Woo boy. Took me a bit to figure out how to structure this chapter without making it seem too contrived. My apologies for the delay in updating.

I expect there will only be one more chapter after this, and the fic will be finished.

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Shadowhawk dares the twisted dreamscape that Yyira and Laarn have become lost in. Will the Tayledras Mindhealer succeed in leading the young Mindmate pair back to sanity?

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Maze of Madness

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They wandered together, lost within the shared darkness of their minds. The paths they walked were twisted and confused, shrouded in shadow and littered with sharp, jagged stones and shards of glass. Warped memories floated in little bubbles through the darkness, small points of light like multi-colored stars.

They ran from the purple ones. Purple meant pain.

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Shadowhawk crouched by the children, watching as they dreamed. Laarn twitched and whined, curled as tightly as he could get to the girl's side. Yyira whimpered and moaned, spindly arms locked tight around the young kyree.

Shaking her head, Shadowhawk rose and left the chamber, leaving her merlin, Twill, behind to monitor the younglings and warn her if their dreaming got any worse.

"Breaking their Bond isn't an option," she stated flatly before either Winterstar or Huorra could ask. "Maybe before they slid into madness, it would have been possible. Now, it would probably kill them both."

:What do you mean?: Huorra asked. From the look on Winterstar's face, he had been about to ask the same question.

"I mean that breaking the Mindmate bond would break them, Huorra. In their shared insanity, Yyira is Laarn and Laarn is Yyira."

:That's impossible. No Mindmate bond has ever been that strong.:

"Have Mindmates ever gone mad together before?" Shadowhawk countered harshly.

Huorra whined, flattening her ears and leaning hard against Winterstar's thigh. The Hawkbrother scowled at the Mindhealer, burying his fingers in Huorra's pelt. "That was unduly harsh, Shadowhawk. Laarn is her son, remember."

Shadowhawk turned her piercing gaze upwards to meet his, asking quietly, "And what about the out-clan child? What is Yyira to you, Winterstar?"

Winterstar looked away first.

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Sometimes they were in a cave. The purple bubbles, the bad memories, couldn't find them in the cave.

Sometimes there were others in the cave with them. A silver-haired man that sang to them. A female kyree who watched them with sad yellow eyes. It seemed to Yyira and Laarn that they knew these two, and that all they had to do was reach out to them and the nightmares would go away. But fear held them back, always made them hesitate one second too long.

Then a new person came one day. Silver-haired like the man, only female, and a pale raptor perched on her shoulder. She spoke to them sometimes, but mostly she just watched them.

The purple bubbles could find them then, crowding close and driving them back into the twisted maze of their minds.

They didn't want to see the woman with the bird.

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The man smiled cruelly, and his flat, blunt teeth slowly warped into vicious fangs that would rip and shred their throats.

"You're a bad little girl, aren't you? You know what happens to bad girls, don't you?"

They cowered into the corner as he walked slowly towards them, unbuckling his belt.

"What happens to bad girls?"

"Punished. Bad girls deserve to be punished."

The nightmare changed for the first time.

A shadow rose behind the man, a great hawk with wings spread wide. A woman stood behind the man with moonlight for hair, clothed in a cool, swirling green-gold gown.

:It's only a dream, younglings. It's not real.:

"Real!" they cried with the same voice.

Blood flowed red when the man touched their cheek.

:It's not real. Dreams can't hurt you.:

"Can't you see the blood? So much blood. Yyira's blood." Laarn whispered.

The woman walked forward, and the cave tried to come with her. The nightmare wavered, the man blurred, like water dumped across a fresh painting. She alone remained solid, a shining light, untouched by the blood that flowed down the walls.

:Not Yyira's blood. Never Yyira's blood.:

"Yyira's blood!"

:No. That's the dream, and the dream is a lie.:

"Truth!" Yyira's voice this time, angry and frightened. "Not a lie! Not a liar!"

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Shadowhawk gasped, jerking awake and finding herself sprawled in an untidy heap on the floor. There was something firm but soft beneath her head, and when her eyes focused, she saw a very worried Winterstar looking down at her.

"What happened? We heard you cry out, and Twill came flying out of here like his tail had caught on fire."

