."
"My family is no longer mine to call so,” came the stentorian reply. As the elongated blade sped up its dive for her life, Ash leaned to the right and instead took it in her shoulder, nevertheless with a horrible wail.
Chest heaving, she fell back onto the ground with white heat torching her body as the pain ran rampant. She screamed out as a lead boot buried itself just below her ribcage, sending black splotches to swarm her fuzzy vision. Her mouth, unbearably salty from the combination of sweat and blood that concentrated on her tongue, contracted spasmodically, unable to draw breath that didn’t take this anguish to another level.
It took everything she had to finally overcome that latest, frame-splitting blow and narrow her pooling eyes into a glare of survivor’s defiance. “Likely, you lost the right when you joined this vile effort.”
Fed only by the foreign power of vengeance, Ash let her fist surge upward and slam full-throttle into her oppressor’s nearing throat.
The tempest eyes flickered and then the Pure demoness was falling.
Bleddyn had just shot down another fiend in black to spare its target, a teenaged satyr. So, with viciously buzzing ears, now she had to just stop for a minute. And in that moment of shaken reflection, her fingers traveled up the handgun’s barrel.
When she jumped back from the unexpected scalding, her gaze relocated to where her prone father lay.
She frowned at how she saw him. His motionlessness was disconcerting, but surely her mother wouldn’t have left him like that if she wasn’t confident in his stability?
As if she’d broadcasted her mental processes aloud, a formidable Pure member emerged from the warring mass and purposefully approached her father.
Her breath catching painfully, Bleddyn raised her gun and pulled the trigger hard.
Nothing.
She gave it a frantic slap against her thigh and tried again.
The huge man advanced still.
”DAD!" The shriek erupted unpermitted.
If her father’s approacher heard, he gave no sign. Her panicked cry had likely gone heard as just another byproduct of war.
As she helplessly watched Connor undergo a scrutinizing investigation, an immense, near unbearable pressure began building in the pit of her stomach. He’ll be fine. He’ll be fine. He’ll be fine.
Suddenly the Pure man’s boot was embedded in her father’s flank. Connor didn’t didn’t give any sign of life then, but the beating wasn’t about to stop there. Again and again, the raging attacks came down on the likely conscious wolf.
No.
No, he won’t.
She wanted to run forward then, to raze the man who dared abuse her noble dad in all of his agony. She was completely ready to be impudent of all the guns that would certainly be trained on her the moment she advanced.
But she suddenly found the building stress inside her debilitating. She demanded her legs to take her forward, but it was as if her brain’s reign over her body had become compromised by this force. As she was slowly consumed by the obtrusive alien power, she couldn’t move.
She couldn’t let anyone hurt her father.
A low rumbling began beneath her feet, in alarming synchronicity with the violent trembling of her own body.
She wouldn’t.
Bleddyn wanted to be scared for herself now, but she could only continue to fixate on her father’s peril. Her whole body was a vessel to this aggressive surge; so much that she could barely stand being conscious.
Her fogging eyes caught only a glimpse of the snaking crack as it surged across the clearing.
There was no way her father could silently suffer those blows for much longer.
And he didn’t. As the heavy boot came down on the wolf’s spine once more, Connor’s whole body convulsed into life as he let out an appropriately agonized yelp. Even through Bleddyn’s vision was barely functional, she saw the supremacist realize the wolf’s life was still claimable and go for his weapon with jarring clarity.
There was a final terrible boom and then a murderous silence as everything stilled.
Time slowed to sliding stop-animated frames as Bleddyn, released from the oppressive force just in time to be completely helpless, watched as the gun dove for Connor’s head.
But it never had the chance to fire his life away.
The earth split open right beneath the spot where Connor Asfaw would’ve lost his life.
Instead, with front paws flailing, he plummeted down into the instantaneous abyss. Multiple of their persecutors tumbled in after him.
For a frozen moment, the only sound heard was the collective soul-shaking scream of the falling.
Then as quickly as it had yawned, the ground slid shut.
Her jaws snapped shut suddenly, both of them pausing. A strange vibration shuddering under their feet. There was a scream, Wolfram knew it was Bleddyn, there was no mistaking it. But
why the ground was shuddering was something he couldn't answer. Then, there was a loud boom, a noise that shook the ground and echoed for miles. The ground shook and screeched, and sudden there was a horrid howl.
Wolfram shoved Mapleshade to the ground, and took off. Everyone had frozen. He burst into the clearing, the ground yawning open wide. He was just in time to see the flailing, falling shape of a massive black wolf, the scream piercing him. It drove into his chest painfully, his breath hitching.
And the ground closed with a soft bang.
He couldn't describe what had just happened, for his mind went blank. His legs shook, giving out beneath him as he slowly sank to his knees. No one dared to move, only stared.
Slowly, he lifted his gaze to meet Bleddyn's, his pupils thinned to the point they were almost nonexistent. "Can someone," his voice was cracking painfully, the screams of the falling echoing in his ears. "Please tell me what just happened?"
