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“Again.”

“Again.”

“Again.”

She was shaking with anticipation, her palms slipping around the axe handle. The handle her father touched hundreds of times. The handle that would now take down the very thing he loved more than his own family.

She lifted her axe over the weakening beam. With a roar, she drove it down.

The Pedestal collapsed.

“Get the legs,” Lily said as she aimed for the one to the right. Daisy took the left.

Whack.

Whack.

Whack.

Whack.

Whack.

Within a minute the vertical poles that once held up the torture device were reduced to useless logs.

“Look, it’s rotted, not black.” Daisy peered where she pointed, noting how the inside of the wood was a spoiled brown and yellow knot of corruption. Where the entire forest around their home was black, here was the rotted core of what had held them and their mothers to subjugation. Putrid and weak.

Working steadily, the young women hacked away at each piece until they were no longer large enough to hurt anyone.

They burned the pieces until nothing but ash was left.