"She threw me out, Winterstar. I said the wrong thing, and she threw me out." Shadowhawk struggled to sit up, and only then realized that Huorra was lying across her legs and hips.

"No, stay down for a bit longer," Winterstar said, brushing her hair from her forehead. His fingers were cool, a blessed relief to the fever she felt inside her head.

"God of my fathers, Winterstar, the strength that girl possesses! And her other Gifts haven't even begun to develop yet."

:We never intruded far enough to read her,: Huorra cut in. :What are her other Gifts?:

"Healing and Empathy, for certain. Something else I couldn't quite read. She'd make one hell of a Mindhealer if only…" Shadowhawk trailed off before she could finish the sentence.

"Is their any hope left?" Winterstar asked.

Pushing at Huorra's shoulder so the kyree would get off of her, Shadowhawk shrugged out from under Winterstar's restraining hands and sat up. "I don't give up a fight so easily, Winterstar," she growled.

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The whip whistled through the air and cracked against their skin. The walls wept blood.

"Bad girl. Pretty girl. Broken girl."

:It's not real.:

The nightmare wavered, melted. The shining woman was back.

"It is real!"

:No, this is just a dream, just a memory, and not even your own.:

"NO! It's real! I'm not lying, it's real, it's real, I'm not lying!"

The woman walked towards them, and the nightmare was blown away by a soft, musical wind. The dark maze stretched out before them, and they ran. They ran far into the dark, and the shadows followed them in the shape of a hawk.

The purple bubbles followed them too, crowding closer and closer, surrounding them until they couldn't run anymore lest they run into one. Faces surrounded them, slovenly half-naked women laughed, cruel-faced men leered, starving children cried out in pain and fear.

A silver arrow flew threw the darkness like a falling star, and one of the bubbles burst in a shower of blood.

:They are not real. And you can destroy them. You have the strength to destroy them.:

"Punished. Bad girl. Bad girls deserve to be punished."

:Laarn is not a bad anything, certainly not a bad girl.:

"Laarn?"

:Laarn.:

A blue bubble floated through the hole left where the arrow had pierced through the purple ones. They ran through fields and forests, chased the scent of the hare on the wind, and smelled the earth beneath their paws.

He remembered his mother and his sibs. He remembered playing Catch and Keep in the caves. He remembered listening to the historians and the story-tellers. He remembered who he was.

Laarn's teeth ripped through another purple bubble, and the darkness was splashed with red.

:Yyira. Come back to us, Yyira.:

"Bad girl. Lair. Bad girls deserve to be punished."

:You are not a bad girl.:

"Yyira is a bad girl."

:Then let Yyira go. Release her and send her torments with her.:

"I am Yyira."

:You are who you choose to be.:

A bow appeared in her hands, a silver arrow already set to string. Laarn and the woman turned away into the darkness, but alabaster stardust marked their trail. She could find them, if she wanted to. If she could destroy the bubbles.

She lifted the bow awkwardly, unsure how to use it. Drew back the string.

Blood. So much blood.

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Winterstar paced restlessly, unable to hold still. Shadowhawk rested, Twill tucked nearby, and watched him pace. Huorra and Laarn were curled up together, the cub getting the first restful sleep he'd had in days.

"You're going to wear down a chasm until the kyree need to build a bridge just to get into that cavern." Shadowhawk said dryly, her voice tired.

Winterstar sat down abruptly right where he'd been pacing. "You were in trance for hours, and it's been a full day since you came out. What if she—"

"She has to choose herself, Winterstar. She has to decide to come back to us herself. I can't do any more for her unless she does that."

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The girl that walked out of the cavern was pale and much too thin. Her filthy clothing hung off her gaunt frame like rags. Her honey-brown eyes were dark with fatigue, the sunken flesh around them bruised. Autumn-brown hair hung around her face in matted tangles.

:I would like to take a bath, please.:

The soft, gentle Mindvoice jerked them all awake, and they stared at the fragile figure standing in the entranceway as if they couldn't believe they weren't still dreaming.

"Yyira?" Winterstar asked, his voice quiet and full of hope.

Laarn pulled away from his mother, padding across the cavern to nose at the girl's hand. She rubbed his ears, tilting her head as she turned those dark eyes toward Winterstar, seeming to consider his question, or perhaps her answer.

:Yyira is dead.: