Chapter Text
Anne
"Give. Him. Back." Light blinded Anne's eyes. But almost as quickly as it had come, it had begun to fade as she started to stumble on her feet. All her energy had been zapped away, just like that. Like she had been hit at a moving truck going at full speed.
Sprig, sprig had fallen... he had been dropped out of the window, by Andrias. That's why she had gotten mad, that's why she had attacked him.
"Heh, looks like she can't control it." Andrias, this was his fault, it was all his fault.
Her limbs gave out, and she fell back, barely being caught by the familial hands of hop pop. Her vision was starting to unblur, the red spots disappearing.
"Anne!?"
That voice, she knew that voice. Sprig, who had been dropped out of the window, who she would never see again. Wait, sprig?
Using what felt like all of her remaining energy, she turned her head, seeing sprig running straight towards her arms. And seeing him, seeing him felt like seeing him for the first time again, when she had caught him in that trap.
Sprig collided with Anne, hugging her tightly, and she returned the gesture with even more ferocity.
"Sprig? You're, alive? Oh thank goodness..."
"Marcy caught me just in time!" Marcy. Sweet, lovable clumsy Marcy. Hurt, desperate, sobbing Marcy. The girl, who through it all, had been hiding the fact the she was the reason she, Anne, and Sasha ended up in amphibia in the first place. Marcy, who was scared of moving away. Who had got them trapped on purpose. Yet despite knowing all this, it felt like Anne had just meet her again, too.
"Marcy?" She said the name like a question, like she never knew who Marcy was in the first place.
"I'm surprised."The kings booming voice broke through the air of the throne room, snapping Anne out of the fog that had been flooding her brain. "Somehow, you still got the gift kid." Gift? What was Andria's talking about? Was that what had happened just now? "Which means, I can't let you live."
He was ready, ready to charge at Anne. His sword of massive, raging flames gleaming in the dim light of dusk that show through the now half shattered windows. When suddenly, the castle, that had been flying, suddenly began to dip down. Like when an elevator abruptly stops.
"Please work please work please work..."The soft pleas of Marcy reached Anne's ears, looking up, she saw the girl tampering with the music box, trying everything in her power to get a portal to start. And just when it seemed like she had finally got it, the portal flickered in and out of view, like a glitching computer, before disappearing completely. And no matter what Marcy did, the unstable version of the portal wouldn't return "No, no..."
Andrias turned around with wide eyes, just in time to see the end of the scene. Before a determined and almost menacing look crossed her face as he began running towards Marcy. His large footsteps shaking the throne room.
"Marcy!!" Sasha's panicked voice, that was her voice. Calling out to warn her of the threat that was coming up behind marcy. Anne could only watch as Sasha ran towards the king to block him from the black haired girl. Grime following along behind her.
Grimes hammer made contact with Andrias' foot just in time, causing him to trip right before he reached Marcy.
'I should be helping' Anne realized, 'I shouldn't be letting him do this...' ignoring the pain in her legs and the lightheadedness that plagued her, Anne pulled herself to her feet, sword clutched in her hand. Her eyes locked on king Andrias, who was fight Sasha and Grime.
"Anne, wait-!" Anne could hear the desperate voice of sprig behind her, but she didn't care, these were her friends, they needed her help.
She charged, running the mad tyrant just in time to see him throw Sasha towards Marcy. Her body hit the floor, bouncing off of it once before hitting it again as her body began to slide back across the floor, scrapes forming on her arms and knees.
Marcy didn't move in time before Sasha fell into her, both of them crashing into the wall. Apparently the king had thrown Sasha so hard that it cause the wall to crack when she and Marcy hit it, the pieces of concrete flying and cutting up their faces, one large, sharp fragment lodging into Marcy arm.
Rage burned in Anne's chest as the king turned to face her. He was throwing her friends around like rag dolls. Whatever had ignited the furry in her when he had dropped sprig out of the window, began to return, the feeling pounding through her veins.
Anne charged, lifting her sword in preparation for her attack.
Andrias lifted his own sword made of devilish flames, the sword placed in a way that seemed like he was trying to block Anne's and melt it into a pile of useless metal. But instead Anne's sword wasn't blocked by his, nor did it make contact with his body. No, instead, he swung his sword at her, the flames burning her skin.
The pain started in the base of the left side of her neck, beginning to stretch over her shoulder, down her chest, the pain tugging like it was trying to pull her organs out with the large gash that caused the pain. It kept going, the burning sensation stretching across her body in a diagonal, and it felt like every breath she took was only half completed. Like the fire had burned through one lung and left the other untouched. The pain continued and plagued her whole existence before finally ending in her right hip.
The smell of burning flesh filled the air as Anne fell to her knees, her sword clattering to the floor. Her body shook, something clawing it way up her throat, and it felt like it had been lit with that damn fire. Like the liquid boiling up in her throat was gasoline, that had been lit aflame to burn her from the inside out. Only when the taste hit the back of her neck did she realize it was her own blood, bleeding into her lungs and stomach from where the wound started at her neck.
It began to drip down her chin, the metallic liquid clogging her air way, forcing her to cough it up. more and more blood came out of her mouth as she began to kneel over, hoping gravity would help dislodge the blood, her body desperately trying to clear her lungs.
There were already clots of blood in the pile of blood forming on the floor, like her body was already desperately trying to heal.
Her hands clutched at the wound that now went all the way across her body, blood seeping through the old middle school uniform she hadn't changed out of. The fire lit liquid burning her fingers as spots began to fill her vision.
She heard screaming, some of her name, the rest she couldn't make out. A blob formed in her darkening vision, but she couldn't tell who it was as they desperately try to hold her up.
