"I thought the hit would have just splatted him across the walls," Kacey said. "I guess he was a bigger stubborn fuck than we thought."

His left eye glowed and receded back to grey, a tired eyelid hid the deteriorating color.

"It's over, at least." He bent over. To his side was the beast. It was...something of a large order, not larger than the worm. A giant, almost puffer-fish kind of monstrosity, with vesicles across its black flesh and a myriad of little arms extending out of its round body and two eyes that filled with blood and who released it with every outward 'puff' of the creature.

It puffed in and out, with such speed, with the small spikes and fines outstretched across its round body.

This creature fell to the floor next to Kacey, wobbling, almost in injury. It breathed in and out and each time, destroying portions of the concrete and making small craters as it exploded and imploded.

"That's enough." Kacey extended his arm out, he waved across, and the creature disappeared into dust, into his eye.

"It's unwieldy. That's why I hate it." Kacey told his sister. "And what about you, I told you we didn't need that thing."

Of course, the worm. That thing that had dug underground and rumbled beneath their feet with each of its slithering movements.

"We did need it. We wouldn't have won without it."

"I know, but look at you." He walked over. She held the wall, her legs angled a bit and shaking. The blood underneath her eye pooled and fell like a tear, hitting her chin and then the floor like droplets from a faucet. Each movement made her worse; a large waterfall ejected out of her eye sockets. Her stiff mouth was open, slightly, the drool came out of her. It was as if half her body was paralyzed, at least from her shoulder to her eye. The veins in her neck protruded, seized almost, clenching her muscles into an eerie stiffness.

"Let it go." Kacey grabbed her by the shoulder and helped her up. "It's done now."

Her knees gave way, she put a hand against the floor.

"No." Her feet shook, she tried to stand but fell. He lifted her up.

"Come on, you're hurting yourself. Just let it go."

She turned to him, eye red-shot and wide. The other, blind nearly, grey and turning white.

"He's still alive." She said. "I can feel him. He's struggling, he's alive."

"What?"

The worm rose from the floor, halfway up to the vaulted ceiling. The chandeliers swerved and fell like glaciers across the room, he pushed her to the side. A chandelier fell, splatted right next to them.

The worm moved, jerked itself along the walls and up them and then collapsed.

"Where is he?" He turned to Jaimi. "Where'd he go?"

"Inside-" She held her stomach. The strained muscles extended out her body. Then she knelt down, and there, prostrated, she vomited across the floor. There wasn't even food for her to vomit, there was nothing but yellow, green-sickly sludge. Over-use was what it was. Though, they had learned to call it Summoner's Sickness.

"Let it go, release it!" He shook her shoulder. She turned and regurgitated.

Then he looked up to the loud scene where the creature screamed and wiggled on the floor. And from its stomach, it came out, sand. As if a leak in a pipe, it came out the gaps from its carapace, spilling onto the floor. Black sand. The leaks grew, every few feet the monster was bleeding sand.

"Release it!" Kacey screamed. He touched his eye, the grey one.

The lion came out, almost in apparition-like state. A blurred, less material form realized itself in front of him. This lion chimera was unfinished, like a half-done portrait. All traced lines, no color.

His eye faded into pure white, the pupil disappeared.

"It's going to die." He held his breath.

The worm screamed, one last shout before it all went quiet. Sand came out of its mouth like foam or blood would to any corpse.

Ritcher...came out.

Exploded out of the stomach. A bulge in the worm's tummy flashed for only a moment before a large rift of sand flew out from the fresh hole. It covered the bodies, the walls, everything with five inches of sand.

"All that force in one spot," Ritcher extended his hand out, he grabbed onto the body of the worm to pull himself from the dune created. "It can create a blade, a force, strong enough to cut any metal. Or flesh. Or bug."

He turned to face Kacey. Kacey's right eye flashed this time around, the giant ball with limbs, the fish or mutant or chimera, whatever abortion of nature it was, rolled out onto the floor. Its arms latched onto the sands, grabbing small handfuls of them as it rolled down.

"It was a good effort, I'll give your sister that," Ritcher said. Sand, like armor, came out of his body in small tiles. They fell to the floor and blended with the black sand sea. "But now she's done, isn't she? And you? You're here, to fight a battle you already know is lost. To fight in my home, with the expanse of my advantage before you. This is an... an...away game, that's what you'd call it, right? Fun."

