Dream Wolf

33: The Pause

What followed after the silence was mostly chaos, but the chaos hadn't started yet.
Ali ran to her brother, her brother who had-and-then-hadn't betrayed them, who's disappeared for so long, who was dead.
Killed by a friend.
Tears started to fall, and it seemed that time was standing still for everyone else.
"Ali." A soft whisper came from above. Her mom reached down and hugged her, and Ali didn't even reach up to push her away.
Then it came.
Someone pulled Ali away. She recognized Tom's hands as he pushed her off, making her stumble. Her mother stood up, taking a gun- Ali figured she must have brought one with her from the real world- from her pocket and pointed it at Tom. He exchanged the favour with an aimed bow and arrow.
It was a stalemate, kind of.
Ali looked around, trying to find her other friends. Maria was slowly creeping towards Quendel, who was growling, and Ali could see the knife in her hands as it flashed in the light. Ed and Sandy were right behind her, taking out knives of their own, previously stashed in their boot. They walked to the sides of Tom, around Ali. Roy was still lying there, dead, and the fact that he would never laugh at her again hit her.
Cocoa was standing, staring at Ali, who stared back, trying to ask why in her gaze.
Unfortunately, she wasn't very skilled in the art of eye-communication.
Pain exploded up her arm, and in the split second it took to turn around and see the arrow shot at her mother, by Tom, and Maria attacking Quendel, and Sandy leaping on Cocoa, and Ed going for someone else, who had just leaped from the shadows- Great, her principal was on their side too?- and she thought about everything that had happened.
The dreams. Taking them here. The queen. The knife in the tree. The hole in the castle wall. The girls in the dungeon. The disappearence of her friends. Everything.
How it felt like she was dying.
Ali fell onto the ground, watching the blood of her friends drip onto the floor as the raging battle flew, and she tried to get up but with only one arm she couldn't, really, and then the door flew open and everyone froze.
"How nice that everyone's here again," said the high, cold voice of the queen.

A/N: Two chapters left after this! The next one will have a lot of people screaming at each other. Always fun.
Thank you so much for reading! I decided that, seeing as these are the last few chapters and I'm crazy bored, it will end this week, instead of sometime this month or so.