She felt like she was suffocating, burning, and being stabbed over and over all at the same time. The different pains mixing to make the worst sensation she had ever felt.
She could only faintly make out the scene, Andrias' sword going clean through someone's stomach, and the smell of burning flesh seemed to double.
"MARCY!!!" The desperate scream of her friend's name was the last thing Anne heard before she collapsed, the world going black.
----
Anne was falling, she had been falling for quite some time now. Two things she had learned. This world seemed to be an infinite dark pit where all she could do was fall, and that she was broken, split in a diagonal from her shoulder to her hip. Like she was a doll that someone had given up on and cut down the middle.
No matter what she tried she couldn't get her pieces to go together, nor could she stop the fall. She couldn't stitch herself back together, and could only try to make sense of this dark reality.
Something suddenly gripped at the back of her throat, spilling out of her mouth in a red flood of copper. The tangy taste flooding her senses.
As she desperately tried to clear her throat of blood, she suddenly made contact with hard, solid ground. The bones of her top half shifting and contorting with the impact, while that half that had been cut away seemed unaffected.
"I knew she wouldn't last long." A cruel voice taunted, ringing out through the darkness. Faces formed in front of her. She recognized them, Marcy and Sasha. But their faces were covered in scars, the wounds bleeding a gooey black liquid that pattered against the ground like rain fall. Their eyes black pits that seemed to lead to nowhere.
"Not like she did anything for us, good riddance." Sasha's voice crawled into her ears as she forced out another mouthful of blood, this one seeping with the same black liquid that dripped from her friends.
The faces began to fade, making fear flood through Anne, a desperation flooding through her that both her bottom and top half seemed to share. "N-no, wait-!" She was cut off by her own blood, or what used to resemble her blood and was now a black tar that plagued her mouth.
She tried to chase the fading faces of her friends, dragging herself across the floor with her hands, leaving her bottom half behind in the void of space.
She only made it so far when more goo spewed out of her mouth, and this time, it didn't stop. Clogging up her airways. It was spreading, beginning to drip out of the corners of her eyes, making her vision slowly start to go black.
She grasped desperately for breath, but when she did she only ended up swallowing liquid ash, the foul liquid gurgling in the back of her throat. She couldn't breathe, she couldn't see. The tar was even beginning to drip from her nose and ears now, cutting off all of her senses as it continued to spew out of her mouth.
Breathe, she couldn't breathe, she needed to breathe.
----
Her lungs were no longer denied of air, the oxygen filling her lungs, tasting better than it ever had before.
She wasn't in the black void of hell anymore, she was in a bed, upright with sunlight seeping into her eyes. She knew where she was, she was in the fwagon. The wagon hop pop had bought for the journey to Newtopia and gave a nickname.
A hand suddenly pushed her back down onto the bed. Touching only the right shoulder and not the left, where pain stung like a thousand bees.
"Woah, careful, you're still healing." It was Sasha's voice, but it wasn't sinister and taunting and dripping with tar, it was soft and concerned.
"Anne's awake!?" The words came from someone who sounded exhausted, but extremely relieved. Marcy.
"Careful! You'll open the wound again!" Sasha's voice was panicked, like a mother who was trying to keep kids from playing with kitchen knives. There was the sound of shuffling, then a creak. It sounded like someone had gotten into the other bed.
Finally, Anne's vision began to clear, the fuzz the had lurked at the corners of her eyes fading away. Sasha was standing over her, one hand still holding Anne down by the right shoulder. But her head was facing Marcy, who was in the bed across from the one Anne was in. Her shirt was cut halfway down to make room for the bandage that was wrapped around her waist, a small spot of blood seeping through one side of it.
That's when Anne remembered, someone had been stabbed, some had cried out Marcy's name. Marcy had been stabbed. Sasha's panicked voice called out for her.
Anne had a bandage wrapped around her as well. But this bandage stretched from her left shoulder to her right hip. And more blood was leaking through it than Marcy's.
Anne was still trying to figure out how she was able to breathe, how the black gloop didn't haunt her throat, when sasha spoke again.
"It's okay, it was just a dream." A dream, a dream made to make Anne afraid of her own shadows.
"What happened, where is everyone?" She remembered, everyone had been there that day, the plantars, grime, Olivia and Yunan. But now, it was just her, Marcy and Sasha.
It was Marcy that spoke this time, her voice weak and tired, the pain no longer cover by relief. "Sasha said she had to leave them, to take care of us. They wanted to find a base... to build a rebellion.
"You left them?" Anne's voice was tense as her eyes filtered onto Sasha, the blonde haired girl tensing.
Anne felt the same rage she had felt when Andrias dropped sprig out of the window. She felt stronger, the same blue light from earlier filtering into her eyes. "You left them!?"
Sasha stepped back, her body tense, fear flickering in her eyes. "A-Anne, no, I-"
"You left, the only family I've ever had here, the only people I was able to trust!?
"You don't understand! I-I had to!" Sasha's words were fumbled as Anne took another step forward. The blue rage that had taken over her when she had lost sprig burning hotter.
Sasha backed up even more, her voice desperate now. "It was the only way for me to have enough time to save you!"
That stopped Anne dead in her tracks, the blue slowly coming down, the world no longer blurred. She wanted to ask why Sasha wanted to save her, but she didn't. Instead, she turned to Marcy.
"Does Andrias have the box?"
"No... but..." the girl spoke softly, shifting around while wincing in pain? Trying to find something. Eventually, she pulled out the music box.
It was split almost down the middle, some pieces missing with edges of ash being the only thing left.
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