He slapped his arm to stop the shaking.

Which didn't help at all? His sister laid to his side, her breathing a sporadic and suffocating slur of sounds. Choking, and exasperation and sighing happening so fast it blended together.

She sounded like a clock.

It was like having a timer tick down to a fateful end he could only imagine, but was sure would become a reality. Had he not tried. Had he not stepped up.

One leg moved forward. The two animals attacked, with sluggish and telegraphed movements, with such dramatic gestures that it would be difficult not to dodge.

The lion charged a claw, shot it in the direction of Ritcher. Ritcher jumped.

The monstrosity, whatever it was, came rolling down with its small hands pulling and digging into the sand. It expanded, breathing out, making a crater and large track where it rolled down, to hit Ritcher as he fell from his jump.

Ritcher raised a wall of sand. The creature collapsed into it.

"You're the annoying one." A platform of sand formed beneath his foot. One hand, still missing, the other holding the half-broken cane. He pointed his cane at the giant ball of hands and distorted limbs and covered it with a sleek coat of sand. Then he turned his cane, clockwise. It compressed the monstrosity. Drowned it. Crushed it in the prison of sand. Until the blood squirted out.

"Like an iron maiden," Ritcher said. The sand fell with grace, with calm, from the corpse of the beast.

Kacey's right eye exploded in blood. He tripped midway his run towards Ritcher. Trying to stand, he pushed his arm down. Not enough.

He tried his other hand. He moved his shoulder instinctively, but there was no arm there. There was nothing.

"It's painful, isn't it?" Ritcher asked. "And see? You're blind now too. You're like me. Though I've lived with it longer, I've known what it feels like to see the world not in images but in the fear conjured by sound and smell and touch."

Kacey felt a hand on his shoulder. He turned his head up, both eyes bled. Both were white.

Beyond him, beyond the breath of Ritcher before him, he heard the groan. His lion stumbled over, he heard it. The scream.

"You can't see it, can you?" Ritcher gripped Kacey by the shoulder. He pushed him down, face first into the sand and laid his foot upon the back of his head and stomped, firmly, until his face imposed itself on the floor. The screaming, mouth open, frightened face.

"Your lion, the cat? Yes, I've stabbed it in the heart." And Kacey knew it was the truth because of the groan and the pain sudden in his chest. "What makes this, the third? The fourth time I've killed it?"

Kacey pushed himself, tried to. His arm gave up. Ritcher stomped down.

"Do you have anything to say?" Ritcher asked. He pressed down on his foot. The sound of gathering sand was above, it was the sound of dragging, like an invisible ocean wave pulling every particle towards this singular spot. It gathered on him, on his back, past his severed arm, up the sleeves of his rags and in his pants and on his torso like a heavy blanket.

"Run, Jaimi. Run." He let out, the blood spat out of him with each word. He breathed it in, blood and sand. His heart beat fast, but his body did not move. The smothering was slow moving, but all-encompassing. Exactly how he expected it, exactly how he expected Ritcher to kill him. With patient perfectionism.

Like any good butcher or craftsman.

"She already ran," Ritcher said. "That isn't a lie. Lying is a sin after all."

The grin formed across his face, wide, a bit stupid-looking (if he saw it).

"She's smart." He chuckled. His heavy eyes slunk down. His lion, somewhere further beyond, groaned. It's heavy lungs exasperated, releasing the final bouts of tension in its body.

"Smarter than you," Ritcher said.

"She always was."

"Is that the last thing you want to say?" Ritcher asked.

"Last words? You're the only one who'd care for them." Kacey's face fell down, rested on the sand. It was warm. "You're the only one I've really spoken with."

"Sad," Ritcher said. "Sad and stupid."

"No. It's not sad." He said. "She' still alive, I can't be sad."

His lungs were the first to get crushed. One of his ribs punctured it, the pain was sudden. Brief.

His thighs were next.

Then his neck. By then he was already gone. All that was left was warmth, warmth, and wetness.

And far behind him, beyond even Ritcher. The lion roared and cried.